Chatham University completed the sale of its Eastside location to Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Chatham, which sold the building for $17 million with an approximate $10 million mortgage payoff, will remain a tenant for up to 10 years and will look to move to new spaces after that lease is up.
University President Lisa Lambert, who announced the sale in an email to the campus community on March 25, said that most of the transitions will be seamless. Students, staff and faculty may notice some changes like parking management, but nothing will be in effect until late this summer at the earliest.
Chatham Eastside currently is home of the College of Health Sciences, the interior architecture program and the Center for Women’s Entrepreneurship, in addition to having practice facilities for certain athletic programs, including baseball, softball and wrestling.
Construction of the Health & Human Performance Center, the teaching hub for the health and exercise science programs on campus, will continue, according to Lambert, but the development of the new weight room will not.
CMU “didn’t want the weight room there because they’re afraid that the vibrations from the weights dropping on the floor would upset what they’re planning to put in under there,” Lambert said in a Communiqué interview. “We still want to get the weight room, but we’re now having to explore where on campus it can be. So, [we] had to make that compromise.”
The previous tenant left the building after COVID-19 because it transitioned to operating remotely. The University started exploring its options as early as 2023, but interest in the location died down after an initial push.
“What we found is the tenants wanted us to invest in the building and outfit it for them and spend the money to remodel it for them. We couldn’t afford that, and nor did I want to put money into that kind of thing. Again, being a landlord is not in our mission,” Lambert said.
“I want to spend the money on our students. So it was decided, well, we need to push harder.”
The University was able to capitalize on Eastside’s location, which sits along the one-mile stretch from Bakery Square to Duolingo’s office in East Liberty that’s leading artificial intelligence development, known as AI Avenue. CMU also owns the building next door.
“They found us. [The sale] was well known among the real estate agents. We had multiple bidders, and we went with the best deal for us,” Lambert said. “They were the best, all down the road.”
