Neighborhood 91, the 195-acre advanced-manufacturing campus at Pittsburgh International Airport, is getting bigger. Officials have signed off on a new 108,000-square-foot production building that would rise on roughly 5.8 acres next to the campus’s existing multi-tenant facility, which is already fully occupied.
Airport authority signs off on ground lease
The Allegheny County Airport Authority has approved a ground-lease agreement that clears the way for the new structure, according to the Pittsburgh Business Times. The lease covers about 5.8 acres at Neighborhood 91 and authorizes the Regional Industrial Development Corporation, or RIDC, to move ahead with development and leasing plans for the site.
RIDC expects to break ground this spring
RIDC leaders say shovels could hit the ground soon. Timothy White, the organization’s senior vice president of business development and strategy, told local outlets that RIDC expects to break ground "sometime in the spring," according to reporting by WPXI. The new building will join the campus’s existing production facility and a smaller neighboring building, both of which are already occupied.
What the campus is meant to do
Neighborhood 91 is pitched as an end-to-end additive manufacturing production campus that clusters 3-D printing, materials, and supply-chain partners on land adjacent to the airport, according to Neighborhood 91. The project’s materials and white paper highlight tenants and partners already on site and forecast roughly $2.2 billion in wages and about 6,000 jobs at full build-out. RIDC manages the property and plans to market the new building to manufacturers, materials suppliers, and defense-aerospace contractors.
Why the airport location matters
The campus sits directly beside Pittsburgh International Airport, giving manufacturers quick access to air, road, and rail networks and making rapid shipment of parts more feasible. Project managers and regional developers have repeatedly emphasized that proximity is a key selling point in RIDC’s outreach to potential tenants and partners, especially those that value same-day or next-day global connectivity for high-value parts and materials.
What to watch next
Permitting, tenant commitments, and financing will shape how quickly the new shell goes up and who ultimately moves in. RIDC has not yet publicly named any anchor tenants for the building. Local economic development advocates say the additional space could help accelerate the cluster’s growth by drawing more machine makers, powder suppliers, and defense contractors to the airport campus.
