Posted Jan 24, 2019, 1:56 PM
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Join Date: Dec 2013
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PBT has up an article about the new Walnut Capital building behind its paywall. I'm yoinking the text again via page source:
Quote:
Walnut Capital Partners is poised to again test the zoning limits for a new development, this one it’s calling an Innovation Research Tower proposed for an assemblage of properties along Fifth Avenue at the corner of Halket Street near the heart of Oakland.
The Shadyside-based development firm presented its plan for the new office building — proposed to total 12 stories and reach an 185 foot height that is more than 30 percent taller than the site’s 120-foot zoning limit — to a meeting hosted by Oakland Planning & Development in advance of a scheduled February hearing before the Pittsburgh Zoning Board of Adjustment.
It’s a development Walnut Capital is working to tee up now as the project is unlikely to be under construction for at least a year as the company continues with its current project a few blocks away redeveloping the Pittsburgh Athletic Association into a new office address, along with the ongoing construction of its second building at Bakery Square 2.0 on Penn Avenue in the East End.
Citing a 2017 Brookings Institution report on Oakland, Walnut Capital President Todd Reidbord told a gathering of Oakland residents and other neighborhood stakeholders their early vision for the site of what is now a collection of commercial properties modest in scale, including two it bought from Allegheny County
“We think one of the future growth potentials is for what everybody is calling the Oakland innovation district,” said Reidbord.
The new building, currently designed to total 285,000 square feet of rent-able space, including 6,000 or 7,000 square feet of first floor retail and 100 parking spaces on two levels, is expected to be a “great opportunity” for “corporations, research institutions and others that are looking to get closer to our great universities,” said Reidbord.
Working with a design by downtown-based Strada Architecture, LLC, Walnut Capital Partners is pursuing the project with new financial partner Lionstone Investments without an identified tenant for a proposal that company chairman Gregg Perelman said could accommodate a mix of different sized tenants.
According to the agenda for the Feb. 7 hearing before the Zoning Board of Adjustments, Walnut Capital is seeking one special exception and three variances, all relating to key concerns expressed by attendees at the meeting.
The special exception is to allow a building with a height up to 120 feet that fronts on Fifth Avenue, with a companion variance for up to 85 feet above that.
Walnut Capital is also seeking a variance for floor area ratio and to provide spaces for 100 cars in the project instead of the 347 spaces required, according to the zoning agenda.
The firm is no stranger to pushing the envelop on zoning height requirements in the city. Walnut Capital’s new building under construction at Bakery Square, for which Philips will take 200,000 square feet, will be about 127 feet tall and total more than 300,000 square feet after originally being limited to 85 feet and about 100,000 square feet less.
Walnut Capital is pursuing the project with the expectation of granting the first floor retail space to Oakland Planning & Development for a nominal fee to make use of it for local community business in a market in which first floor retail in new urban buildings has often been a challenge to lease out commercially.
The project could also include more expensive lab space for research, catering to research-oriented tenants with a strong desire to be within walking distance of the neighborhood’s universities and medical institutions.
While he wouldn’t divulge a cost estimate for the project, Perelman said he expects it will be a more expensive building than Walnut Capital’s new nine-story project underway at Bakery Square, which is expected to cost $40 million.
The Oakland meeting attendees expressed a host of basic concerns about the Walnut Capital plan. A major concern is always over the neighborhood’s chronic limits for parking. There was also concern about the overall scale of the development for a site that’s adjacent to the Skyvue Apartments, a recent development that reached a 120-foot height limit and is an enormous and looming presence over the neighboring stretch of Fifth and Forbes Avenues.
Reidbord argued the building will be terraced back from the street to help alleviate the height issue for a project slated to achieve LEED Gold status. He also expects the project’s bike parking, neighborhood’s bike lanes and strong public transportation resources, including an expected BRT station nearby, will result in less workers in the building driving to work.
Nick Lardas, an Oakland resident who lives a short walk from the site, observed the Skyvue project was only allowed to build up to 120 feet once it achieved various benchmarks for LEED, public transit accommodations and bike parking.
The added 65 feet struck him as a far push beyond a limit that’s already been stretched.
“Why should we allow zoning to be exceeded by that much?” he asked. “There’s other locations in Oakland where builders want to build buildings twice and three times what zoning allows. What good does zoning do the residents of the city, or more specifically, the residents of Oakland, if the city allows developers to go way beyond what zoning says they can do?”
Reidbord argued for a “give and take” with the city over the scale of he project, and noted how other cities such as Cambridge, Mass., have instituted parking maximums, putting limits on how parking developers can provide in new developments; building taller is a way to bring in new companies and help to build upon the city’s tax base, he added, noting that two of the properties will go back on the tax rolls after being long owned by the county in a time of changing lifestyles and commuting patterns.
“We don’t think height is a bad thing,” he said.
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Basically, NIMBYs are still being NIMBYs.
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