The ground floor at 1700 Murray Avenue gets most of the attention when people talk about the corner. It's the former Rite Aid, it's the space everyone walks past, and it's set to become a grocery store. That grocery is still a 2027 project. The second floor will be busy first, and the people working upstairs will be buying coffee, lunch and after-work drinks on Murray long before anyone pushes a shopping cart out the back door.
Brandywine Communities bought the building in December 2025. By August 2026 the company said the second floor was fully leased, with all of those tenants expected to move into remodeled offices later this year. The latest timeline for the grocery is still the one in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's August report. Remodeling would start once engineering plans were finished, and the owner was aiming to open around March 2027.
A building that was always more than a drugstore
The curved glass on the corner is an office building first. Brandywine's April announcement calls 1700 Murray the only Class A office address in Squirrel Hill. IBM was the first occupant, followed by M*Modal, which 3M bought in 2019. The Post-Gazette describes the building as holding several restaurants and offices alongside the Rite Aid. It also reports that the building changed hands after its previous owner defaulted on its mortgage.
The Rite Aid closed during the chain's 2025 bankruptcy. In July 2025, Pittsburgh City Paper covered the regional fallout: prescriptions moved to other pharmacies, lines got long, and access was disrupted. The Squirrel Hill store was among the closures shown. That left the most visible storefront on the neighborhood's main intersection empty, in a building that was about to change owners.
Upstairs, the leases came first
Within 100 days of buying the building, Brandywine signed three second-floor leases totaling more than 12,000 square feet. A fourth tenant was announced in August.
| Tenant | What it is | Where it's coming from |
|---|---|---|
| Techstra Solutions | Management consulting firm headquartered in Pittsburgh | Already in Squirrel Hill, moving to upgraded space |
| Generation Dental | Dental practice building out a new care facility | Previously located nearby |
| Pittsburgh City Paper | The city's alt-weekly, relaunched in 2026 | Relocating to the Murray Avenue corridor |
| A Jewish Healthcare Foundation affiliate | Office tenant, named in the August announcement | Not specified |
Two of those four were already in the neighborhood. In Brandywine's release, Techstra founder and CEO Jennifer Honig said the new space keeps the company in Squirrel Hill and close to Carnegie Mellon University. Generation Dental is moving from nearby, so for its patients the change is a different door on the same few blocks.
City Paper is the arrival most people will notice. According to WESA, the new nonprofit LocalMatters bought the paper from Block Communications this spring, and editor Ali Trachta and nearly all of the editorial staff were expected to return. City Paper announced it was coming back online and in print, with a monthly print issue. Its archive lists monthly issues starting in June 2026, including an October issue. Brandywine's announcement said the paper chose 1700 Murray for a walkable location with immediate access to the dining and retail corridor.
There's still room for more. In April, the leasing team said several parties were looking at the 17,000-square-foot third floor. Brandywine's plans also include a lobby remodel, upgraded access control and new tenant signs, and the August announcement said renovations were underway throughout the property.
Downstairs, the grocery has to be built before it can open
The ground-floor tenant goes by Murray's, Murray's Market or Murray Avenue Market, depending on the announcement. Brandywine's August release describes a 12,000-square-foot grocery in the former Rite Aid space. Owner Yitzchok "Itchy" Glassner told the Post-Gazette it would be a supermarket where everything is kosher, as opposed to a specialty kosher shop. He said much the same in Brandywine's August release:
"You don't have to be Jewish to shop at Murray's; our goal is to become the neighborhood's go-to market for quality, convenience, and outstanding service."
Here's what the Post-Gazette and Brandywine say is planned:
- Fresh produce, meats, baked goods, prepared foods and household essentials
- Personal-care products, which matters at a corner that used to be a drugstore
- A commercial kitchen making takeaway food, with 8 to 10 seats for eating in
- Online ordering and delivery, handled through third-party apps at first
- A 23-space parking lot behind the building, with an ADA ramp at the back so shoppers can roll carts out to their cars
The planned hours, as the Post-Gazette reported them, are 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and 8 a.m. on Friday until two hours before sundown. That schedule has no Saturday hours, so the corner should be quiet on Saturdays and busy on Sunday mornings, when the Squirrel Hill Farmers Market is also running around the corner on Beacon Street.
The grocery is going in next to some established neighbors. The Post-Gazette points out that the Giant Eagle on Murray Avenue carries kosher products and that Murray Avenue Kosher, a decades-old neighborhood store, is the area's kosher specialty market. Glassner said he sees Murray's as a different kind of store aimed at the wider neighborhood.
Getting this far took a while. The court handling Rite Aid's bankruptcy approved Glassner's plan for the market and his takeover of the old store's lease. The Pittsburgh Zoning Board of Adjustment heard the plan in May 2026 and approved it in July, and the landlord formally recognized the lease on Aug. 7. Brandywine said in August that store construction would begin in the coming months and that opening details would come later. Even if the March target holds, the second floor will have been in use for months before the grocery opens.
Murray Avenue has been turning over too
The building's office workers will be arriving on a block that has already changed a lot this year.
- April 2026: Steel Town Tavern reopened in the remodeled former Murray Avenue Grill space, Patch reported.
- May 23, 2026: Stuntpig served its last day at 1707 Murray Ave., according to the Post-Gazette. Its owners said they were thinking about what comes next.
- May 27, 2026: Teriyaki Express soft-opened at 1715 Murray Ave., in the former Viet Nom Nom space.
All three are within a short walk of 1700 Murray. A floor of consultants, dental staff and reporters means more people on Murray every weekday who need lunch, and that is the kind of steady daytime traffic smaller restaurants depend on. The Brandywine's lobby remodel and new tenant signs will also make the building look occupied from the sidewalk again.
The corner's calendar before the grocery opens
The intersection will keep busy through the months of construction. Here's what's coming up:
- Saturday, Oct. 31, 5 to 7 p.m.: Business District Trick or Treat along Forbes and Murray avenues through Forward Avenue. Participating businesses will have posters in their windows, according to Uncover Squirrel Hill.
- Sunday, Nov. 1: A Day of the Dead celebration is on the Squirrel Hill Urban Coalition calendar, with more details promised closer to the date.
- Thursday, Nov. 5, 6 to 8 p.m.: The 2026 Squirrel Hill Treasure Awards Dinner at Pittsburgh Golf Club.
- Sundays through Dec. 20, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.: The Squirrel Hill Farmers Market at the Beacon Bartlett Parking Lot, 5737 Beacon St. It skips Nov. 29.
The Night Market on Murray Avenue between Forbes and Beacon is finished for 2026. By the time it's back next year, the corner could have a working grocery and a full second floor of offices.
We keep a close eye on corners like this one when we help people buy and sell homes around Murray and Forbes. If you'd like to talk about how changes on Murray Avenue could affect your plans, whether you're selling a home nearby or deciding which part of Squirrel Hill suits your routine, Miranda Micire is happy to walk the corridor with you. Contact Us.
