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Pittsburgh, PA

Strip District's Brickworks Gets a $16.95 million Permit for a Six-Story Apartment Building

Seven weeks after McCaffery Interests broke ground on its 260-apartment Brickworks project in the Strip District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the city issued a $16.95 million permit for a six-story apartment building at 21st and Smallman streets.

By Morningline Research · November 13, 2026

Pittsburgh issued a building permit on Nov. 6 for a new six-story apartment building at 49 21st St., on the corner of 21st and Smallman in the Strip District. The permit carries a reported value of $16.95 million.

That corner is the edge of Brickworks, the 260-apartment project McCaffery Interests broke ground on in September. It's the first building permit we've seen for the project, and the first price on one of its buildings.

From a vacant block to a permit

Timeline of the Brickworks site in Pittsburgh's Strip District, from the 2020 land purchase to the November 2026 building permit
Graphic: Morningline Research, from City of Pittsburgh permit records and the reporting linked in this story.

The permit's own words are short: "construction of new 6 story apartment building with integral 1st floor parking garage." It doesn't name the project or the developer. The match is the location. McCaffery says Brickworks covers the two blocks bounded by 21st, Smallman, 23rd and Railroad streets, and its plan calls for "two identical buildings" of rental apartments, according to the company's project page. This permit covers one building.

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McCaffery bought the site in 2020. It describes Brickworks as a 300,000-square-foot residential development on 3.5 acres of what it calls a vacant site.

The plan has changed along the way. In January 2023 the city's Planning Commission approved an eight-building, 288-unit version, the Pittsburgh Business Times reported. Today's plan has 260 rentals in the two apartment buildings. Another developer will build 40 townhomes on the site, according to WPXI. McCaffery's own page says 60 for-sale townhomes and condos. The two counts haven't been squared in anything we've read.

Shovels went in Sept. 24

McCaffery held the groundbreaking on Thursday, Sept. 24. WPXI reported an elevated pool deck and pet amenities in the plans. Developers called it one of the few vacant sites left in the neighborhood.

"We love Pittsburgh," Dan McCaffery, the company's CEO, told the station.

The Business Times' headline on the groundbreaking that week put Brickworks at $100 million, as listed on McCaffery's news page. That figure is for the whole project. The $16.95 million is the value reported on one building permit, not a contract amount, so the two aren't the same measure.

Brickworks sits next to McCaffery's Strip District Terminal, the long market building it redeveloped on Smallman. Its older Strip projects include the Cork Factory and Lot 24 apartments, according to the company.

A neighborhood that tripled

Smallman Street in the Strip District, looking toward downtown Pittsburgh from 21st Street
Smallman Street in the Strip District, looking toward downtown Pittsburgh from 21st Street. Photo: Cbaile19, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).

About 3,242 people lived in the Strip at last count, up 319% from 2015, according to the 2025 "State of the Strip District" report from the community group Strip District Neighbors, Pittsburgh Magazine reported. The same report counted 524 housing units under construction and 1,985 more planned.

Visitors keep coming too. The report tallied 8.6 million visits in 2024, up from 7.49 million the year before.

More is lined up closer to the river. Midwood Investment & Development plans two buildings with a combined 459 homes and 37,000 square feet of ground-floor retail at One 21st Street, the old produce warehouse site at 21st and Railroad, according to the project's leasing brochure. Midwood bought the 4.5-acre riverfront property for $8.2 million in 2017, WPXI reported.

In Washington, a federal permitting bill that housing groups say could help get more apartments built faster cleared a 73-25 procedural vote in the Senate this week, Construction Dive reported.

Back at 21st and Smallman, the permit clears the way for the first of the two Brickworks apartment buildings. The second, identical one is still to come.

How we count

The permit comes from the City of Pittsburgh's building permit records for 49 21st St., issued Nov. 6, 2026. The value is the one reported on the permit. The project name and the developer come from the reporting linked here; the permit itself names neither.

See Pittsburgh's latest permit numbers, updated weekly.

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Sources

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More numbers: Pittsburgh, PA building permit activity, updated weekly.