Expansion planned for popular downtown State College bar. When will it be done?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Planning commission reviewed Doggie’s Pub expansion to the Homerella ground floor.
- Construction will add a bar, restrooms, seating and garage-style glass doors.
- Work begins April 2026 with accessible Calder Way entry; completion set for fall 2026.
By next fall, a popular downtown State College bar will look a little different after an expansion project is completed.
Plans for an expansion at Doggie’s Pub, 108 S. Pugh St., State College, were presented to the State College Planning Commission Thursday evening. The bar will expand into the ground level of the Homerella building next to it, Mark Torretti, project manager at PennTerra Engineering, said.
“The existing Doggie’s Pub is staying the same. They are going to be taking the ground floor of the Homerella building and the covered breezeway area and enclosing that,” Torretti said. They’ll also enclose some entrance alcoves at the corner of Pugh Street and Calder Way, and along Pugh Street, to create one area.
The new area will have an additional bar, restrooms and areas for seating and standing, the plans show. The expansion will also include glass, overhead garage-like doors, Nathan Hutchinson of Fernsler Hutchinson LLC said, that can be opened to intertwine the courtyard use and the restaurant and bar use.
“So when the weather’s good, it’ll be almost like an extension of the courtyard. And there’s obviously many months when the garage doors will be down, but it still will be a very bright space,” Hutchinson said.
The new entrance of Doggie’s will be on Calder Way and there will be an exit only door near where the existing entrance is off of Pugh Street. By moving the entry, it will be an accessible entry and will take some of the pedestrian traffic off of Pugh Street, Hutchinson said.
The exterior will change a bit too as part of the project. Renderings show a roughly 12-foot facade made of brick and panels in the color red, giving it an “old-world pub feel,” Hutchinson said.
Because the first floor of the Homerella building and the covered breezeway (the current Doggie’s entrance on Pugh Street) are different elevations, they’ll have to lower the grade in the expanded area off of Pugh Street to the same elevation.
Planning Commission member Tony Sapia said it the project is a perfect example of redeveloping an old space. Planning Commission member Peter Aeschbacher liked the plans and spoke about the challenge of the project.
“It is certainly a daunting endeavor to bring the charm of Victorian London to this Googie 1960s piece of architecture, and it’s really, I think, also a great urban design challenge of wrapping that corner and then resolving the grade change,” Aeschbacher said. “The plans, I think, do a really good job of showing where the pub is and where the residential entrance is, and distinguishing those two from each other.”
Work is expected to start in April and be completed by the fall 2026.
