According to 2025 Residential Assistance Capital Program (RACP) funding proposal documents, Point Park is planning on taking over two large buildings Downtown to increase the size of the campus.
This filing, which is on the cusp of the university enrolling one of its largest classes of first-year students ever and running out of housing on-campus, requests $5.5 million in funding to renovate the former YWCA building into student housing, study spaces and what the filing calls “community areas.”
University spokesperson Lou Corsaro declined to comment, saying the university does not have anything confirmed yet.
The $5.5 million in funds from the state will cover the “full renovation of the existing structure,” which includes upgrades to bring the building into ADA compliance and demolition of outdated portions of the building.
Before falling into disrepair, the former YWCA building was also the original home of the Center for Media Innovation (CMI) and where Mandarin Gourmet, a campus-favorite Chinese restaurant best known for appearing in “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” (2018), stood before its 2023 closure.
Originally, the former YWCA was going to be turned into luxury apartments by Detroit-based City Club Apartments (CCA). However, there has been no visible progress on renovating the building — beyond demolishing the old CMI — for three years since the building was bought for $4 million in 2022.
RACP funding was also supposed to support the project when it was still planned to turn the building into luxury apartments — $6 million, to be exact. However, none of that funding was distributed to CCA. It’s unclear if that money would be reused elsewhere or if it could be given to Point Park, as well.
Tyler Heckel, a political science major who graduated in 2023, said the former YWCA building could act as a business opportunity for students, noting how there was already once a restaurant in the space.
“They need to open an actual campus restaurant.” Heckel said, “Business students [can] get experience running it like Pitt does with its dining hall. They can do whatever on the left side and whatever with the rest of the building, but Point Park needs an actual cafe.”
Heckel also mentioned the pool in the former YWCA’s basement, which has been out of use since the early 2000s, according to the organization. However, Heckel said it would be something still worth exploring.
Along with the Gulf Tower renovation project, it was touted as a major Downtown redevelopment hallmark in 2024 and still is, despite the questionable future of City Club Apartments and the lack of any signs of progress at the building.
Additionally, CCA was ordered in May to pay $3.5 million plus interest to Union Life Insurance, after the company defaulted on the former YWCA’s mortgage. The building is now in the hands of a receiver, according to the Pittsburgh Business Times.
It is unclear whether this move is in direct response to a lack of on-campus housing for incoming students, as seen by the need to house 90 first-year students in the Wyndham Grand hotel near Point State Park.
Further away from campus, the Mellon Bank building on Smithfield Street next to Target is also on the RACP funding proposal document; with Point Park listed as the requestor of funds.
Point Park requested $4 million in funding to renovate the old bank in phases. The first is meant to “modernize core building systems” and add elevators along with extra surveillance; phase two will renovate the bank to include “flexible classrooms,” performance and rehearsal studios along with community programming facilities. Finally, the third will complete “specialized buildout purposes.”
The former bank, which was described as “long vacant” in the funding request, was last a PNC Bank call center until the COVID-19 pandemic emptied out the building. Prior to that the bank was a short-lived Lord and Taylor department store. PNC announced it was looking to sell the building in August 2024, but the company said it had not sold the old bank yet.
If the building were purchased and used by Point Park, it would expand the campus the furthest it ever has Downtown, and will be the furthest on-campus building away from Lawrence Hall and Academic Hall.
It is also unclear whether the performance space which may be added to this building will act as an extension of the Pittsburgh Playhouse, or will be closer to the theater space inside the Boulevard Apartments, which are the only spaces student-run theater companies can use after the Playhouse stopped sponsoring each company.
