Village of Cranberry Woods

Today's Pittsburgh Business Times unveils early information on the Village of Cranberry Woods, a mixed-use development that will sit next to the new Westinghouse complex. Not only is it expected to help serve the growth that Westinghouse will bring, but Westinghouse is being asked to offer expectations for this new development.

[Developer Don] Rodgers is planning a new mixed-use project featuring 200,000 square feet of retail, two hotels and an estimated 150 residential units just east of Cranberry Woods office park, the new headquarters for Westinghouse.

The Village of Cranberry Woods project is situated along a swath of property that fronts Route 228. It is being marketed by CB Richard Ellis/Pittsburgh, which also helped bring Westinghouse and its new 915,000-square-foot campus to Cranberry Woods.

Westinghouse's new site just got bigger

Even though Westinghouse isn't planning to move into their new Cranberry offices until 2009, they've already expanded. Business is growing, and with it is an increase in staff. Some highlights from two articles today:

Post-Gazette:

The nuclear power plant company recently made the decision to add 140,000 square feet to the three-building complex now under construction inside an office park near the intersection of Interstate 79 and Route 288. An extra floor will be built atop two of the three structures.

"Adding the additional floors gives us flexibility for the future," Westinghouse spokesman Vaughn Gilbert said in an e-mail. "Also, hiring is accelerating."

The addition of two floors bumps the size of the new campus above 920,000 square feet. To put that in perspective, the Westinghouse square footage now will be larger than all but four of Downtown's biggest office towers (the U.S. Steel Tower, One Mellon Center, One Oxford Centre and 525 William Penn Place).

Tribune-Review:

We will move about 2,400 to 2,600 people from our current headquarters in Monroeville and our facilities in Churchill and then expect to hire a minimum of 1,000 people at that facility," Gilbert said.

That's in contrast to about 2,000 existing employees and an additional 1,000 when Westinghouse announced its choice of the Cranberry site in March.

"There's a potential for even more (hiring) down the road if business continues to grow at the speed it is," Gilbert said. "We also have an option to build a fourth building out there."

As reported by the Tribune-Review last month, the company already hired 850 employees in the fiscal year ended March 31, and projected it may hire another 1,300 in the current year.

Cranberry approves Westinghouse

Not that there was much question, but Cranberry Township has officially approved Westinghouse's proposal for its complex in the Cranberry Woods office park. With the construction set to begin before year's end, the area now braces for change.

The most immediate change is the planned widening of Route 228 between Route 19 and Route 8, a stretch of about eight miles of road that has become prone to rush-hour jams as developments and shopping malls sprang up. Interstate 79 exits will be reworked.

More local coverage of the Westinghouse event

Lots of local news outlets picked up on the Westinghouse groundbreaking yesterday.

• KDKA
• Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
• Pittsburgh Business Times
• WTAE
  

The Pennsylvania Office of the Governor also submitted a press release.

Westinghouse ground-breaking today

From the Post-Gazette:

Gov. Ed Rendell will be in Cranberry today for the groundbreaking at Westinghouse Electric's new corporate campus in Cranberry, an 82-acre, 800,000-square-foot project billed as the largest of its kind in state history.

The fast-growing nuclear power engineering firm almost left for South Carolina last year, but the state was able to keep it here with the creation of a special taxing district that will save Westinghouse $45 million.

Following today's groundbreaking, employees who currently work in Monroeville and Churchill will have to wait until 2009 and 2010 to occupy the $175 million Cranberry complex.

Westinghouse expects to hire 1,500 new employees this year plus an additional one to two thousand over the next few years.

In related news, part of Westinghouse's parent company Toshiba was purchased by Kazakhstan's state-run energy company Kazatomprom. More details in the Tribune-Review.

Westinghouse to break ground Aug 14

On Sunday, the Post-Gazette reminisced about the long and sometimes heated battle to keep Westinghouse, one of Pennsylvania's "legacy" companies, in state. Even determining which in-state location got fierce at times.

Gov. Ed Rendell will take part in the ground breaking August 14th, a move for Westinghouse which has been described as "the biggest relocation project in the country this year".