PITTSBURGH | Development Rundown III

[eschaton]

The June 3rd HRC agenda is online. The most notable thing is the first detailed presentation regarding the new Pitt dorm wrapping around the Music building. There's several additional angles on the building in both day and night lighting. In addition, apparently the ground-floor dining isn't a campus cafeteria, but some sort of publicly-available retail establishment? The agenda also has an infill house in Manchester.

In addition, the June 11 ZBA is online. Well, not the agenda, but the individual items. This also includes the Pitt dorm, with this showing a schematic for the ground-level floor plan.

PBT has some additional information about the townhouse development that has been working its way through zoning. The 16-unit development is all market rate, with units selling for $500,000+. The developer is attempting to get this built via a condo/HOA process where the land is owned jointly due to concerns about long-term maintenance of retaining walls. Doesn't sound like there was much community opposition, but Mitinger was a stickler as per usual.

In other ZBA news, the crazy-ass bank shot that Walnut Capital was doing to get inclusionary zoning shot down for the under-construction Caroline project was defeated. I didn't realize that The Caroline was that far along already, but it's a good way off of Forbes, and not immediately visible from most angles.

[Johnland]

I love all the glass on the Pitt Music Bldg dorm.

[eschaton]

Next week's Planning commission presentation is now online. Unfortunately, it's another light agenda.

The biggest item is an update to the historic preservation code. Unfortunately, the presentation is shockingly short and vague. I've noticed pretty shoddy admin work by the HRC compared to some of the other city committees, so I'm not sure if the problem is merely someone in a staff position doing a rush job, but the devil is in the detail when it comes to these things, and just saying that processes are going to be "streamlined" says very little. Or maybe these are changes coming from the Mayor's office. Regardless, this seems unacceptable given how it's being fast tracked.

The only other new thing is a proposal to turn a small temporary parking lot in South Side Works into a permanent surface lot. Looking over historic street views, this was just landscaping between two buildings until around 2020. The lot is for the Pitt building immediately adjacent. While there's an argument that there's no surface lot for the building (the surface lots behind are owned entirely by the new apartment building Connection at Southside) there's ample parking within like two blocks, and I don't like creating a permanent curb cut/turn off of a high-traffic part of East Carson Street. Still, Pitt's proposing this, so it'll likely sail through.

In some other news, apparently the proposed Wexford Science + Technology office building in Oakland is not yet dead. They're still working through zoning and design, and it sounds like they need more leasing commitments (at least 60%) to warrant groundbreaking.

[eschaton]

Well, this is interesting - someone is planning on building a 120-unit senior townhouse development in Banksville.

Not the sexiest new construction at all, but it's interesting there's enough demand for such a large suburban-style development in an unfashionable part of the city.