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  #541  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2018, 2:16 PM
cdc cdc is offline
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Originally Posted by Bricktrimble View Post
Ah man!!! Bummer And they even had groundbreaking with a robot delivering the first brick...
What's going on is that CMU reconsidered the Tata building's size
after that groundbreaking and decided to make it bigger. They
are currently planning on what schools/departments are going to get space
(e.g. engineering, computer science have some of it). I have a friend
who's department may move over there, so there's been alot of
discussion about it.
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  #542  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2018, 4:20 PM
eschaton eschaton is online now
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City has finally posted the 2/15 zoning board agenda. We heard about one of the big elements (expansion of Bakery Square 3.0 to nine stories) a few weeks back. But lately the zoning board has changed from posting these agendas weeks in advance to only posting them the day before. Whether this is sheer laziness or on purpose, I'm not sure.

Anyway, aside from Bakery Square, we have.

1. Distillery project in the Strip District at the former Artistry location (2613 Smallman Street).

2. A proposed new warehouse off of Greentree Road in Westwood

3. Conversion of an old church-related building in Manchester into a coworking space and artist studio. This project is being done by Brian Mendelssohn, who owns Botero Development - a small development company that did a lot of work on rehabs in Lawrenceville before the big boys priced him out.
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  #543  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2018, 5:46 PM
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Originally Posted by BrianTH View Post
As for the UPMC project, I'm tempted to go off on a similar rant about why hospitals, despite being great for economic development, can be pretty crap when it comes to urban development issues. But whatever--that corridor seems destined to be hodge-podge with lots of unfortunate mini gaps and such, but as long as it is built up to an overall high level of use it will support better-planned development all around it.
Again, the Baum-Centre corridor (hell, basically the whole zone from the apartment block area of Oakland all the way to Downtown East Liberty) is crying out for a whole new zoning category similar to Uptown and the riverfront. It might not help in terms of hospitals, because they can always rezone areas EMI and essentially do whatever they want with them. But it should stop more fast food restaurants from opening up along those streets.
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  #544  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2018, 7:27 PM
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Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
Again, the Baum-Centre corridor (hell, basically the whole zone from the apartment block area of Oakland all the way to Downtown East Liberty) is crying out for a whole new zoning category similar to Uptown and the riverfront. It might not help in terms of hospitals, because they can always rezone areas EMI and essentially do whatever they want with them. But it should stop more fast food restaurants from opening up along those streets.
At least the new Arby's on Baum is fronting the street.
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  #545  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2018, 7:52 PM
BobMcKelvin BobMcKelvin is offline
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Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
Again, the Baum-Centre corridor (hell, basically the whole zone from the apartment block area of Oakland all the way to Downtown East Liberty) is crying out for a whole new zoning category similar to Uptown and the riverfront. It might not help in terms of hospitals, because they can always rezone areas EMI and essentially do whatever they want with them. But it should stop more fast food restaurants from opening up along those streets.
I think this whole corridor is ripe for a pedestrianization scheme, with the curb bump-outs, bright crosswalks, bike lanes, street trees, and reducing it to one lane except turning lanes on Baum especially. Centre is already pretty tight which is good as far as keeping speeds low and making it easy to cross on foot.
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  #546  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2018, 8:33 PM
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Originally Posted by BobMcKelvin View Post
I think this whole corridor is ripe for a pedestrianization scheme, with the curb bump-outs, bright crosswalks, bike lanes, street trees, and reducing it to one lane except turning lanes on Baum especially. Centre is already pretty tight which is good as far as keeping speeds low and making it easy to cross on foot.
Agreed. I'd love to see Baum go on a 'road diet'.
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  #547  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2018, 9:38 PM
eschaton eschaton is online now
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Originally Posted by BobMcKelvin View Post
I think this whole corridor is ripe for a pedestrianization scheme, with the curb bump-outs, bright crosswalks, bike lanes, street trees, and reducing it to one lane except turning lanes on Baum especially. Centre is already pretty tight which is good as far as keeping speeds low and making it easy to cross on foot.
It would be nice to have some room for a bus-only lane on Baum. You could reroute the buses which currently go down Centre onto Baum (like the 71A and C) quite easily. AFAIK only the 77 travels on it currently. Wouldn't inconvenience any of the bus riders to walk an extra short block that much at all.
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  #548  
Old Posted Feb 15, 2018, 8:34 PM
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New Planning Commission presentation. Four new items this week:

1. Day Automotive wants to buy 6.5 acres just off of West Liberty Avenue to expand its Subaru dealership into land now taken up by landscaping of Fair Oaks Senior Apartments. This will require some rezoning, as the area is currently set aside for residential uses. The senior apartment building will remain in place, Day Automotive just wants to buy land currently unused along West Liberty and Pauline Avenues. Can't say I'm thrilled by this, but West Liberty is a lost cause when it comes to urban form, so it wouldn't be the worst outcome in the world.

2. A zoning change of a section of Susquehanna Street in Homewood from RIA-VH (Residential Single Unit Attached Very High Density) to UI (Urban Industrial). The strip is here, and contains mostly vacant lots along with four remaining houses.

3. Phase B of the Mill 19 project at Almono is up for review. It looks nice, but not dramatically different from Phase A.

4. St. Edmund's Academy is submitting their proposed renovation and expansion of their north wing. It's being done by Stada, and is certainly a step up from the existing structure, which is a blank brick wall.

Last edited by eschaton; Feb 16, 2018 at 3:25 AM.
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  #549  
Old Posted Feb 16, 2018, 4:21 PM
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Text of PBT article about the Bakery Square 3.0 presentation to ZBA.

It looks like the NIMBYs aren't going to defeat this proposal, given the big community groups are either in favor (ELDI) or neutral (Larimer Consensus Group).

Also glad to hear that the Bakery Square Busway stop is still "proposed." At least it hasn't been killed yet.
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  #550  
Old Posted Feb 16, 2018, 5:05 PM
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Oh, and the 3/8 ZBA agenda has landed. Items of note which aren't retreads:

1. 2 infill houses in South Side Slopes.

2. Conversion of this warehouse on Mintwood Street in Lower Lawrenceville into a 17-unit condo building.

3. Conversion of the former employee parking lot for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette downtown into commercial parking. I'm sure this is just temporary, but it's not a good thing regardless.
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  #551  
Old Posted Feb 18, 2018, 12:03 AM
BrianTH BrianTH is offline
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Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
2. A zoning change of a section of Susquehanna Street in Homewood from RIA-VH (Residential Single Unit Attached Very High Density) to UI (Urban Industrial). The strip is here, and contains mostly vacant lots along with four remaining houses.
That's a pretty critical block, since it is right next to Wilkinsburg Station on the Busway. Do we know anything about why this is being done now? Is there a project in the works for that whole block?
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  #552  
Old Posted Feb 18, 2018, 12:08 AM
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Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
It looks like the NIMBYs aren't going to defeat this proposal, given the big community groups are either in favor (ELDI) or neutral (Larimer Consensus Group).
Random sidenote, but there is a lone NIMBY making a traffic argument, and I think the traffic, if anything, is better around there. I think that is thanks to the CMU smart system, but I am completely unconcerned (plus it is not like a few more floors of an office building is a huge traffic generator anyway).
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  #553  
Old Posted Feb 18, 2018, 1:17 AM
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Originally Posted by BrianTH View Post
That's a pretty critical block, since it is right next to Wilkinsburg Station on the Busway. Do we know anything about why this is being done now? Is there a project in the works for that whole block?
It looks like most of that block was bought from the city nearly exactly a year ago by a company named 15 CCD Corporation. Most of the remainder of the block (and the area behind) is owned by a guy who runs a small hauling company. There's still one city-owned vacant home, and one which is owned by a third party (might be homeowner occupied, but doesn't take the homestead exemption).

15 CCD appears to be a holding company related to Bridgeway Capital, the owners of the 7800 Susquehanna property right next door. If they succeed in buying out the hauling company, and deal with the last two holdouts, they'll control quite a large chunk of land - and have pretty free reign to redevelop it as they see fit considering UI is arguably the most permissive medium-density zoned area.

Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianTH View Post
Random sidenote, but there is a lone NIMBY making a traffic argument, and I think the traffic, if anything, is better around there. I think that is thanks to the CMU smart system, but I am completely unconcerned (plus it is not like a few more floors of an office building is a huge traffic generator anyway).
My wife drives a lot more than me, and often complains about the traffic on Penn Avenue through that area. Between our daughter going to Linden K-5 and shopping at the East End Co-op, we do drive out that way pretty often. But we tend to shortcut on Hamilton through Larimer and Homewood.
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  #554  
Old Posted Feb 18, 2018, 11:12 AM
BrianTH BrianTH is offline
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Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
If they succeed in buying out the hauling company, and deal with the last two holdouts, they'll control quite a large chunk of land - and have pretty free reign to redevelop it as they see fit considering UI is arguably the most permissive medium-density zoned area.
I note the Bakery Square article suggested they thought there was even more demand than a 9-story office could handle, but 9 was the minimum they wanted. I wonder if this area next to Wilkinsburg Station, including the old warehouse they are already converting, could become another Bakery Square-type development, at least with respect to offices. In fact, I also think the Park and Ride lots would obviously be suitable for development, assuming the parking could be replaced with a structure or two.

Quote:
My wife drives a lot more than me, and often complains about the traffic on Penn Avenue through that area. Between our daughter going to Linden K-5 and shopping at the East End Co-op, we do drive out that way pretty often. But we tend to shortcut on Hamilton through Larimer and Homewood.
Yeah, we drive through there a lot, and the traffic on Penn has always been an issue, since long before Bakery Square. So we have our own tricks for bypassing Penn.

My point was that I don't feel like it got noticeably worse with the addition of the apartment buildings and office building in the former Reizenstein Middle School land. Indeed, I do think the CMU smart system made a difference, such that if anything, we now use those bypasses less than we did before.
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  #555  
Old Posted Feb 18, 2018, 11:58 AM
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So we're a St Edmunds family and pretty excited about the renovations. As some may know, the field house originally had a hockey rink inside, and it is bigger than it needs to be for modern uses (like basketball). The new spaces they are carving out, combined with the redesign of the adjacent portion of the school, should be much more useful (as the plans indicate, it is going to be a combination of art, music, and STEM stuff). And having a full lobby and elevator at the entrance on that side will also be very useful and improve accessibility greatly.

As the documents explain, the design is intended to smoothly tie together the part of the field house that will remain and the Darlington side of the school. I think the upshot is there will now be a much nicer look as you are approaching downtown Squirrel Hill along Forbes, because as previously noted the current blank brick wall is not that inviting:

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4380...7i13312!8i6656



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  #556  
Old Posted Feb 20, 2018, 1:50 PM
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  #557  
Old Posted Feb 20, 2018, 3:09 PM
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Anyone else aware that the 'District 15' office building in the strip broke ground??

Just read a PBT article about it- 105,000 square feet. I do remember the design to be very uninspiring but not sure if there have been any architectural updates
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  #558  
Old Posted Feb 20, 2018, 4:10 PM
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I know some of you had comments on the color a couple of weeks ago. That is briefly addressed in the article.

Quote:
A broad green space will point towards The Cut, connecting the Tepper Quad with the central part of the campus. The yellow brick exterior is distinctive, yet familiar.

“It reminds you of the Kittanning brick in the original (architect Henry) Hornbostel buildings,” says Routledge. “It’s connecting CMU to Oakland in a way it hasn’t been. It’s moving the campus physically towards Oakland.”
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  #559  
Old Posted Feb 20, 2018, 6:46 PM
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Healthy Ride bike share network seeing major expansion. See the map here:

https://healthyridepgh.com/expansion/
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  #560  
Old Posted Feb 20, 2018, 8:35 PM
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http://www.post-gazette.com/business...s/201802200035

I personally enjoy that the Post-Gazette wrote a whole article about a guy from Wheeling complaining on Facebook - with no evidence - that the airport renovations are going to either cost too much, or it’s going to increase taxes, or maybe both. (?)
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