There is a building in Greater Hazelwood that used to service the locomotives of the J&L Steel mill, one of the most powerful industrial operations this city has ever known. For decades it sat dormant, a monument to a Pittsburgh that was. Today, the Roundhouse hosts speakers series, startup founders, and researchers mapping the next frontier of American biomanufacturing. The metaphor is not subtle, and it is entirely intentional.

"This building," said Heidi Ward, who leads the University of Pittsburgh's Greater Hazelwood Neighborhood Commitment and lives in the community herself, "is a metaphor for what's possible when research, industry, and neighborhood partnerships all work together to shape Pittsburgh's next chapter."

Ward was speaking at a recent Pitt Academy event held in the restored Roundhouse, part of the former J&L Steel footprint that has since become Hazelwood Green, the 178-acre mixed-use development along the Monongahela River that represents one of the most ambitious urban land transformations in the country. The occasion brought together alumni, researchers, and community partners to discuss what is quietly becoming one of Pittsburgh's most compelling economic stories: the rise of a genuine life sciences hub in a neighborhood that once ran on steel.

A Manufacturing Center for the Next Economy

At the center of this transformation is BioForge, Pitt's biomanufacturing innovation center whose permanent facility is currently under construction at Hazelwood Green. The site is designed to become a regional anchor for life sciences manufacturing, connecting university researchers and early-stage companies with the operational expertise to turn laboratory discoveries into scalable products.

Ian Johnson, BioForge's director of life sciences and a Pittsburgh native who earned his degree at Pitt, describes his team's mission with refreshing plainness. "We take really cool science," he said, "and turn it into something manufacturable, so that it impacts people immediately." Among the projects BioForge is currently advancing is Furnace, an mRNA brokerage platform developed in part from lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as microneedle patch technology developed by Pitt-connected researchers. The goal in each case is the same: to move transformative science out of the lab and into the hands of patients as quickly as possible.

The model is already attracting outside companies. Panther Life Sciences, a startup that worked with BioForge during its formative stages, made the decision to relocate its operations to Pittsburgh entirely. That kind of pull, the ability to bring growing companies across state lines and into the city's orbit, is exactly what economic development officials and university partners have been working toward for years.

Workforce Development That Starts Next Door

The economic potential of a biomanufacturing hub means little to a neighborhood if the people who live there cannot access the jobs it creates. That tension, between the promise of innovation and the reality of opportunity, is something Ward and her colleagues have been grappling with directly. When Pitt asked Greater Hazelwood residents what they needed, the answer came back consistently: people were curious about life sciences careers, but did not know where to start, and were reluctant to commit to months of training without knowing whether it was the right fit.

Pitt's response was the Life Sciences Bridge Program, a 50-hour paid workforce development initiative specifically designed for young adults without college degrees. The program introduces participants to careers in biotechnology and life sciences, then connects them with additional training, educational pathways, and employment opportunities. Its first cohort graduated in April 2026, a milestone that Ward called a proof of concept. The program demonstrates that a university can, with intention, serve as a genuine ladder of opportunity for the people who already live alongside its research facilities, not merely a backdrop to them.

Rosta Farzan, an associate dean for Engaged Scholarship at Pitt's School of Computing and Information Sciences, has approached the same challenge from the angle of technology and community trust. Working with neighborhood organizations including Center of Life and Hazelwood Initiative, Farzan's team has helped residents set up environmental air quality sensors, giving community members an active role in monitoring and understanding the data that affects their own streets. The principle, Farzan noted, is that the best solutions emerge when researchers listen as much as they teach. "That is actually how we learn a lot about how to best solve these problems," she said, "and build technologies that are actually better for everyone."

Pittsburgh has spent the better part of three decades repositioning itself from an industrial economy to a knowledge economy. What is happening at Hazelwood Green suggests the city may be approaching a genuinely new phase: one in which the knowledge economy begins manufacturing things again, only this time the products are therapies, diagnostics, and biomedical tools rather than steel. For a neighborhood that was built by the mill and long defined by its absence, that is a remarkable thing to witness taking shape.