From global to local, a mix of developers set their sights on Hazelwood Green

https://www.post-gazette.com/busines...s/201812130077

Positive momentum at Hazelwood Green as well.

evolveEA recently won an AIA design award for the proposed redesign of Penn Station. This study was undertaken as part of the Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group (PCRG)’s Better Busway Study, in partnership with the Port Authority of Allegheny County. You can read more about it here:

https://vqtnsg.sn.files.1drv.com/y4m...&cropmode=none
Source: Carnegie Mellon SoA, Courtesy evolveEA

Looks like we will eventually get our equivalent to Amazon HQ2--except at a reasonable pace, with a diverse range of businesses, and without billions in subsidies.

Some data things:

County-level GDP is now being published. No surprise, Allegheny County dominates the Pittsburgh Metro/SWPA, with more or less decent growth rates. Washington County has passed Westmoreland for a distant second thanks to higher recent growth rates:

https://ucsur.pitt.edu/perspectives....20181228505725

Not a lot of detail in the underlying data, but Allegheny was about 80% private service, 12% private goods production, 8% government. Washington in comparison was 64% service, 30% goods, 6% government. I note service includes more business/industrial things like research, transportation, and such, not just conventional professional and retail services.

Meanwhile, looks like strong demand growth has caught up with the hotel construction boom in Pittsburgh (which itself has slowed a bit):

http://hotelnewsnow.com/Articles/291...s-supply-slows

Demand growth was particularly strong in the CBD, which is good news for the new projects still in the pipeline. The article also touches on various hotels in development in the East End including The Oaklander and the Tryp hotel going into the Washington Education Center building (pictured in development in an above photo review).

As also explained in the hotel article, all this fits together--the diverse and growing business mix helps create strong demand growth for hotels.

New PBT article about Millcraft's Esplandade.

https://www.bizjournals.com/pittsbur...rth-shore.html

Those are 200 foot towers:

https://i.imgur.com/kY9npAk.png

This is a pretty neat project in a currently sleepy part of town. Millcraft has already proven that they get stuff done so this will happen, though I do think four 200 foot buildings is ambitious and wouldn't be surprised to see the number of buildings and/or height scaled back somewhat.

Wow. That's incredibly ambitious. I really hope it happens, but the site seems fairly isolated, which makes it a tough sell.

They claim to have the financial backing to pull it off. I agree it seems ambitious for that location, but it is still quite close to Downtown (I'd call it walkable, and definitely bikeable), the other North Shore and North Side amenities, and has decent access to the airport and highways and such.

I will note if they pull that off there, all the excuses offered by the sports teams about their development sites on the North Shore and Lower Hill will once again be proven to be nonsense.

One errant thought - a major project there - including amenities which will be widely used by the public - will quite possibly push the city to extend the North Side stub of the T up Beaver Street at least that far. I mean, it's not an impossible walk from Allegheny Station, but the distance between Esplanade and Allegheny Station is about the same as between Allegheny and North Side Station. Provided they could find some way to get it up and over the West End bridge ramps it would seem doable to me as part of a general redesign of Beaver Street.

Speaking of extending the T, were there ever any preliminary plans on extension in that direction? I assume they knew how they would manage flying over the West End ramps but never saw their official ideas.

The word I heard was that there were some original plans to extend the T all the way to the airport on an existing right of way which didn't pan out.

More recently, there has been some discussion of extending the T up 65 as part of a conversion of the street from an elevated highway back into a surface boulevard. But the state has been appropriating money and improving 65 in its current state, meaning we're probably locked into the "great wall" existing for another decade plus.

I would imagine that this design is contingent on converting Beaver Ave into a 2-way street from the casino garage. This would make the property just as accessible as the rest of the north shore, and although the T station would be a bit of a hike from there it would at least be completely flat.

That Ferris Wheel looks like it could be a little bigger. Next to those buildings it almost looks like an afterthought rather than a statement/signature piece in this development. Maybe it's just me tho...

On the extension of the T and repurposing Rt. 65, I've always thought that road should be repurposed as a surface boulevard a la the Ben Franklin Parkwaybut with a large central median since there are already 2-lane surface streets on either side of Rt 65. Basically, they can remove the elevated freeway portion and re-integrate it with the existing surface streets on either side of it, which would leave a large median in the middle to possibly run the T through. I would also suggest reconfiguring the ramps at the north end of the West End Bridge. I don't know why they thought of turning that into a half-assed freeway interchange. That, to me, never made any sense; just more backwards urban planning from the bureaucrats who think they are city planners...

Here's an article with more than you ever wanted to know about the history of the T.

https://www.post-gazette.com/busines...s/201812190090

So, I noticed this morning that the Esplanade development has changed significantly in footprint over the last year. Press releases in 2017 described it as 13 acres, now it's up to 13.

If you look at the rendering shown above, it's clear that while the development still doesn't extend to W. North Ave (Detroit Switch is still there) it's much further south now. The Ferris wheel is right next to the West End Bridge, and the Cardello Building is nowhere to be seen.

My understanding is that proposed system was pretty much shovel ready; funding was already in place (and a huge amount at that; $1/2 billion in 2016 USD) and the city pissed away the funds.

Not to jump tracks here, but Philadelphia is in the same boat. They had a MASSIVE subway plan laid out that is rather comparable to that of Chicago's system - only underground. Somebody posted in the Philly transportation thread on the transportation forum a map of this proposed layout. It looked like a loop around Center City - Look at the map, and look at the PATCO Speedline as it follows the alignment down 8th and under Walnut before terminating a block before Rittenhouse. That was supposed to be the southern/eastern alignment of this "loop" consisting of pretty much all the routes going to the airport, down to West Chester, and up to Pottstown, Jenkinown, etc. As we all know, the only lines that were built were the Broad St. and Market-Frankford spine lines with a spur from Broad Street connecting with the Patco line at 8th.

I wish we had people who actually come from a city/regional planning background rather than these bureaucratic wind bags who think they're qualified for city planning. I feel that not having a good reliable rail transit system has really hurt the region long term.

The City of Pittsburgh is not in charge of transit planning in the region.

The relevant entities are Allegheny County (including through the Port Authority), the state, and the feds (including through the SPC). The transformation of the Spine Line into the North Shore Connector, for example, happened when Republicans took over Allegheny County and the Port Authority, in alignment with the Ridge Administration and ultimately the George W. Bush Administration.

It would be a very different situation if the City, or indeed City/County, had sole discretion over how to spend all the revenues generated within its jurisdiction then spent under the direction of the state and federal governments.

Uber resumes autonomous car testing in Pittsburgh.

I think it's interesting that they chose Pittsburgh as the city to restart the program after one of their cars was involved in a fatal accident. Between the tunnels, bridges, weather and short highway on/off ramps (including some on bridges) this has to be a very challenging environment.