New restaurant opening in Schenley Plaza

The Porch at Schenley — the newly named restaurant and bar on Schenley Plaza — will open… The Porch at Schenley — the newly named restaurant and bar on Schenley Plaza — will open later this fall.

Eat’n Park Hospitality Group, the company behind the restaurant, will have the restaurant serve American-style breakfast, lunch and dinner, and though the company hasn’t finalized its hours, the restaurant will not be open 24 hours like other Eat’n Park venues.

“It won’t be an Eat’n Park; it will be a bit of a higher-end restaurant,” said Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy director of facilities and Schenley Park manager Jim Griffin. “It will still have accessible price points; it will be a nice restaurant.”

Mark Broadhurst, director of concept development for EPHG, expects the restaurant to open this fall — his “best bet” is early October.

The restaurant will serve alcohol, but Broadhurst said the bar will be more designed for eating and enjoying a glass of wine or beer, and patrons will not have to be 21 to enter.

“It’s a totally new concept for us. It’s something we designed and developed specifically for Schenley Plaza,” Broadhurst said. “It will be a casual neighborhood bistro open for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

The whole side of the building that faces the plaza will have a patio, giving the restaurant its moniker, “The Porch.” Broadhurst said that it will be a great spot overlooking the plaza for people to enjoy drinks.

Griffin said the restaurant is vital to the vision originally planned for Schenley Plaza, and the building’s rent is a necessity for maintaining the park’s services and operations year around — like keeping the Great Lawn and gardens manicured and providing security and lighting as well as the free public programs the plaza offers.

Schenley needed a revenue source to keep the plaza operable at its current levels.

“The plaza is a special park, and it had benefited from significant funding from contributors to the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy,” Griffin said. “But we need a revenue source to operate Schenley at its current standards.”

Griffin and the conservancy collect the money from the plaza’s tenants for the city and then put it back into the park.

The one-story building, approved by the Pittsburgh Art Commission, is in its fifth year of planning and includes some new green technologies, at the behest of the commission.

“The design includes a lot of green and sustainable initiatives. We have a green roof on top,” Broadhurst said. “We will have grass growing on the roof, and we will have a garden. From the landscaping standpoint, there will be a children’s amphitheater in the back and you will be able to do special events.”

The building will also feature barrels that collect rain water to sustain the gardens on the roof.

“There are a lot of windows, and it’s a low-profile building,” Broadhurst said. “What we really tried to have as much as possible is have the building disappear.”

But over the summer there was some controversy surrounding the construction of the building.

Sam Shilling, assistant executive secretary treasurer and director of

organizing for the Greater Pennsylvania Regional Council of Carpenters, said he is upset about the alleged wage undercutting in which EPHG’s main contractor, Bridges, engaged.

The company offered contracts to non-union carpenter companies, and union members could be seen protesting this issue outside the construction site this summer.

“We at the carpenters union are always for progress and business,” Shilling said. “However, we did not resolve the wage issues.”

Broadhurst responded that Eat’n Park had nothing to do with the carpenter’s wages and that their issue should be taken up with Bridges, whom they feel comfortable dealing with.

“When we started the project, we bid it out to five general contractors. None of the union contractors bid on the project,” Broadhurst said.

“It’s really an issue between the union and Bridges, because we don’t pick the subcontractors, just the general contractor.”

Griffin isn’t concerned with the dispute and expects a great partnership with Eat’n Park.

“There aren’t any setbacks as far as I’m aware. We weren’t heavily involved with the building carpenters protests; we had no stake in it,” Griffin said.

“We are happy to have Eat’n Park. It fulfills our goal of having a quality restaurant in the plaza, and we look forward to them adding value to the area.”