Who Fills Liberty Avenue's Old Italian Rooms Next?

Pleasure Bar closed in late September, and the next Italian restaurant planned for the same block comes from a Shadyside kitchen.

Both addresses sit on one stretch of the 4700 block, a few doors apart. Three family ownerships ran the oldest Italian restaurant on that stretch from 1941 until it closed. The block's national coffee chain shut down the same week. The one restaurant still on the way is Italian, and the chefs behind it come from Spahr Street. More and more, the legacy Italian rooms on Liberty change hands to cooks from outside that legacy, and the Italian food arrives with newcomers.

Three Addresses, One Block

In a single month, three addresses on the 4700 block of Liberty Avenue went dark or stayed in limbo:

1. 4729 Liberty Ave. Pleasure Bar closed, and its building went up for sale. Pittsburgh City Paper reported the closure on Sept. 22, 2026. Pittsburgh Magazine wrote two days later that it had "closed its doors this week."
2. 4744 Liberty Ave. Giulia is planned for the former D'Amico's and Station space. As of mid-October it had no confirmed opening date.
3. 4765 Liberty Ave. The Bloomfield Starbucks closed in late September, part of a wave of Starbucks closures across the country. The Pittsburgh Business Times reported the shutdown.

The Starbucks will likely pull a different kind of tenant than the other two. The first two are restaurant rooms with long Italian-American histories, and the rest of this post is about them.

What Pleasure Bar's Building Actually Includes

The sale covers more than a dining room. PennLive reported an asking price of $2 million for an eight-unit property. It has two ground-floor storefronts, one of them the restaurant, along with two office spaces and four apartments. The listing summary called the restaurant space "excellent condition" and said it comes with a current Allegheny County liquor license.

So the next owner takes on a whole small mixed-use building at the center of the block. They could keep a licensed restaurant in the ground floor, change it, or lease it to someone else.

PennLive noted that the business made no public announcement. Its website still said it was "temporarily closed for renovations" and invited diners to "come see our gorgeous new space and hours on September 13th." That date came and went before the for-sale signs went up. In spring, owner Jamie Campau, who bought Pleasure Bar in the late 2000s, told PublicSource that he still hadn't reopened the bar side after the pandemic years and that rising food costs had made it "a completely new universe."

The Old Rooms Haven't Stayed Italian

Look at what happened to the other legacy rooms nearby and a pattern shows up. When a long-running Italian-American restaurant on this stretch closes, the room usually stays a restaurant, and the concept usually changes.

PublicSource's July report on the corridor documented the first two handoffs. The third is the only one that loops back to Italian, and it took two tenants to get there. Station ran in the space for about nine years and closed in early 2024, as the Pittsburgh Business Times reported at the time.

Giulia Brings Italian In From Outside the Neighborhood

Giulia is the project of Jamilka Borges and Dianne DeStefano, who run Lilith at 238 Spahr Street in Shadyside. Pittsburgh Magazine listed the restaurant at 4744 Liberty Ave. among its expected 2026 openings.

Their concept isn't a red-sauce revival. In March, NEXTpittsburgh described a lighter, playful coastal Italian menu that leads with seafood and still serves meat. DeStefano told the outlet, "it's Pittsburgh, after all." Borges pointed out that Italy has "a lot of coast." The operators also filed a Form C for Only Chives LLC, doing business as Giulia. It describes a modern Italian restaurant built on seasonal ingredients, with full-service dining, cocktails, catering and private events, and a goal of opening in 2026.

The timing has slipped. NEXTpittsburgh's March report said Giulia could open "by late summer" if construction and permits stayed on track. On Oct. 10, The Pittsburgh Wire still listed no confirmed opening date, customer menu or reservation link. For now, the block's next Italian dining room is a renovation still in progress, a few doors from the one that just closed.

Giulia may be filling a gap that a longtime shopkeeper on the street has pointed out. Gina Merante has run the produce shop Linea Verde on Liberty for more than a decade. She told PublicSource:

"I don't think there's enough ambition. We don't have a destination. Donatelli's was a destination."

She said she had hoped the old Del's building would become an Eataly, "so you could go to Eataly at the entrance to Little Italy." A coastal Italian restaurant with private events and a cocktail program, from chefs with a following in Shadyside, is the closest thing to that kind of draw now planned for the block.

Who Keeps the Block Busy in the Meantime

While two rooms on the 4700 block sit dark, the businesses holding the stretch together share a profile. Most are small, and each one focuses on a single thing.

• Brothmonger, 4770 Liberty Ave. This soup-focused counter got a Post-Gazette write-up in October 2025. It sits in the same hundred block as Giulia and the closed Starbucks.
• Dad's Dog & Burger, 4830 Liberty Ave. It opened in April 2025, according to the Post-Gazette. The owner cooked at Little Italy Days in August.
• Linea Verde Green Market. Merante's produce shop closed only for festival week in August, the Post-Gazette reported.
• Mimic's Market. Jay Imbrie and Jae Crone run this tabletop game shop. They told PublicSource that business was good and that they were looking for more space for tournaments and events. Pokémon leagues and miniatures painting nights already fill the folding tables.
• Lot 17 and Froggy's. During Little Italy Days, both bars had crowds spilling onto Liberty Avenue, according to the Post-Gazette's festival coverage.

Down toward the 4500 block, Bodega Film Lab moved this summer from 4120 Main St. to 4509 Liberty Ave. Owner Pat Bruener told City Paper that the new space gives him four times the floor area and room to grow programming. Knowing Place, Brian Longwill's shop, moved over from Penn Avenue and took the Main Street storefront, with a soft opening in July.

None of these businesses is the "destination" Merante described, and most are newer arrivals than the Italian rooms they share the sidewalk with. On this block, the newer arrivals are the ones expanding.

The Corner at the Other End Runs on a Longer Clock

Foot traffic on this stretch depends partly on how people get there. Rich Trocchio runs Bloomfield Groceria, a corner store on Cedarville Street. He told PublicSource that slow growth in the neighborhood has cut into the foot traffic that stores like his rely on. The same report described a grocery store and 248 apartments once planned near the Bloomfield Bridge, which the city's zoning board rejected.

The street layout at that end of Liberty is set to change, but not soon. In July, the City of Pittsburgh announced $1,322,540 in Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission funding to redesign the Liberty Avenue, Main Street and Bloomfield Bridge intersection. The goals include pedestrian safety, fewer vehicle conflicts and better transit access. The Post-Gazette reported that the $3.65 million project could start construction in 2029. The concept includes shorter pedestrian crossings, safer bike facilities and a possible transit hub that would consolidate bus stops. The city expects to hold neighborhood meetings in early 2027.

Before any of that work begins, a buyer will decide what happens to the eight-unit building at 4729 Liberty, and the Lilith team will set an opening date for Giulia at 4744.

If you're wondering what the 4700 block's changes mean for a house or building of your own near Liberty Avenue, The Onufer Team is glad to talk it through with you. Contact Us, and we'll share what we're watching on the block as Giulia gets closer to opening.