Pittsburgh's Strip District is about to gain another tool in its ongoing reinvention. On July 9, Mayor Corey O'Connor and the Urban Redevelopment Authority announced they are entering exclusive negotiations with TAGLYZ LLC to redevelop the long-vacant Office of Municipal Investigations building at 2608 Penn Avenue — a city-owned property that has sat idle while the neighborhood around it has grown into one of Pittsburgh's most energetic commercial corridors.
The TAGLYZ proposal carries a $4.35 million price tag and envisions a thoroughly mixed-use future for the site: two ground-floor commercial spaces activated for small businesses, a top-to-bottom adaptive reuse of the existing building with a new third story added, ten market-rate apartments on the upper floors, and the potential to convert adjacent parking into a public garden or pedestrian parklet. If the plan holds, the OMI building would go from city liability to neighborhood asset.
The URA issued a request for proposals in March 2026 to reactivate the building, and TAGLYZ's bid rose to the top. The exclusive negotiation period — six months long — will allow the developer to conduct site testing and nail down the specifics of their plan before a final agreement moves forward. The URA Board of Directors reviewed the project at their regular meeting the same week the announcement was made.
"The Strip District has proven there is real demand for spaces where small businesses, residents, and visitors can coexist. This project builds directly on that momentum."
Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh
A Second Win for Downtown Vibrancy
The OMI building announcement came paired with a second development move: the URA's planned sale of 604 Liberty Avenue in Downtown Pittsburgh to MK Liberty Partners. That project carries a total investment exceeding $480,000 — including the $200,000 property purchase — and aims to bring a vacant street-level storefront back online as a lease space for a local small business. The location sits on a busy corner near Heinz Hall and Market Square, at the heart of the Golden Triangle's pedestrian activity.
Both projects reflect the O'Connor Administration's strategy to chip away at vacancy in the city's most visited districts by putting underutilized city-owned properties into private hands that will activate them. The approach is deliberate: rather than large anchor redevelopments, these are the neighborhood-scale interventions that make streets feel alive — a coffee shop on a corner that had been boarded up, a garden where a surface lot once sat, an apartment where city clerks once filed reports.
Together, the two announcements represent more than half a million dollars in targeted investment in Pittsburgh's commercial core, with the Strip District project alone potentially catalyzing millions more once construction begins and small businesses move in.
Part of a Broader Downtown Push
The timing of these two projects is no accident. Pittsburgh has spent the past year aggressively converting momentum from high-profile events — the 2026 NFL Draft, the renovation of Market Square, the opening of Arts Landing — into durable investment. The URA currently has nine projects in its Downtown development pipeline, with one completed, four under construction, and five moving toward financial closings. The total residential commitment now stands at 708 units, 477 of which are affordable.
For the Strip District, the OMI building sits at a particularly interesting inflection point. Penn Avenue between Downtown and the Strip has seen sustained investment over the past several years, with food vendors, coffee roasters, and specialty retailers filling formerly empty storefronts. Adding ten apartments above two new commercial spaces is exactly the kind of density that makes a block feel like a neighborhood. And a public garden replacing surface parking would give the area something the Strip still lacks: a reason to linger.
What does this mean for Pittsburgh? It means the city is doing the patient work that urban revival actually requires — not just ribbon cuttings on marquee projects, but the careful stitching of vacant buildings back into functioning streets, one block at a time. The Strip District has earned its reputation as Pittsburgh's most dynamic commercial corridor. Projects like the OMI building redevelopment are how that reputation gets made permanent.