PITTSBURGH | Development Rundown III

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Wish I could take advantage of this, but we had two international vacations last year. It was an accident - we had planned a family vacation to the UK for spring break, but my wife's father had an accident (and ultimately died), but she felt strongly I shouldn't cancel the vacation, so I went alone with the kids. Then she had a flight credit to use with British Airways within six months, so the two of us went to the Netherlands sans kids in August.

My condolences to your wife.

We have already booked with British Air for our 2024 vacation, so we may also not use this until 2025 at the earliest. But we plan early (obviously), so we might well book 2025 flights as soon as they become available. We had already been looking at either Scandinavia or the Faroe Islands (among other possibilities), but possibly sneaking in a second trip just to Iceland would work out too.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by wpipkins2

The design is better suited for a financial institution trying to keep hundreds of jobs close to reliable public transportation. Form vs function with the added benefit of an expanded and upgraded jail trail. The First Avenue T Station and garage received funding because of PNC’s investment in downtown. The PNC operations center is an asset to downtown Pittsburgh.

I agree that PNC Firstside is an asset to downtown, but these points are extraneous to the building's scale being out of whack in downtown Pittsburgh.

What other building in downtown Pittsburgh has a footprint as large as that of PNC Firstside? Answer: the convention center

What other office building in downtown Pittsburgh has a footprint as large as that of PNC Firstside? Answer: None

By definition, that is out-of-scale with its environment. There's no argument here.

Let's put it a different way... imagine that Pitt's Posvar Hall was built downtown. No one would agree with you if you tried to argue that Posvar Hall was somehow not out-of-scale within the confines of downtown Pittsburgh.

Additional point: Posvar Hall's footprint is roughly 20,000 sq ft smaller than that of PNC Firstside... and that's including the plaza between it and the Hillman library.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Wish I could take advantage of this, but we had two international vacations last year. It was an accident - we had planned a family vacation to the UK for spring break, but my wife's father had an accident (and ultimately died), but she felt strongly I shouldn't cancel the vacation, so I went alone with the kids. Then she had a flight credit to use with British Airways within six months, so the two of us went to the Netherlands sans kids in August.

First, jeez, sorry about your father-in-law. Second, how'd you and your wife like the Netherlands? Never been and have been thinking about a Europe trip soon, and it keeps popping to near the top of my list.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

My condolences to your wife.

Thank you.

Originally Posted by pj3000

First, jeez, sorry about your father-in-law.

Thank you. It was a random thing - he was walking outside in his driveway doing yard work and tripped and cracked his skull. Caused a brain bleed that they ultimately couldn't repair, so they took him off life support about a week later. He was 79. Bad way to go, but some old guys just get stubborn doing things they shouldn't (two of my great grandfathers died for this reason - one with almost the exact same injury).

Originally Posted by pj3000

Second, how'd you and your wife like the Netherlands? Never been and have been thinking about a Europe trip soon, and it keeps popping to near the top of my list.

We had fun. It was near the top of my wife's list for the architecture, but I admit I had some trepidation due to the kind of people I thought Amsterdam would attract. There were absolutely a lot of the annoying tourists (mostly British) who were there for weed and prostitutes, but they were avoidable.

We stayed in a hotel within a 15-minute walk of Amsterdam Centraal. This was tremendously useful in terms of logistics, because all of the other cities we traveled to (Rotterdam, Utrecht, The Hague, etc.) are all serviced by high-speed trains which come every 15-20 minutes, run late into the night, and take an hour or less in terms of transit time. So unless you want to go to an actual rural area (or visit Maastricht I guess) there's really no reason to actually stay overnight anywhere else. Still, hard to beat in terms of the number of distinct cities you can hit in a week (you could probably do something similar in Germany in the Rhineland, but German cities are ugly, so I'm not in a hurry to tour Dusseldorf or anything).

[eschaton]

So I saw a few days ago the Grant Building is facing default and thought - it's actually a decent candidate for residential conversion.

It's not as pretty as some of the earlier 20th century buildings, but it's a solid building from the 1930s with some nice Art Deco flourishes. Perhaps most importantly, it's actually articulated in such a way as to allow for lots of natural light even deep into the core of the structure.

Seems at minimum the top 13 stories (which are stepped/smaller) would make for an excellent series of units. Hell, the three highest could basically be converted into townhouse-style units with access to a green roof.

[AaronPGH]

Originally Posted by eschaton

So I saw a few days ago the Grant Building is facing default and thought - it's actually a decent candidate for residential conversion.

It's not as pretty as some of the earlier 20th century buildings, but it's a solid building from the 1930s with some nice Art Deco flourishes. Perhaps most importantly, it's actually articulated in such a way as to allow for lots of natural light even deep into the core of the structure.

Seems at minimum the top 13 stories (which are stepped/smaller) would make for an excellent series of units. Hell, the three highest could basically be converted into townhouse-style units with access to a green roof.

Had the exact same thought here, and was surprised to not see any mention of potential residential conversion in the article. The shape seems perfect.

[xdv8]

I did not read the article with Gainey's quotes, but if he thinks we should give up our Downtown's buildings this quickly I think he should take that loser energy into a new position, like ex-Mayor.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by xdv8

I did not read the article with Gainey's quotes, but if he thinks we should give up our Downtown's buildings this quickly I think he should take that loser energy into a new position, like ex-Mayor.

That was not the opinion of Gainey, but a poster on here.

Gainey has not argued we need to sacrifice any buildings, only that we need to admit office use isn't going to recover downtown any time soon, and we need to develop alternative plans for downtown buildings soon.

[eschaton]

November 14 Planning Commission presentation up. Three new items for next week, none of them involving major development, though still worth discussing.

1. A proposed loosening of zoning regulations around daycares. To broadly summarize, this will allow for small-scale childcare (less than six children) by right essentially everywhere in the city. While larger day cares will still need special exceptions to be built in single-family zoned areas, all parking minimums for daycares have been eliminated. There are typically 1-2 requests for variances relating to daycares per month, so this will lighten the ZBA's workload.

2. The historic nomination of Frick Park, which has been in the process for months.

3. Approval of a new mural in Uptown. I'm actually a bit surprised, because the mural is already there. I didn't think the Planning Commission did after-the-fact approvals like the HRC.

It's also worth noting that the URA agenda for tomorrow is also online. There's nothing particularly sexy here. They're putting 200 Ross Street out again for bid as a residential conversion, loaning money to the North Side Y to help keep the dilapidated SRO units up at habitable levels, and funding a number of smaller-scale projects (including the sale of 15 parcels through City of Bridges Community Land Trust.

[shantyside]

wilkinsburg has half the population it had in 1960, and probably a much smaller fraction of the businesses

Wilkinsburg tries to demolish 'deplorable' buildings, avoid gentrification

https://triblive.com/local/wilkinsbu...entrification/

"Wilkinsburg has been fighting blight aggressively for years, officials there say. Since at least 2020, the town has budgeted $300,000 a year to demolish abandoned properties. But it might be a Sisyphean battle — the Excel spreadsheet listing vacant properties in this 8,000-household town is 17 pages.

That doesn’t faze Borough Manager John Antinori. The Westmoreland County native worked in New York City for 25 years in internet marketing before returning to the area in 2019.

Wilkinsburg is his new project.

“There’s a lot happening here — significant new development, commercial and residential, and the ongoing efforts to clear the way for that,” he said. “Three years ago, when we talked about this, we spoke mostly about blight. Now we speak about blight and redevelopment.”

[shantyside]

nice location for affordable housing - a block away from market square and only a few blocks away from point state park

Beacon Communities receives $5M grant to renovate historic high-rise downtown

https://www.bizjournals.com/pittsbur...-downtown.html


"The 88-unit May Building at 111 Fifth Avenue downtown is poised to undergo its first substantial renovations since the 1970s.

That's thanks to a $5 million grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Green and Resilient Retrofit Program implemented through the Inflation Reduction Act.

The property is owned by Boston-based Beacon Communities, an active affordable housing developer in the region that took ownership of the May Building as part of its 2017 buy of the portfolio of National Development Corp. that included 59 properties totaling 5,300 units.

According to an announcement of the grant, the mixed-income redevelopment will preserve what is a nationally registered building located within the Penn-Liberty Historic District downtown in a location a short walk to the cultural district as well as Point State Park."

[photoLith]

^^
So Wilkinsburg wants to tear everything down so that it can never redeveloped and just continue to lose population and have decreased home values so that more properties become abandoned. That seems logical. Unless I'm missing something here.

[shantyside]

nice building - not the best location

A new life for the John P. Robin Civic Building?

https://www.post-gazette.com/busines...s/202311090073

"After striking out in trying to attract a developer to acquire and rehab the John P. Robin Civic Building in Downtown, the Pittsburgh Urban Redevelopment Authority is taking a different tack.

The URA intends to issue a request for qualifications Nov. 13 for firms interested in reusing the 116-year-old building at 200 Ross St. that served as a government hub for decades.

Officials are turning to the RFQ after a request for proposals released last summer for the sale and redevelopment of the 13-story structure failed to generate any interest.

Brandon Wilson, a URA project manager, told board members Thursday that developers were hesitant to respond to the request for proposals in part because of the complexity of the project.

The goal is to convert at least part of the building into affordable housing, a priority of Mayor Ed Gainey and his administration.

As the lack of interest in the request for proposals suggested, the URA is facing some headwinds. Some developers have been reluctant to take on new projects because of high construction costs and interest rates. Affordable housing also is challenging to finance.

Ms. Harris is hopeful that a Downtown tax abatement program proposed by the URA for developers willing to undertake residential projects that include affordable housing will help to turn the tide. She said the Pittsburgh Public Schools recently approved the abatement program. The URA will be meeting with the county in a few weeks to try to get its approval as well. She noted that the abatement program wasn’t as close to being implemented when the RFP was issued last summer as it is now."

[shantyside]

i know crime is not a relevant topic here, but i have to make a comment

in the decade or so it was there, i cannot recall one bad thing happening at the old east liberty whole foods surface parking lot which functioned as a quasi-public square

the new whole foods location, with its creepy underground parking lot, hasn't been open much longer than a year, and already there's been an armed carjacking there

Pittsburgh police probe armed carjacking in East Liberty and armed robbery of Chipotle at Waterworks

https://www.wtae.com/article/pittsbu...orks/45818228#

"Pittsburgh Public Safety said a man told them he was sitting in his white Audi station wagon in the Whole Foods parking garage when a man opened the driver’s door, pointed a gun at home and forced him out."

enclosed garages are dangerous because there's places for bad people to hide

surface lots are safer because there's no place for a bad person to hide

that new whole foods location is so poorly designed it's gonna wind up getting someone hurt

[pj3000]

^ yes, it's the design of the new Whole Foods that caused the carjacking. I really think that we should level all parking garages and expand the size of surface parking lots throughout the city in the name of public safety.

I also recently heard that it's easy for bad people to hide behind trees, so I think we should cut down all the trees in Pittsburgh (and those in other nearby municipalities where bad people are), so bad people have a harder time hiding when they are outside. Like, bad people could still try to hide when they're outside, but they'd only have shrubs and flowers and plants like that to try to hide behind, but we'll be able to see the bad people trying to hide behind smaller plants like those, so it wont be as dangerous.

No trees = no one gets hurt

[bmust71]

CMU just released plans for their new Richard King Mellon Hall of Sciences at the corner of Forbes and Craig. ~339,000 square feet in total. Here's the link to the article:

https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/arc...ll-of-sciences

[eschaton]

The new CMU building looks nice. Perhaps most importantly, this will fill in the last real gap along Forbes, linking together the core of CMU's campus with Oakland proper (or at least the S. Craig area of Oakland - the area around Schenley Plaza is of course a pretty big gap in development).

[shantyside]

Originally Posted by eschaton

the area around Schenley Plaza is of course a pretty big gap in development).

what does that mean? public development is just empty space?

that's like saying central park is a pretty big gap in the development of manhattan

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by shantyside

what does that mean? public development is just empty space?

that's like saying central park is a pretty big gap in the development of manhattan

I mean, a gap is a gap. I'm not saying it needs to fill in. But in no way is there a cohesive urban street wall which runs from the Forbes Avenue to S. Craig. They functionally operate as two different "downtowns." Which is different from Central Park, where there's quality urbanism wrapping around the park in every direction, so it doesn't form a true break in development.

I do think that the core of Oakland, in/around Pitt, is a bit of an architectural mishmash, insofar as you can see the original City Beautiful style of the core of the neighborhood, mid-century misadventures, and more modern attempts to orient it as a properly urban campus. I don't thik we should take a wrecking ball to the oldest stuff, but things like the Hillman Library (even with the planned changes to the street level to make it less of a fortress) were unfortunate.

[eschaton]

December 7 ZBA is up, and there's actually a few interesting projects, breaking with recent months.

1. A new multifamily building in Homewood. This is a PFHA-funded development, listed as "up to 60 units" with 60,000 square feet of commercial space. Looks like a four-story building. Location is here. Technically, it will cover three (small) city blocks, with an alley vacated and the building spanning Tioga Street with a tunnel underneath. It's Desmone, so the design is bland as hell, but it will fill in an important missing piece in a portion of Homewood that has shown the most promise in recent years, due to proximity to the East Busway.

2. Construction of two semi-detached homes in the South Side Slopes. I wish I could say more here, but there are no renderings. Looking on Google Earth, the site should have pretty nice views from the upper stories however. I'm actually a little surprised they didn't flip it the other way and build the houses of of Niles Street, as the view would be even better.