Following a shift of its Treasury services function to another Federal Reserve bank, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland has eliminated all but a handful of job at its Pittsburgh branch and is selling its 80-year-old building in that city's downtown.
In February, the Treasury Department notified the Cleveland Fed that it would be moving jobs processing savings bonds and other securities out of Pittsburgh and into the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. At that time, the Pittsburgh branch had about 320 employees, with about 240 working in the retail securities area, June Gates, a Cleveland Fed spokeswoman, said in an interview Wednesday.
In connection with the consolidation, the Cleveland Fed said in a notice filed with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry earlier this month that it had eliminated 118 jobs at the Pittsburgh branch through a combination of early retirement, attrition and layoffs. Once the consolidation is completed in early 2012, the branch will have about 25 employees working mostly in banking supervision, financial support services and human resources, Gates said.
With the downsizing nearly completed, the Cleveland Fed now intends to shift the branch's operations to smaller, leased space in downtown Pittsburgh and will sell the branch headquarters at 717 Grant Street, Gates said.
The Pittsburgh property, designed and built specifically for the Fed, was completed in 1931.