Mere months ahead of the launch of its first lunar lander into outer space, Astrobotic Technology Inc. is already setting its sights on building out more local space of its own as the North Side-based company looks to double its footprint in the coming months.
CEO John Thornton confirmed the company's recent $2,587,500 acquisition of a roughly 50,000-square-foot warehouse on Reedsdale Street from Eleven 06 Condo LLC.
It's just a few blocks away and "a hair bigger" from the company's 47,000-square-foot headquarters on North Lincoln Avenue in Manchester and will serve as a key component of the company's future growth plans in the region. Thornton said he estimates an additional 200 or so workers could occupy the space after it gets redeveloped over the course of the next 18 months. He added that the company's current headquarters is essentially at capacity, with many of its estimated 210 workers "hoteling" desks with each other amid a hybrid in-person and remote work environment.
"We're not afraid of a big renovation project," Thornton said while pointing to the dilapidated building that can be seen from Astrobotic's current rooftop terrace. "It's just like this building; this building was a total gut job and redo."
Thornton said the plan is to convert the multi-floor building into one that's more suitable for office use. It'll also feature an entire floor dedicated to lab space similar to what the company has at its current building.
"We need it done as soon as we can," Thornton said. "We're working with our architects and our contractors now to work to get [development plans] up. That's actually the next meeting I'm heading to."
Astrobotic's recent buy of 1104-1106 Reedsdale, a vacant five-story warehouse building, marks a new chapter in a couple different redevelopment proposals for the property in the past, located not far from a T station as well as Rivers Casino Pittsburgh.
It's a building that an investment group lead by Tony Dolan took before the Pittsburgh Planning Commission in 2016 with the goal of renovating the property into a hotel, establishing 130 rooms by building five floors on it.
With the casino's Landing Hotel now open and operating nearby, the previous owner 1106 Condo LLC, as the name suggests, pursued the Reedsdale property as a condo redevelopment, working with Piatt Sotheby's International Realty.
In early March 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic shut down much of the economy, Piatt Sotheby's held a marketing event to promote the "Eleven06" condo project estimated to cost $15 million to build out and pitched to include a private gym, rooftop deck, and dog park.
The new expansion plans for Astrobotic will likely serve only as a blip on the company's milestone timeline compared to the upcoming launch of its Peregrine lunar lander, which will soon head down to Cape Canaveral, Florida, to board a rocket from United Launch Alliance that's bound for outer space with a planned takeoff date of May 4. Once in space, Peregrine will be ejected from the rocket and navigate toward the moon over the course of about a month before touching down on the lunar surface with its dozens of payloads.
Astrobotic has scored upwards of $500 million in NASA contracts over the years, Thornton said. Peregrine will serve as the first commercial mission to the moon ever as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.
Yet while the buy and the new expansion may only be a blip in the context of the company's other plans, Astrobotic's expansion into 1104-1106 Reedsdale marks one of the city's largest office expansions in recent years.
In an office market in which the need for space has shrunk dramatically amid hybrid and remote work arrangements, any new space requirement for 50,000 square feet in the city has been extremely rare, with moves by Dollar Bank to 20 Stanwix, now called Dollar Bank Corporate Center, and the law firm Dickie McCamey's commitment to move into 80,000 square feet at Gateway Center in 2025, notable exceptions.
Ralph Egerman, a principal in the Pittsburgh office of Colliers International, who sold Astrobotic a building next to its established headquarters on Western Avenue in Manchester in 2021, remembers how quickly the company moved on building out an expansion and expects they'll do so again.
"They're clearly a company in high gear. They’re moving forward very quickly," he said, viewing their presence as a major plus for the city. "They’re the perfect corporate neighbor for Pittsburgh. They're exactly who we want."
