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Lawrenceville Robotics Company Expands

Carnegie Robotics, a spin-off of Carnegie Mellon’s National Robotics Center, is expanding its headquarters and manufacturing facilities in Lawrenceville.

Currently housed in CMU incubator facilities, the company plans to move into the 31,000 square-foot former Heppenstall building between 43rd and 48th streets.

President and CEO John Bares said the company outgrew its current space.

“In our new facility we want to add not only the office and production areas for building our products, but also shops and needed equipment to sustain our innovation side of the outfit of the company,” said Bares. “So, put all that together and we needed to create quite a bit more space than we have today.”

The company received $50,000 in Job Creation Tax Credits and an $11,250 training grant from the state Department of Community and Economic Development. An $850,000 10-year, low interest loan was also provided by the state.

Bares said there is a lot of pressure to move out of the city and into the surrounding suburbs.

“We really wanted to stay in the city, we wanted to stay in Lawrenceville, and we needed to find the right situation that would allow us to do that. So certainly the state deal that we’ve arraigned is really helping there,” said Bares. “And we’re excited about it because continuously we find people that want to come back to Pittsburgh, they want to work in Pittsburgh, and they want to stay in Pittsburgh.”

Bares said they’re planning to be completely moved into the new facility by April 2014, but they’ve already started a project there.

He said they’re planning on hiring another 20 workers to join their 25 employees at a rate of about two a month.