A new 103,747-square-foot opening has formally hit the market as Colliers International works to replace Big Heart Pet Brands in a building only renamed after the company a short time before it opted to leave.
Colliers International recently sent out an email blast marketing the space, which includes three full, contiguous floors that total 98,000 square feet along with a 5,000-plus square foot section of the fifth floor in what was originally a lease started by Del Monte in 2006. The building was known for most of its life as Del Monte Centre.
The lease runs until January 2021. The new tenant that could have the opportunity to change the name of the building again, according to Colliers.
Paul Horan, a principal for Colliers who is representing the space for sublease along with colleague Ed Lawrence, was not immediately available for comment.
Big Heart Pet Brands was bought by Orrville, Ohio-based J.M. Smucker Co. last year. The company announced in June that it would close the North Shore office, which employed about 225. It was a quick shift for a Pittsburgh operation that had only been sold by Del Monte Pacific Ltd. a year before.
This six-figure block of a space is becoming available in a greater downtown office market in which vacancy has been projecting upward, even as developers seek to add more office inventory downtown, on the former Civic Arena site, and in the Strip District.
Not far from the Big Heart Pet Brands Building, Alco Parking Corp. President Merrill Stabile proposed plans last year to build two 11-story office towers across from PNC Park.
The new space comes available as Heinz Kraft Co. continues to work to backfill its space at Heinz 57 Center, a 270,000 square foot sublease that was the biggest in the market in recent years, although some of the space has been taken.
Pete Licastro, principal of Point Bridge Realty Advisors LLC, expects the space will offer the flexibility to sublease to multiple tenants if one major user isn’t available to take all.
He said the sublease marks a major change for the building, recalling when Del Monte first took a lease of more than 170,000 square feet in the building the deal helped to kick off the development of the North Shore.
“When that lease was done, it was a significant transaction for the North Shore and that building,” he said. “What it shows you is how impactful these corporate consolidations and acquisitions and mergers can be. That’s a significant change in direction from say, four years ago.”