Pittsburgh’s Planning Commission on Tuesday approved The Andy Warhol Museum’s new $45 million entertainment venue in the city’s North Shore.
The 57,776-square-foot entertainment venue on Sandusky Street is slated to include a first-floor concert venue with standing room for up to 1,000 people. Plans presented to the commission also showed a second-floor mezzanine and an events space that could hold up to 360 people on the fourth floor. The third floor is designed for offices and support spaces.
The site is currently an asphalt parking lot for the museum.
The new entertainment venue is part of the Warhol’s Pop District initiative, which aims to include “physical and programmatic expansion of the museum,” said Dan Law, the museum’s associate director.
Law called the new event space “the cornerstone of The Warhol’s reimagination of the eastern North Shore.”
Rick Armstrong, a museum spokesperson, estimated that work could begin on the $45 million project as soon as spring 2024.
Commissioners Dina Blackwell, Jean Dick and Sabina Deitrick voted to approve the measure. Other commissioners were absent or abstained from the vote.
Commissioner Peter Quintanilla, who abstained from the vote but participated in a discussion about the proposal before the vote was called, voiced concerns over the building’s exterior design.
“It feels more like an office building than something that’s celebrating Andy Warhol,” he said.
Another North Shore proposal originally set for a Planning Commission vote Tuesday was delayed till mid-November. A developer looking to install a large LED video screen that would show Pirates games near PNC Park is expected to reappear before the commission during its next meeting on Nov. 14.
When the proposal was first brought before the commission earlier this month, commissioners and staff with the city’s Department of City Planning voiced concerns about whether the 916-square-foot screen would be visible from I-279.
The Chicago-based architecture firm Barker Nestor, which is spearheading the project, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
