A Pittsburgh organization that works to provide resources for life sciences startups has moved into a new headquarters location in a different city neighborhood.
LifeX, one of the region's preeminent startup accelerator hosts, has taken over most of the 3,818-square-foot InnovatePGH Avenu Revv: Oakland coworking space on the second floor of the building located at 218 Oakland Ave., swapping out of its location above the corporate offices of Amazon.com Inc. near the SouthSide Works development along Sidney Street in the South Side.
Come Nov. 1, LifeX will occupy the entirety of the space except for a communal event area. It currently is using most of the private offices previously used by other startups and teams that worked out of the Avenu Revv: Oakland location, all of whom have since been relocated to other InnovatePGH co-working locations.
LifeX is pitching the move as a win for its portfolio companies and also for the Oakland neighborhood, an area of the city that has continued to produce valuable assets for business development over the years while in the company of the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University and other high education institutions nearby.
"With this relocation to the Pittsburgh Innovation District, LifeX aims to establish a center of gravity in Oakland for the life science startup community," LifeX Director of Ecosystem Development Kelly Collier said in a statement. "Many of our portfolio companies and engaged innovators are already located in Oakland, so we look forward to drawing together a broader community of talent, expertise and startup supporters in this innovation core."
The move is also a major win for InnovatePGH, a public-private partnership based in Oakland that's looking to elevate the city's status as a global player in tech and innovation development.
"The Revv: Oakland space is sort of becoming a life sciences clubhouse," Jason Griess, ecosystem and research director at InnovatePGH, said while noting the move came at the perfect time given the recent opening of the Avenu: Atwood location. "All the timing signals that the market for tech coworking is strong in Oakland and we hope it continues to grow."
Griess didn't rule out the possibility that InnovatePGH could look to pursue additional co-working space buildout in the future given LifeX's takeover of its flagship location but said it's not a priority for the organization at this time given its recent opening of the Atwood space.
"We have no targeted plans to expand again, but we are seeing an upswell in demand for co-working, especially in the tech sector," Griess said. "We are obviously always looking and trying to figure out if the demand is right and the timing is right for us to provide more space for growing tech companies in Oakland."
But the move-in of LifeX also comes shortly after Japanese multinational IT firm Fujitsu expanded its presence in the aforementioned Avenu: Atwood location, taking several private offices in the process and fueling the demand for space in Oakland that Griess said has continued to rise in recent years.
"The [LifeX] move here is part of the growth of the district overall: It's a great individual story, but it's couched in a larger momentum that we're seeing in the Pittsburgh Innovation District," Griess said. "We're densifying innovation assets, the universities are drawing in more and more investment and more and more startup formation. We think this is a really good sign and we're really excited to strengthen the partnership with LifeX."
