New Planning Commission Presentation up for next week: Only two new items, but both of them are fairly sizable.
1. A brand new - previously unannounced - building at Bakery Square, which they are calling "Bakery Refresh 2020." Essentially it replaces the worst portions of Bakery Square - the junky little one-story building (formerly occupied by Coffee Tree Roasters, and now a Millies pop-up) and some of the surface parking lot (the row closest to the street - around ten spaces). In its place will be a new two-story building with additional restaurant space (looks like 2-3 restaurants) which will be connected to the historic Bakery Square building by a two story "conservatory" (I think it's an atrium, but whatever). The space available for outdoor seating and recreation will also be widened. Social loses their outdoor seating - but apparently gains year-round seating in the atrium - which will stay buttoned up in the winter. The new development very helpfully screens the limited remaining parking (which is more akin to head-in streetside parking than a lot now) from Penn Avenue. And they are building a new bus stop for Bakery Square. I was just down there the other week with my wife and noted how out-of-scale and wrong this area now felt, so it's great they're doing something with it.
2. Walnut Capital's new Innovation Research Tower, being built at the corner of Fifth and Halket, has finally reached the Planning Commission. As a refresher, it's a ten-story 268,000 square foot building mostly used for office/lab space, with a small amount of ground-floor retail. It is being built just down the block from Sky Vue, taking out a number of low-scale buildings (
all but one pretty unimpressive from a historic preservation standpoint) along with some surface parking lots. I'm not crazy about the design (something more neo-traditional world look better in Oakland, IMHO), but I like the use of blue panels (an unusual color for buildings these days) it fills the block well, and it will look nice from street level. Forbes Ave view is flat and fugly, but they're probably expecting the back side of the block to fill in at a similar density and block the view eventually anyway. Looks like the plan is for steel to start going up by next summer. It will be interesting to see what occupies the "community driven retail" that OPDC got them to agree to along Fifth.
In addition, there is a new ZBA agenda up for October 24th. There's a handful of small projects of some interest here.
1. New Dollar General on Brownsville Road in Carrick. Looks like it's going to replace
this old Long John Silvers building.
2. A new eight-unit, three-story apartment building in the Middle Hill. No address is given, but
judging by the parcel information, it's here. Honestly, it seems like a lot of land for just an eight-unit building.
3. Anew construction house on Melwood Avenue in Polish Hill.
Address is here - where an existing building sits - suggesting this is a teardown and replace - to the best of my knowledge the first in Polish Hill.
4. Construction of a new one-story community center in Homewood.
The address says here, which is where infill houses are already going. I'm guessing this community center is already partially under construction, because I've passed by one recently while driving.
Edit: Also,
PBT has a new article up about several small developments on Ellsworth in Shadyside. To recap, a new restaurant is opening where Elbow Room was located, the replacement plan for the vacant dental office continues apace and - new to me - there are plans to replace the former Bites and Brews building (which is half destroyed at the moment) with a new office building. It's unclear what the scale of this is going to be.
Edit 2:
This month's Bloomfield-Garfield Bulletin is a bit light on development stories, with one notable exception: West Penn Hospital presented a final version of its new 10-year master plan to the community on September 4th. Presumably it will end up online some time for city approval, but to summarize, they plan to build a new eight-story garage on Gross (
almost certainly here), build a new outpatient pavilion in the same general area (unclear exactly where based upon the bad wording in the article) and demolish and rebuild the existing Mellon Pavillion (
the building that fronts on Penn Avenue) with the new building planned to be designed in such a way as to provide a more welcoming pedestrian entrance from Bloomfield. The hospital wants to reconfigure Gross for two-way traffic, which is a great idea, but had a negative reception from the neighborhood in the past.