Dr. Adam Greer didn’t want to move his business out of Bridgeville, but after nearly four years, his chiropractic practice had more than outgrown its office at 600 Taylor Way.
Not only does the volume of patients push the limits of his existing space, but the scarcity of nearby parking poses a challenge for some of Dr. Greer’s patients, who are visiting him specifically because their mobility is limited.
To many people, the obvious move would be to leave Bridgeville for South Fayette or Collier, where there are plenty of bigger spaces and near-unlimited free parking.
But Greer found a different solution—one that is right in the center of Bridgeville’s business district.
For five years, the former PNC Bank location at 456 Washington Avenue has sat vacant. Known as the Bridgeville Trust building, the 6,000 square feet space includes marble floors, high ceilings, elaborate crown moulding, a wall of safety deposit boxes, and a walk-in vault encased in 7-inch-thick concrete walls. It’s a space that looks like it could never be anything except a bank.
Except it’s about to reopen to the public as the new location of Greer Chiropractic & Rehabilitation.
Greer bought the building late last year began renovating and retrofitting shortly thereafter.
“I didn’t want to leave Bridgeville, but we’ve outgrown our current office,” he says during a tour of the still-under-construction space. “There wasn’t another building in Bridgeville that could accomodate our specific needs, like a first-floor entrance with plenty of nearby parking.”
With the old PNC building he gets all of that while avoiding the high tax rates of South Fayette Township.
From the outside, the most obvious change is that the bank’s drive-through lanes are gone. That area will become a 15-car parking lot reserved for Greer’s employees and patients.
Stepping inside of the building will induce instant nostalgia to anybody who has ever banked at the location. You step into the same marble entranceway and clear across the room, past the marble-adorned pillars, is that same massive bank vault door that has been there since the Eisenhower administration.
What was once a long bank tellers’ counter along the northern wall has been converted into three patient examination rooms. The space along the southern wall has transformed from client meeting cubicles to patient treatment rooms.
The bank’s vault, which is still completely intact, will become Greer’s office space. The wall of old safety deposit boxes will also stay as-is. During the tour, Greer points out where the bank had incorporated vents that allow air to flow into the vault, presumably just in case somebody was ever accidentally locked inside.
Although much of the building was in perfectly serviceable condition, some upgrades were complicated by the bank’s fortress-like architecture. While installing additional restroom toilets, the plumbers encountered a concrete floor far thicker than they ever expected. The restroom had to be upgraded to meet ADA requirements, but Greer was able to preserve the existing intricate tilework in the women’s room.
Purchasing the building made Greer not only the proud owner of an old bank, but now he’s also a commercial landlord.
The rear of the building houses a separate office space that is home to an architectural firm called Integrity Design. Upstairs is a 6,000-square-feet space that until recently was home to an IT company. It’s a surprisingly large space that includes numerous offices, a lounge room, and a second-floor patio, and a computer server room that still contains the specialized air conditioned required by such operations.
When Greer’s practice moves into the building later this summer, the first floor will feel very much like it has since the 1950s, but it will also be symbolic of what Bridgeville can be in the 21st century—a modern business center standing firmly on a foundation established many, many decades ago.