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  #1  
Old Posted May 24, 2011, 2:51 PM
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PITTSBURGH | Tower at PNC Plaza | 545 FT / 166 M | 32 FLOORS

Tower at PNC Place
Pittsburgh
Preliminary height: approx. 600ft
Floors: 40
Square footage: 800,000
Primary tenant: PNC Financial will take 100% of office space, street frontage to be retail
Price: $400M
Begin construction: 2012
End construction: 2015
Special features: "World's greenest skyscraper"
Architect: Gensler (San Francisco)
Construction: PJ Dick (Pittsburgh)

PNC's announcement (featuring video):
http://multivu.prnewswire.com/mnr/pnc/42893/

Tower at PNC Plaza site:
https://www.pncsites.com/pnctower/
newspaper:
http://post-gazette.com/pg/11144/1148681-28.stm

Quote:
PNC planning '12 start on new headquarters tower

Billed as the world's greenest skyscraper, $400M structure will rise 40 stories and house offices for 3,000 employees


Tuesday, May 24, 2011
By Mark Belko, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

PNC Financial Services Group has finally fessed up: It will build the world's greenest skyscraper -- about 40 stories in all and nearly all glass -- in the heart of Downtown.

The disclosure came Monday at the Fairmont Pittsburgh, where PNC showed off plans for the $400 million "skyrise" that will serve as its worldwide headquarters.

But the Tower at PNC Plaza won't be any ordinary skyscraper.

PNC officials are promising that the building will exceed the highest rating given for environmentally friendly design by the U.S. Green Building Council and enliven the Downtown skyline.

"We think the Tower at PNC Plaza will be a destination. We think it will draw people from around the world who will want to come and see this building and, hopefully, we'll find some people who will want to emulate it," said Gary Saulson, PNC's director of corporate real estate.

...

The view of the Tower at PNC Plaza from Market Square.


Larry Roberts/Post-Gazette
PNC CEO Jim Rohr announced plans for The Tower at PNC Plaza -- an "eco-friendly" 40-story skyscraper that will become its corporate headquarters. It will be built between Fifth and Forbes.


The location of the Tower at PNC Plaza will be between PPG Place and the U.S. Steel building.


Last edited by Evergrey; May 28, 2011 at 12:53 AM.
     
     
  #2  
Old Posted May 24, 2011, 3:39 PM
Wiz Khalifa Wiz Khalifa is offline
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Sweet the thread is up

That's an awesome looking building.
     
     
  #3  
Old Posted May 24, 2011, 4:44 PM
DBR96A DBR96A is offline
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This is long overdue. Pittsburgh hasn't had a single highrise built since 1987, and even new midrises were scarce until after 2000. Maybe I'm wrong, but it's possible that Pittsburgh's skyline literally did not change during the 1990's. But now office space in the city is bursting at the seams. Vacancy rates in downtown Pittsburgh are only about 10%, and in some areas near the universities, it's essentially zero. This has helped fill office space in adjacent neighborhoods, which is a good thing, but the problem is, most neighborhoods away from downtown and the universities don't have enough office space to pick up the slack for long. This new skyscraper should free up some office space downtown at a time when it's desperately needed.
     
     
  #4  
Old Posted May 24, 2011, 5:10 PM
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Screencap from https://www.pncsites.com/pnctower/ :




I like that this tower is being built with no public funds or incentives.
     
     
  #5  
Old Posted May 24, 2011, 5:13 PM
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  #6  
Old Posted May 24, 2011, 5:26 PM
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Those atriums are amazing. Hoooooooooo! Can't wait to see this thing rise in the skyline.
     
     
  #7  
Old Posted May 24, 2011, 5:40 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AaronPGH View Post
Those atriums are amazing. Hoooooooooo! Can't wait to see this thing rise in the skyline.
Too bad it won't be done till 2015. I know you hate waiting, Aaron!




We need to have CMU get working on some skyscraper building robots that could crank this thing out in about 6 months.
     
     
  #8  
Old Posted May 24, 2011, 6:47 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PA Pride View Post
We need to have CMU get working on some skyscraper building robots that could crank this thing out in about 6 months.
Like those little robots that rebuilt that apartment building in Batteries Not Included?
     
     
  #9  
Old Posted May 24, 2011, 7:24 PM
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Wow this is big news for Pittsburgh!!

Link to a very large image - http://multivu.prnewswire.com/mnr/pn...campusview.jpg
     
     
  #10  
Old Posted May 24, 2011, 7:35 PM
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Agreed this is long overdue. As much as like the juxtaposition of Pittsburgh's skyline, many of the buildings themselves are very eighties looking. This is a long overdue breath of fresh air.
     
     
  #11  
Old Posted May 24, 2011, 8:07 PM
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wow, this is awesome! it really pulls Pittsburgh into the 21st. century!
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  #12  
Old Posted May 24, 2011, 9:28 PM
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Okay all of you talented artists, get to work on showing us how this sexy new thang is going to look from the various skyline angles!
     
     
  #13  
Old Posted May 24, 2011, 9:46 PM
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i jumped in my seat when i read 600 feet! then i jumped again when i saw the renders! awesome tower, and i hope this brings in a bunch of new developments in downtown Pittsburgh!
     
     
  #14  
Old Posted May 25, 2011, 12:40 AM
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  #15  
Old Posted May 25, 2011, 12:48 AM
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Sharp-looking tower and I like that it plugs the "gap" from the view in the pic above.
     
     
  #16  
Old Posted May 25, 2011, 6:05 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dylan Leblanc View Post
Anyone know of any recent talk about the proposed office building development on that empty lot above on the lower right? It would be really nice to see two commercial towers being built in downtown Pittsburgh in close proximity at the same time (though I know that the proposal on that empty lot was for only a 20 story building or so).
     
     
  #17  
Old Posted May 25, 2011, 6:58 PM
DBR96A DBR96A is offline
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I'm interested in seeing some renderings from the West End Overlook.
     
     
  #18  
Old Posted May 28, 2011, 3:21 AM
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PNC buying remaining sites for new headquarters

Pittsburgh Business Times - by Patty Tascarella

Date: Friday, May 27, 2011, 11:11am EDT - Last Modified: Friday, May 27, 2011, 1:10pm EDT


"PNC Financial Services Group Inc., Pittsburgh, is purchasing three buildings from the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority for $1.1 million, confirmed Fred Solomon, PNC spokesman, and Gigi Saladna, URA chief information officer.

These properties, located on Wood Street in Downtown Pittsburgh, are the final properties PNC (NYSENC) needs to begin construction of its new headquarters building, the Tower at PNC Plaza, later this year. It previously acquired six sites, bringing the total to nine.

The purchase is expected to be formalized at the URA’s June 16th board meeting, Saladna said. The buildings are 430, 434 and 438 Wood Street.

PNC announced plans for the approximately 40-story, 800,000-square-foot green building Monday. It will be located on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Wood Street and is expected to be completed in 2015."
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  #19  
Old Posted May 30, 2011, 2:10 AM
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PNC's plan could be harbinger of Downtown revival

By Jeremy Boren

PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Last updated: 9:20 am

Paul O'Neill longs to see a Golden Triangle revival, and hopes adding The Tower at PNC Plaza to Pittsburgh's skyline will help.

"Think about 3,000 people in that space and the implications of that for those who choose to live Downtown and patronize the business," said O'Neill, the one-time U.S. Treasury secretary and former CEO of Alcoa. "Every investment moves us in the right direction."

PNC's announcement last week that it plans by 2015 to build the 40-story skyscraper for 3,000 employees reinforced the hope that O'Neill, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and the tower's designers share for reinvigorating Downtown.

"In fits and starts, the city has become a remarkably better place than what it was when I came in 1987," O'Neill said.

Yet, it's not the advent of a Golden Triangle high-rise binge.

"I don't think our market is ready for high-rise speculation. The rates aren't ready for that," said Andrew Wisniewski, executive vice president of CB Richard Ellis, a Downtown real estate firm.

The 800,000-square-foot, eco-friendly tower will be a recruiting tool for the company and city, said Doug Gensler, a principal in the Boston office of Gensler, the architecture firm that designed The Tower and Three PNC.

"It's beginning to help complete the idea of a rich, thick urban center," Gensler said. "It fits with that 24-by-7 feel of Market Square, the Cultural District and the Fairmont (Hotel) at Three PNC."

Gensler's concept is to create a tower of atriums. Each would become employee meeting spaces spanning several floors, to break up 40 "horizontal slabs" that can be isolating.

PNC Chairman and CEO James E. Rohr said the company will spend $400 million to build The Tower at PNC Plaza at the corner of Wood Street and Forbes Avenue, about a block from One, Two and Three PNC Plaza.

The last high-rise opened in 2009 and was the first one built in more than 20 years, largely because it's cheaper to rent rather than build Class A office space, which has been plentiful, but is becoming scarcer.

Fewer vacancies

If PNC's skyscraper materialized today, its square footage would nearly equal the amount of Class A office space available to rent in Pittsburgh's Downtown commercial real estate market.

It's an encouraging result of steadily climbing demand, rising rental prices and leading employers such as UPMC and BNY Mellon gobbling up office space in premier buildings.

But PNC plans to occupy all of its building — except for some first-floor retail space — so, it won't add to the rental market.

Class A office space vacancy is about 7.2 percent — compared with 15.9 percent for the lower B and C classes — with 875,556 square feet available, according to real estate company Grubb & Ellis, which puts out quarterly reports on the market.

"I think it is at a historical low," said Pamela Lowery, vice president of research and marketing for Grubb & Ellis, adding that firms in need of lots of space will turn to the ample supply of Class B rather than construction because it's "too expensive" for most.

Wisniewski said rental rates would need to approach a lofty $38 a square foot to make high-rise construction more palatable. They're about $25 now.

Smaller projects of about 10 floors are feasible, he said, or higher if they include hotel and residential space over offices as is the case with Cecil-based Millcraft Industries' plans to spend $70 million to convert the 16-story former State Office Building into River Vue, a 218-unit apartment building.

Ravenstahl predicted sites the Urban Redevelopment Authority owns, scattered across the Cultural District, Grant Street and elsewhere, should be easier to sell to developers as a result of PNC's investment.

"If there was a hesitancy, or folks that weren't sure about (investing Downtown), this will eliminate all of that," Ravenstahl said at the PNC tower announcement.

The new tower is a positive sign, "but I wouldn't hang my hat on that as the renaissance," said Aaron M. Renn, a Chicago-based urban analyst and consultant.

U.S. skyscraper construction boomed in the 1980s and early '90s, he said. Downtowns in mid-sized cities became overburdened with commercial real estate.

"The future of the economy is not about a long-time Downtown bank adding a building. It's about all the new businesses there, and about who's starting tomorrow's PNC bank," he said.

Greenest of them all?

At least two skyscrapers — the 48-story Duke Energy Center in Charlotte, N.C., and the 55-story Bank of America Tower in New York City — achieved LEED platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, which rates a building's energy efficiency.

PNC is seeking that same highest rating. It could succeed in building the world's most environmentally friendly building because the rating standard grows more rigorous over time and benefits go beyond lower electricity bills, said John Quale, a University of Virginia associate professor of architecture who studies green building design.

Workers in well-lit, properly ventilated and comfortable offices tend to miss fewer days, be more productive and stay with the company longer, reducing turnover, he said.

Since personnel often are a company's highest cost, savings there easily eclipse what can come from using high-efficiency LED lights or installing green rooftops to reduce heat gain.

"To set the benchmark that high is essentially saying if they don't do it, it's going to be embarrassing for them as a company, so everyone is going to focus on that goal," Quale said.

When the tower is complete, it will alter Pittsburgh's acclaimed skyline, but it is puny when compared to the truly enormous structures across the globe, said Carol Willis, curator of the Skyscraper Museum in Manhattan.

The 160-story Burj Khalifa in United Arab Emirates is the world's tallest building.

Willis said U.S. cities generally constrain building height, while governments in China, South Korea and Middle Eastern countries encourage it to spur economic growth and accommodate huge populations.

Is a 40-story office tower really a skyscraper?

"Skyscraper is the romantic term," she said. "It's all relative. Skylines and skyscrapers go together, so if it pops up in Pittsburgh's skyline it's a skyscraper."
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  #20  
Old Posted May 30, 2011, 6:27 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DBR96A View Post
I'm interested in seeing some renderings from the West End Overlook.
The PNC tower won't add much oomph to the West End Overlook view, since from that angle it lines up almost perfectly with BNY Mellon Center.

Here's a quick-and-dirty SketchUp model for viewing in Google Earth. The model is quite crude but allows one to see how the building fits into the skyline from various viewpoints.
     
     
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