It’s a chilly, mid-March afternoon and developer Jack Benoff is standing inside one of the yet-to-be refitted condos on the third floor of the historic Otto Milk building. He’s talking with his contractor, Joe Leonello from Franjo Construction, about interior work that still needs to be completed to convert the former milk factory and brewery into 56 residential units and 2 commercial spaces.

As you eavesdrop and hear him speak, you can just sense the excitement of the vision that Benoff has for this project.

“It’s a great project at a great location for a great price,” says Benoff, founder of Solara Ventures, based in Newtown, Pa., outside of Philadelphia. “For the price, you can’t beat it in Pittsburgh. It’s an exciting project, and in my mind, it’s the most exciting project going on in the city right now.”

The Otto Milk Building Condominiums, located at 25th and Smallman Streets in the heart of the Strip District, across the street from the Right By Nature Grocery Store, will be ready for move-in this fall. Originally built in 1865, the structure had been the former home to two brewing companies, and then the Otto Milk Company.

The property comprised seven buildings, and sat vacant for several decades before Benoff, a Philadelphia-area developer who rehabbed the 17-condomimium unit at 941 Penn Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh, visited on a non-real estate matter. He fell in love with the property when he happened upon it.

“Initially, we had difficulty gaining access to the buildings as the condition of the site was quite a challenge,” he says. “Yet, I loved the exterior and the entire architecture of this building and the other buildings surrounding it. I also loved the vibe of the Strip and thought this would be a wonderful place for a new development.

”Kathy Wallace, who sold the building to Benoff and now handles all the marketing with Re/MAx Select Realty. She expects the $19-million rehabilitation project to continue to add to the vitality of the local business district.

“The City of Pittsburgh and local developers have only recently committed to the development of a downtown, residential neighborhood,” she says. “Being from Philadelphia, where this type of development has existed for a while, Jack clearly got the concept. We have been proving that the reuse of an architectural gem like Otto for urban living can be successful here.”

Wallace applauds other projects like the nearby Cork Factory for transitioning the Strip into a residential neighborhood.

“Urban revitalization is about renewing old neighborhoods or creating new ones where now-silent industry once dominated the landscape,” she says. “We are a part of building rather than gentrifying. It makes it a much more interesting place to be. We couldn’t have done this without help from organizations like Neighbors in the Strip or local government that have worked so hard in pulling the threads through all of the components required for building a new neighborhood. We are just one of the cogs in the wheel.”

The Otto Milk Building Condominiums will offer units ranging from one to three bedrooms and priced from $212,000 to $1.35 million. With the City of Pittsburgh’s LeRTA 10-year tax abatement, a buyer can save up to $6,000 per year on city and school real estate taxes. This makes the condominiums an affordable housing option for those who want an urban living environment. As of this writing, nearly 65 percent of the units have been sold. “

Kathy has been taking care of the marketing and sales and has done a magnificent job for us,” says Benoff. “I think what attracts people to this area is the vibrancy. You can walk out your door and within 100 feet, you can be at a gourmet supermarket, have great coffee, go to Jo Jo’s for a great breakfast, go around the corner for ice cream, and have more bars and restaurants than you can ever imagine.“

Plus, the shopping is endless. And if you want to walk another two blocks beyond here, you’ll be in downtown Pittsburgh. Another six blocks and you will be in the Cultural District. The river is here, too. You have everything you can possibly want in an urban setting.”

Benoff also loves the history of the building. In 1865, Joseph Spencer built what is known as the “tower” building to accommodate his growing Phoenix Brewery, which 45 years later, was one of several breweries that formed the Pittsburgh Brewing Company. After about a century, the facility became home to the Otto Milk Company, a family-owned factory that delivered milk to residents throughout Western Pennsylvania.

Benoff, who officially closed on his purchase of the Otto Milk Building in 2007, credits the Pittsburgh’s tax abatement program and other city incentives that allowed this rehabilitation to take place. The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) also played a hand in the project renovation by investing $790,000 in the project.

The best part of the job for Benoff is dealing with the buyers themselves.

“In development, most people don’t want to talk to the buyers but for me, it’s an enjoyable process,” he says. “I come in and walk people through the place and treat them like they are buying a million-dollar home. I want to overdeliver and underprice. We want to do whatever we can to make them happy.

”Since his number-one priority is buyers, Benoff has tried to make the process customer-friendly by allowing them to choose what they want inside their units instead of his telling them what they need.

“We ask what options they want,” he says. “Another part of the excitement of this process is the interaction with the buyer. Rather than telling them to go to a design center and pick something out, we want to hear it from them. When they personalize their new homes, they deal with me or one of my contractors. They don’t deal with someone who doesn’t know what they are talking about.”

Benoff chuckles when asked about the types of challenges he encountered during the development process. “You name it, we faced it,” he says. “This building is over 150 years old so we started digging through the foundation and hit 100-year old foundations and we started putting footers in because we went deeper than we expected.”

When the subcontractors started work-ing on the ceilings, they found that some required brand new ceilings.

“As soon as we started doing the floors we discovered that they were sloped,” he says. “Because they brewed beer and later processed and distributed milk from here, the floors had to be sloped for the drainage. Of course, we didn’t know that until we walked through and cleared out all of the debris and old equipment that sat idle in here for years. We had to haul out over 100 dumpsters of trash.”

But you won’t ever hear Benoff complain. “This is so much fun and it’s my passion,” he says. “Hopefully I can do another project in Pittsburgh soon. My short-term goal is to get these units built, get the buyers in, and make them all happy. My long-term goal is to find another project that will allow me to continue to contribute to the rapidly emerging residential neighborhood in the downtown area of Pittsburgh and the Strip.”

For more information, visit www.ottomilk.com or call Kathy Wallace at 412-855-8419. !