
30 Oct Point Park University unveils early stage plans for campus expansion

Point Park University Unveils Early Stage Plans for Campus Expansion
Despite being fairly landlocked in its location downtown, Point Park University is ready to expand and enhance its campus and ultimately, the downtown corridor.
To a crowd on Thursday morning gathered in the main PNC Theater of its Pittsburgh Playhouse — a $60-million facility that opened in 2018 and serves as the most-recent example of the university’s ability to grow despite limited real estate options in the Golden Triangle — Point Park President Chris Brussalis outlined why exactly Point Park is looking to grow even more, citing ongoing challenges with downtown’s resurgence post-pandemic.
“Today, we’re going to talk about the vision for downtown,” Brussalis said. “Our vision isn’t just one quarter of the city. It’s about creating something that benefits all of Pittsburgh, including the Monongahela side which is downtown’s south shore, which is too often left out of too many conversations. Personally, I am bullish about downtown Pittsburgh. I am confident that we as Pittsburgh can come together, as we always have, and figure out solutions to these tough issues. We are a community of problem solvers, and this time is no different.”

In order to help guide these plans for growth, Brussalis, who has served in the top role since February 2023, and his leadership team engaged the Urban Land Institute to conduct a study on its downtown footprint and to analyze the goals that they had set forth. It’s the second time in Point Park’s history that it’s engaged the ULI, the first time being in 2007, which ultimately led to the construction of its Academic Village that shaped much of its campus today.
At Thursday’s event, the results of the most-recent study were unveiled.
Overall, Brussalis, as well as Point Park’s SVP of institutional advancement and strategy, Ted Black, said that the ULI’s report was encouraging, as it reaffirmed the benefits that Point Park stands to see from keeping on its growth track and lays out some possibilities for the plans to move forward.
“It’s pretty exciting,” Brussalis had said in an interview with the Business Times prior to Thursday’s unveiling. “What they (the ULI) uncovered, or at least there’s recommendations, the first thing is, they validated that, yeah, there is this opportunity. The stars are aligned here.”
Black shared that in order to help facilitate further exploration and initial-stage planning for this growth, he personally engaged with four well-known experts to each lead research efforts on different aspects of the plan. Those four experts — Rich Fitzgerald, former Allegheny County Executive and current executive director of the Southwest Pennsylvania Commission; Dennis Davin, former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development and current senior vice president at JLL; Audrey Russo, president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Technology Council; and Edgar J. Smith, associate and architect at Ewing Cole — came together for a panel discussion on Thursday to discuss the results of the ULI study and how they will help move it forward.