PITTSBURGH | Development Rundown III

[eschaton]

Interesting looking new development slated for 143 North Craig in Oakland. Looks to be six stories of apartments over a ground floor retail/parking podium. Location is here - taking out a (somewhat remuddled) early 20th century building. Had to do a double take to make sure it wasn't the Pitt project in the works nearby (that's the next block over on Dithridge). Still no info on the OPDC page, but they're usually good about posting these materials after the DAM meeting, so we'll know more soon.

Edit: The building was owned by CMU up until early 2024, when it was sold to a private developer. Seems like it may have been called Whitfield Hall. Not sure if anyone knows the history of usage, but it's interesting to see that CMU actually sold some property, even given the relative remoteness from the core of the campus.

In other news, the August 6 ZBA agenda is now online. The real news here is the 3101 Liberty Avenue project (last seen in early 2025) is still moving along. This project, as a refresher, includes two six-story buildings with a total of 234 units between them. The building facing Penn Avenue will include a small amount of ground-floor retail, and the one facing Liberty includes reuse of the shell of the old brick "Plantscape" building. The attached presentation is quite detailed, though it's been nearly a year and a half, so I dunno if anything new is included here.

[pj3000]

^ Both good-looking projects. Though I do like those old industrial buildings on Penn, even though they are of rather low quality.

[eschaton]

The July 14 Planning Commission agenda is now online. A bit late (and some stuff is still missing), but there's a lot of stuff to note for next week:

1. More info on the proposed senior townhouse development in Banksville. A a refresher, this is a 124-unit 55+ community, tucked away on a site that formerly had institutional uses. The developer is going for an RP-zone (essentially, creating their own zoning district) which I had the understanding the city was trying to move away from, but they're greasing the skids for just about everything now, so we'll see. Regardless, it's a pretty unsexy project with a basic design, but I guess if there's appeal, better here than in the suburbs.

2. Review of the new Fifth Avenue Pitt dorm. We've seen some of this before, but there's considerably more detail here.

3. An entirely new project - a stand of 23 townhomes in the Strip District. This takes around 2/3rds of the block bounded by 32nd, Smallman, Mullberry Way, and the 31st Street Bridge, taking out a number of old industrial buildings. In 2019 an office building was proposed for here, but it's not surprise it went nowhere in this market. This is a Rothschild-Doyno project (wife wasn't on this one). Looks sharp enough for the area - not trying to go ultra modern or to look faux-historic. The orientation of the units is interesting - the Smallman facing row has rear garages which are accessible via a new interior road, while the Mullberry-facing units have their "front" on this new alley, and pull out directly onto the alley. Probably the best they could do given the site layout, but I'm not sure I'd like looking out my front door into someone else's garage every day. Still, a nice enough project.

4. There's some big tweaks coming to zoning as well. Oddly, they're not up for July 14, but viewable on the next PC page. Here's the base doc - no presentation as of yet.

There's a lot of general housekeeping, but there's two big, big changes to the essentially the entire zoning code:

A. Maximum story limits are eliminated. This means in practice buildings can be taller just about everywhere. For example, much of the city has a 40-foot height limit in theory, but given modern commercial construction has 10-foot stories, they tend to max out at 30 feet (discounting empty roof pitches). Now full four-story homes will be allowed across residential areas - even five-story homes if you can figure out a construction plan with 8-foot rooms. In areas zoned multifamily or mixed use, this will be an even bigger positive.

B. Floor-area-ratio (FAR) requirements are eliminated across essentially all mixed-use areas. In practice, these made it so that new buildings needed to take up a smaller proportion of the lot if they wanted to hit max heights. This is no longer the case. I'd argue eliminating FAR isn't really needed for say HC (Highway Commercial) or GI (General Industrial), but you're not going to want to build like that in those areas anyway.

I should be clear that the zoning changes do not consolidate existing zoning types (even ones like NDO which should really be gone), don't mess with the use table, and don't touch setbacks, so there's a lot still on the table here.

In addition, they are packaging in a spot rezoning downtown. This shifts the block south of Boulevard of the Allies closest to Point State Park from Gateway Center's zoning subsection to a more common one downtown. It seems to be because the existing zoning (GT-D) is retaining the FAR which allows for the "towers in the park" typology, and they want future development (probably for the old Post-Gazette site) to be allowed to fill the parcels completely like other parts of Downtown.

Outside the PC, OPDC dropped the presentation for 143 North Craig. Detailed project by Camp Eight here. It's a 155-unit residential building with 1,500 square feet of commercial and a 56-stall garage. Indovina project, sharp as hell. U-shaped building with a raised courtyard to the rear. Intended for the student market given the location, but not formally associated with Pitt or CMU. My only WTF here is it's like one story too many to be a five over one. If they're going to go steel, I'd put even more height on, personally.

[Johnland]

The new Pitt dorm and the apartments at 143 N Craig are both really nice projects. Both seem to be moving away from the colored panel shlock that has blighted Oakland the last 20 years, and instead are using classy brick and glass exteriors.

[eschaton]

Some wrap-up of development news that I didn't cover earlier.

1. Unsurprisingly, community opposition to the new Wal-Mart e-commerce depot in Bloomfield is high. I'm not sure I'd call it a "noxious use" but it's both a bad location and a bad use for the area. Wal-Mart is also trying to play fast and loose with zoning, calling it a "retail location" rather than a "warehouse" even though it won't be open to the public. Wal-Mart is also trying to use the same weird trick to get a conversion of the former Rite-Aid on Noblestown Road through. I expect less opposition here (though a retail corridor, that section of Noblestown is essentially a suburban street with sidewalks) though I can't see the ZBA approving the strange use definition in one and rejecting it in another.

2. In other Bloomfield-related news, Public Source has a feature on the neighborhood. It focuses pretty strongly on local retailers and changes to the neighborhood, with the explicit argument that the neighborhood needs more new development ala Lawrenceville to rebuild foot traffic.

3. Another Public Source article focuses on Larimer. This is mostly initially focused on the conversion of the Larimer School auditorium into Celebration Hall, which will be a community/event space with some sort of food hall, but it also covers recent development within Larimer more broadly.

4. The City is selling two city-owned properties - 2608 Penn Avenue in the Strip, and 604 Liberty Downtown. The former is planned to be redeveloped with a third story added, turning it into a 10-unit residential building with ground-floor residential. Nothing particularly sexy happening with the latter. This was, IIRC, one of three buildings which was originally bought by the City when Three PNC Plaza was constructed, with the original plan to demolish them all for a different orientation for the loading dock.

[eschaton]

So the Planning Commission is meeting today, and I noticed that the presentation regarding the zoning changes is finally up. A summary.

1. A bunch of minor changes to eliminate redundant/obsolete sections of the zoning code.

2. The downtown spot zoning.

3. Clarification of street tree zoning requirements.

4. The elimination of stories/FAR that I noted above. Plus there were tweaks to the Grandview Public Realm I missed, plus changes to the bonus height criteria.

5. Changes UNC zoning so that the higher height limits allowed around transit facilities apply everywhere. Biggest places this seems helpful is Allegheny Center and portions of the Fifth/Baum corridor closer to Oakland. UNC is a strange beast in terms of zoning though, since it's both used in these areas and places like the Waterworks/Noblestown Road which are really just strip malls.

6. There's a simplification of residential compatibility setback and height standards to be similar to Austin, Columbus, and Portland. In practice what this means is it'll be much easier to build taller/closer to lower-density residential areas without having a transition zone of "moderate" density.

Seems like a more comprehensive zoning code overhaul (presumably simplifying uses/reducing the number of zones) is in the works.

In addition, Pittsburgh Business Times has some coverage of the new Smallman Street townhouse project. An important lacunae I forgot was there were plans for a 265-unit apartment project in 2021 which fell through. So it's a substantial downgrade. However, the bay of the existing building closest to 32nd not being demolished will still be owned by the developer, and may be demolished and replaced by more townhouses, so at least it's not a 90%+ reduction in total units.

[eschaton]

The July 28 Planning Commission agenda is online.

There's one new item being reviewed, which is changes to zoning which are intended to regulate short-term rentals like AirBNBs. Unfortunately, the materials have yet to be uploaded, but versions of this have been going around since January. Considering I now live next door to one, I'll be interested to see where this goes (though it's pretty much opposed to how the city is otherwise treating zoning now).

EDIT: Presentation now online. The biggest change from the earlier versions that went through council is in areas zoned residential other than RM new short-term rentals are no longer permitted. It looks like old ones will be grandfathered in, provided they get an occupancy permit within 12 months.

There's also the subdivision of a big vacant property in Central Lawrenceville I'm going to be watching. The site has been vacant for like 15 years now, so it'll be nice to see something going here, even if ends up being more tech/flex warehouse space and not an apartment.

The ZBAs agendas are also now online for August 13 and August 20. Nothing of note for the 13th, but the 20th includes review of the planned 38-unit apartment building on Kelly Street in Homewood. I don't recall having seen floor layouts here before. It's nice to get some more context.

In other news, this PBT article casually drops that the planned 14-story condo building in the Strip rejected by zoning last year is back on? Not sure I like the context though, which is the developer is in personal talks with the Mayor's office and now thinks they'll find a way to push it through. I want more development in the city, but it shouldn't be via having the Mayor's ear!



Also, the Trib is reporting a different condo development in the Strip is moving ahead with construction shortly. This is a 38-unit development in the former "Dog Stop" building on Smallman Street. Renderings of it in a slightly different incarnation dropped back in January.



This is the last "unimproved" building on that section of Smallman.

[Thktanm]

I appreciate your updates and how you add context to the meeting agendas. It reminds me of stormfreak weather updates on Reddit. Have you ever considered writing a monthly development roundup in the form of a Reddit post?

[xdv8]

Originally Posted by Thktanm

I appreciate your updates and how you add context to the meeting agendas. It reminds me of stormfreak weather updates on Reddit. Have you ever considered writing a monthly development roundup in the form of a Reddit post?

I'd second Reddit as well but StormFreak is obnoxious.