Website Design and Development
Esplanade
A new riverfront, explained years before it opens
- Industry
- Real estate development
- Location
- North Side, Pittsburgh, PA
- Visit
- esplanade-pgh.com
Who they are
Esplanade is a $740 million development on Pittsburgh's North Side, built by Piatt Companies on 15 acres of former industrial land along 1,600 feet of the Ohio River. The plan puts homes, shops, restaurants, a hotel and a marina around a 200-foot observation wheel honoring George Ferris, who grew up on the North Side. Crews broke ground in December 2025. The full district is expected in 2030.
What they needed
Before this, the project's website was one long page: an overview, a feature list, a timeline and a FAQ. That works while a development is a proposal. It stops working once crews are on site and people start asking about their own part of it. Retailers want to know about space and families want to know when apartments open. Boaters ask about slips, contractors ask about work, and neighbors ask what all of it means for Chateau and Manchester.
There was also a long press record to organize. Esplanade has been in the news since 2017, and the site needed to state the current plan in one place and give that coverage a home of its own.
What we built
We built it out into fourteen pages, organized by who is asking. Vision lays out the master plan and a phased timeline through full build-out, with the live construction camera and the groundbreaking film on the same page. Apartments and Residences say plainly that plans are still being finalized and collect names for an interest list in the meantime. Community Partnership carries the economic impact figures, which arrived as a flat infographic. We rebuilt them as real text in the site's own type so they read on a phone.
Each of those pages ends in its own form, and every inquiry arrives with its topic in the subject line, so a leasing question and a condo inquiry never look alike in the inbox. The News page pairs project milestones with a press archive of 85 articles going back to 2017, grouped by year so it stays short until someone opens one. The FAQ answers 22 questions, from the construction schedule to taxes. The hero video and the updates slideshow both have pause buttons, and every page scored 100 on an automated accessibility audit before launch.
The marketing team can edit the site by clicking on the page itself, on a heading or a photo, and nothing goes live until they publish. Any published change can be undone from a history list. A site-wide style setting changes the font and size of the titles, so a look-and-feel request does not have to wait on us.
What made the difference
A page for every kind of visitor
Retail space, apartments, condos, the riverfront, and the community each get their own page and their own form, so nobody has to read the whole plan to find their part of it.
The press record in one place
Eighty-five articles from 2017 onward, grouped by year, let a reporter or a neighbor trace the project from its first proposal to the groundbreaking.
Edited on the page itself
The team clicks the words or photo they want to change and publishes, and any change can be undone from its history.
Could your site do more?
A project that has to be explained before it exists needs a site written and built around that one job. Custom website design
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