Despite Mandarin Gourmet, the last tenant inside the former YWCA building at 305 Wood St., closing last year on Sept. 29, no visible construction progress has occurred at the building since the restaurant’s closure.
Signs on the building advertising its future use as a future City Club Apartments (CCA) site still stand at the windows where the Center of Media Innovation (CMI) once occupied part of the first floor. CCA, a Detroit-based owner of luxury mixed-use apartment complexes, bought the building in April 2022 for $3 million.
CCA still advertises the property on its website, without any indication that the company is no longer pursuing the apartment complex project.
The CMI was forced to move out of the YWCA to West Penn Hall when Point Park’s lease expired at the end of 2022. Mandarin Gourmet originally signed a lease in 2022 securing the restaurant’s spot for at least five years, but the eatery had to break from the lease just a year later.
Mandarin Gourmet cited challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic as its main factor of declining business, ultimately leading to the restaurant’s closure in 2023.
Based on information from Construction Journal, a provider of construction project info in the U.S., while the zoning ordinance required to increase the height of the building was approved, “no other applications or building permits have been selected.” The last update on the site was Feb. 14, 2023. Construction was expected to have started October 2023, but no progress has been made beyond gutting the former CMI.
Mandarin Gourmet’s space is virtually untouched and looks almost the same as when it closed last year on Sept. 29. The only noticeable differences at the former restaurant site are two boarded up windows due to broken glass, as well as the closing sign near the front desk having fallen onto the floor.
As for the former CMI, no additional progress has been made at that side of the building either. The power appears to have been shut off, as no lights illuminate any part inside or outside the property.
While construction progress has not visibly started from the outside, a fight over how much the building is worth appears to be underway.
According to Trellis Law, a state trial aggregating website, CCA joined several Downtown businesses in applying for a tax assessment appeal in the wake of lowered property values for buildings in the golden triangle.
The case, CCA CBD of Greater Pittsburgh vs. Allegheny County, was filed March 12, 2024. $26,955 in taxes were paid on the property in 2024, while $27,505 in taxes were paid in 2023, according to the Allegheny County real estate portal.
CCA’s only other property development in Pittsburgh is the SouthSide Works apartments, which were sold to BNTR SSW Propco LLC in Jan. 2022, according to the Allegheny County real estate portal website.
Village Green Associates, a separate company formerly owned by Jonathan Holtzman, CEO of CCA, developed the Morrow Park City Apartments in Bloomfield – now called Albion at Morrow Park – but it was sold to “CCI Historic Inc” in April 2019.
In a Nov. 2023 interview with the Pittsburgh Business Times, Holtzman promised that the project at the former YWCA building is “very much alive.” No specific timeline on construction was provided, but he hopes for the project to take around two years to complete.
A representative at CCA did not return a request for comment.
