PITTSBURGH | Development Rundown II

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Minivan Werner

I'd prefer they refurb the existing structure and build the office tower on a vacant lot or in place of a less historically significant and attractive building.

Me too, although I wouldn't mind if they wanted to use just the shell of the Frank & Seder building, ala Hearst Tower in NYC:



In fact, I was just thinking to myself that the new parking plan would seem to be tailor-made for such an approach, because you wouldn't really need to worry about lining up windows and such.

Of course that would cost some extra money, so there is about 0% chance of that happening unless the City politicians start enforcing the City's Historic Preservation Code, rather than waiving it every time a significant local player asks pretty-please.

[GeneW]

Originally Posted by Private Dick

The stigma is that... the bus sucks

I have no problems riding the bus, I just wish that it didn't take so long to get to work using one. My drive from the North Side to East Liberty/Larimer takes 30 minutes in the morning but if I take the bus, it takes close to an hour.

[Evergrey]

http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburg...enceville.html

Former charter school up for sale in Lawrenceville

Mar 20, 2015, 12:56pm EDT



The Career Connections Charter School at the corner of 44th and Butler streets in Lawrenceville has hit the market for sale as a redevelopment play.

Jim Kelly, a principal with the downtown office of Avison Young, recently began a full marketing campaign for the 40,000-square-foot property after an attempt to quietly shop it for reuse as a school that started late last year came up empty.

With a new sign up on the four-level redbrick building in the heart of the Lawrenceville business district, Kelly said he’s received “a ton” of interest from would-be buyers.

So far, Kelly said, “we probably had three dozen tours” of potential buyers.

The property is listed for $800,000.

“Most of the interest is in converting it into an apartment building,” he said.

...

[TBone7281]

Originally Posted by Private Dick

The stigma is that... the bus sucks

Originally Posted by BrianTH

I think it is less about stigma than about affordable options given your household income. If you can comfortably afford to live in a nice place in a nice neighborhood with an easy drive to Downtown (even in rush hour), comfortably afford a parking lease, comfortably afford a nice car, maybe comfortably afford to pay for private schools if the local schools are not so good, and so on, then driving to Downtown is a luxury you might be able to afford as subject to all those conditions, it can in fact be pretty convenient to drive.

When you don't have that kind of money, you start looking at tradeoffs. The biggest barrier to people using transit at that point is not stigma, in my view, it is the difficulty of affording a nice place in a nice neighborhoods that also has really good transit service to Downtown. This can become even more difficult when you add in the school issue--only so many places with really good transit service to Downtown also have good feeder schools.

None of this can really be solved as long as we keep underinvesting in high-quality transit service--if potential demand for such transit service is outrunning supply, the nice places in nice neighborhoods with good transit service will get bid up by those who can afford to pay more, and everyone else will be left with some difficult decisions to make.

Originally Posted by BrianTH

For the record, I love my bus. It picks up a half block from my house as it goes through our neighborhood, then hops on the East Busway for an express trip Downtown. It is way less expensive than paying for parking, and I can spend the ride sleeping, reading, texting, or just looking at developments in progress out the window. We've gotten to know a lot of the other regular riders, and even host parties with them.

Reliability has been the only real issue, but the new bus tracking has helped a lot with that. I could also fill the gaps more aggressively with something like Uber, but usually I don't really mind hanging out waiting for the next bus, and if I miss the last bus in the morning or evening I can always use the P1 instead (the nearest P1 station is less than a 10-min walk from our house).

But all that is possible because we can afford a place with transit service like that.

Originally Posted by GeneW

I have no problems riding the bus, I just wish that it didn't take so long to get to work using one. My drive from the North Side to East Liberty/Larimer takes 30 minutes in the morning but if I take the bus, it takes close to an hour.

A lot of valid points here, but I tend to agree with The Dick. I don't speak from personal experience, as I have never once considered doing so. I enjoy driving and I like to be in control. Also, I feel like my time is too valuable to waste in public transportation, even if that time would be used doing something totally useless. Which brings me to my opinion of Pittsburgh bus service and public transit in general. My wife used the park and ride system from the eastern 'burbs (Monroeville/Plum) for a while, but it was too unbearable for her. Stank ass people, crappy service, buses constantly breaking down/catching on fire. Eventually she decided it just wasn't worth the hassle to save a couple bucks. She currently works for Highmark and tried a different approach to save a couple bucks - park on the north shore and take the T over for free. Again, it lasted a little while and she ended up basically saying "this is stupid, I'm wasting time and effort" and decided it was worth the extra money to park downtown.

If you don't have a vehicle then circumstances are obviously different... you make do with what you have available. From our perspective though, those options are pretty terrible. Now mind you, we live outside the city so that is a choice we have made. We can see cows outside our back windows and a 3 car garage yet I can still get to work in the Strip in 20-30 minutes.

It's also very dependent on where you are living. I'm sure that public transit is a lot more desirable the closer you live to downtown. The ride is shorter and parking is more expensive. But for a lot of people that work downtown who come from outside the city itself it's just not a very appealing option.

[BrianTH]

Isn't that school actually at the corner of 45th and Butler?

But whatevs, it is a nice building in a great location, and apartments do seem like a natural fit.

I was also interested by this:

Kelly is marketing the school as well as the offices of the Boys & Girls Club on Butler Street in the 10th ward, three buildings that function with connected interiors that total more than 8,000 square feet.

That is maybe a less desirable opportunity (see here), but I would be interested to see what someone would make of it these days.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by TBone7281

A lot of valid points here, but I tend to agree with The Dick. I don't speak from personal experience, as I have never once considered doing so.

Ultimately I think the goal here is just to efficiently meet potential demand of all sorts, price it equitably, then let people make their own lifestyle choices based on their means and priorities.

One problem, however, is that in most U.S. cities, we've invested disproportionately in cars versus transit. Among the many indicators of that fact is that many studies have found positive correlations between property prices/rents and high-quality transit service in otherwise similar neighborhoods, which indicates we are stuck in the sort of bidding-up cycle I mentioned.

Interestingly, in my experience most Americans take this as a given--of course people pay more to be in neighborhoods with a good train route, busway, etc., why wouldn't they? But we don't in fact typically see the same sort of effect with car infrastructure in urbanized areas. That is indicative of the fact that high quality car infrastructure is taken as a given, whereas high quality transit service is viewed as optional, and increasingly as a luxury.

Another problem is that like a bunch of commie Soviets, we tend to insist on giving away roads for free, rather than charging some fee for use. That's a reasonable policy until you start hitting congestion conditions, at which point it becomes pretty dumb (you lose capacity, and also cause all sorts of other avoidable ills, by refusing to price so as to avoid congestion).

So we don't live in a world where we are efficiently investing in and pricing transportation, and in a world where we did, we would probably need less Downtown parking. But Downtown Pittsburgh, and indeed the City of Pittsburgh as a whole, can't fix all that by itself. It can just do its part to even things up a bit, but then has to accept the reality that lots of people for at least a while longer are going to need Downtown parking.

And given that reality--better some levels in a multi-use highrise than most of the alternatives.

[daviderik]

The modern state of Public transportation in pgh seems to degrade year after year. This basic infrastructure is crucial if the city wants to attract more people and keep road traffic in check once they get here. All successful metros have reliable public transit. I found a video on YouTube recently that made me sad. It's from July of 1986. Street cars riding the streets of downtown. It looks so pretty. Sort of unreal. People hoping on and off like it's a trolley car in San Fran. One after the other. Remnants of a time when Pittsburgh was a hub city. We have such a small Downtown. So walkable. Did we really have to get rid of the street cars and make them go underground? Why, so we can compare ourselves to cities like New York? We have 3 stops. I could see if it went out to Oakland. And maybe that's the goal. But I just don't see that happening. Where would the Billion dollars come from to do that? PAT is still cutting service stops. The Trolley used to go everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Now it goes out to the south hills on a self-contained track line. (Only Beachview it's still on a street.) And people get into there cars and drive to a park and ride lot. HUH? Progress or regress? I look at this video and think damn. Downtown has become such a tourist attraction in recent years. People would go crazy of this little trolley cars riding past modern towers of steel and glass. I know Pgh isn't the only city to do this. But the transition is magnified by the total lack luster product we got in return. Bad Trade.
https://youtu.be/X7QPXCUqJrc?t=26m23s

[wpipkins2]

Originally Posted by daviderik

The modern state of Public transportation in pgh seems to degrade year after year. This basic infrastructure is crucial if the city wants to attract more people and keep road traffic in check once they get here. All successful metros have reliable public transit. I found a video on YouTube recently that made me sad. It's from July of 1986. Street cars riding the streets of downtown. It looks so pretty. Sort of unreal. People hoping on and off like it's a trolley car in San Fran. One after the other. Remnants of a time when Pittsburgh was a hub city. We have such a small Downtown. So walkable. Did we really have to get rid of the street cars and make them go underground? Why, so we can compare ourselves to cities like New York? We have 3 stops. I could see if it went out to Oakland. And maybe that's the goal. But I just don't see that happening. Where would the Billion dollars come from to do that? PAT is still cutting service stops. The Trolley used to go everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Now it goes out to the south hills on a self-contained track line. (Only Beachview it's still on a street.) And people get into there cars and drive to a park and ride lot. HUH? Progress or regress? I look at this video and think damn. Downtown has become such a tourist attraction in recent years. People would go crazy of this little trolley cars riding past modern towers of steel and glass. I know Pgh isn't the only city to do this. But the transition is magnified by the total lack luster product we got in return. Bad Trade.
https://youtu.be/X7QPXCUqJrc?t=26m23s

The trolley cars were long extinct by 1986. The subway opened in 1985 - 1986 i believe. I do not have memory of the street cars on downtown streets. The video may have been from 1976?

[daviderik]

Originally Posted by wpipkins2

The trolley cars were long extinct by 1986. The subway opened in 1985 - 1986 i believe. I do not have memory of the street cars on downtown streets. The video may have been from 1976?

It was actually 1985 not 86. I apologize. The man that posted the video is a member from the PA trolley museum. If you watch the entire video You can tell by the cars it's from 80's not 70's.

[DKNewYork]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Me too, although I wouldn't mind if they wanted to use just the shell of the Frank & Seder building, ala Hearst Tower in NYC:



In fact, I was just thinking to myself that the new parking plan would seem to be tailor-made for such an approach, because you wouldn't really need to worry about lining up windows and such.

Of course that would cost some extra money, so there is about 0% chance of that happening unless the City politicians start enforcing the City's Historic Preservation Code, rather than waiving it every time a significant local player asks pretty-please.

I had the same thought this morning when I read that the parking floors would be above ground. Build them behind the F&S façade and, if the windows do not line up, so be it.

Anyone here know the downtown commercial real estate market? How much space will be left vacant as the new PNC and USS buildings become occupied? And how quickly will that space be reabsorbed? Does all that about-to-be-vacant space prevent Oxford from ever finding an anchor tenant? They have been looking for two plus years.

[Urbana]

Originally Posted by DKNewYork

Does all that about-to-be-vacant space prevent Oxford from ever finding an anchor tenant? They have been looking for two plus years.

I am by no means an authority, but I would be really surprised if they increased the size of the proposed building if they didn't have someone very specific in mind.

[AaronPGH]

Originally Posted by Urbana

I am by no means an authority, but I would be really surprised if they increased the size of the proposed building if they didn't have someone very specific in mind.

That would makes sense. Although a tiny part of me wonders if a lot of this is just smoke and mirrors to grab more headlines about their project.

[BrianTH]

Yeah, whichever "anchor tenants" these Downtown office projects on hold have been fishing for, they haven't been biting.

[SlurmsMcKenzie]

Originally Posted by DKNewYork

I had the same thought this morning when I read that the parking floors would be above ground. Build them behind the F&S façade and, if the windows do not line up, so be it.

Anyone here know the downtown commercial real estate market? How much space will be left vacant as the new PNC and USS buildings become occupied? And how quickly will that space be reabsorbed? Does all that about-to-be-vacant space prevent Oxford from ever finding an anchor tenant? They have been looking for two plus years.

I suspect UPMC already has their mitts on most if not all of the empty floors in USX. UPMC is woefully short on space and moving non-clinical operations (especially IT) there would consolidate resources and free up space at other locations (Oakland, Children's, Magee, etc...).

[Austinlee]

Originally Posted by Evergrey

It's going to be another The Gardens or Millcraft's Saks redevelopment...

Sadly... it seems like all we get Downtown in terms of new builds (other than PNC) is a tall parking garage topped with a small amount of condos and/or office space.

The entire Smithfield corridor is turning into a giant parking garage.

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Complete Streets doesn't mean no provision for cars at all. It means achieving a balance which accommodates all modes.

If there is a constant percentage-share by mode (or even a shift of mode share away from cars that is sufficiently gradual), but also a growing number of employees, residents, and visitors Downtown, then Downtown is going to need more of everything--more provision for walking, biking, transit, AND cars.

Given that background, I don't have an inherent problem with Downtown developers incorporating some parking levels in significant new mixed-use projects, assuming the design (particularly street-level) is OK, and there is not much (if any) of a public subsidy involved. As previously noted, I do have a concern about self-driving cars causing a more abrupt shift in mode shares at some future point, but even then there are plenty of standalone garages that could be torn down first before you would have to start going after these parking levels incorporated into mixed-used buildings.

Cars aren't going anywhere. They are personal transport units that give people freedom and autonomy to go where they please.
The biggest problems with cars are about to be fixed: Fossil fuel burning will give way to electric cars that recharge with free rooftop solar power overnight. Inefficient roads and traffic patterns will give way to safer and more efficient driverless cars. But the vehicles will remain.

Any good city should have an "all of the above" strategy to accommodate all citizens. Even if we get huge growth in bicycle commuters (which is happening) and an eventual increase in public transit we will still need robust options for car parking.

We are also going through a huge national trend of suburban raised young adults moving to the city that rank parking high on their list of criteria in their home search.

[Austinlee]

Originally Posted by Private Dick

Bryant St. mixed-use development in Highland Park on Wednesday.






6 townhouses with what looks to be about 4000 sq ft of ground floor retail. Bryant St. has potential, but it's a clumsy mix of structures -- many of them awful. This project will help. Strange that it hasn't been more of a solid, successful business district over the years, considering that the neighborhood has always had a solid middle to upper-middle class of residents.

I love love love this development. IMO, this is the architectural diversity we need more of in Pittsburgh.

[Austinlee]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

For the record, I love my bus. It picks up a half block from my house as it goes through our neighborhood, then hops on the East Busway for an express trip Downtown. It is way less expensive than paying for parking, and I can spend the ride sleeping, reading, texting, or just looking at developments in progress out the window. We've gotten to know a lot of the other regular riders, and even host parties with them.

Reliability has been the only real issue, but the new bus tracking has helped a lot with that. I could also fill the gaps more aggressively with something like Uber, but usually I don't really mind hanging out waiting for the next bus, and if I miss the last bus in the morning or evening I can always use the P1 instead (the nearest P1 station is less than a 10-min walk from our house).

But all that is possible because we can afford a place with transit service like that.

Do you have a link for that bus tracker?

[Austinlee]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Ultimately I think the goal here is just to efficiently meet potential demand of all sorts, price it equitably, then let people make their own lifestyle choices based on their means and priorities.

One problem, however, is that in most U.S. cities, we've invested disproportionately in cars versus transit. Among the many indicators of that fact is that many studies have found positive correlations between property prices/rents and high-quality transit service in otherwise similar neighborhoods, which indicates we are stuck in the sort of bidding-up cycle I mentioned.

Interestingly, in my experience most Americans take this as a given--of course people pay more to be in neighborhoods with a good train route, busway, etc., why wouldn't they? But we don't in fact typically see the same sort of effect with car infrastructure in urbanized areas. That is indicative of the fact that high quality car infrastructure is taken as a given, whereas high quality transit service is viewed as optional, and increasingly as a luxury.

Another problem is that like a bunch of commie Soviets, we tend to insist on giving away roads for free, rather than charging some fee for use. That's a reasonable policy until you start hitting congestion conditions, at which point it becomes pretty dumb (you lose capacity, and also cause all sorts of other avoidable ills, by refusing to price so as to avoid congestion).

So we don't live in a world where we are efficiently investing in and pricing transportation, and in a world where we did, we would probably need less Downtown parking. But Downtown Pittsburgh, and indeed the City of Pittsburgh as a whole, can't fix all that by itself. It can just do its part to even things up a bit, but then has to accept the reality that lots of people for at least a while longer are going to need Downtown parking.

And given that reality--better some levels in a multi-use highrise than most of the alternatives.

The US highway system is effectively subsidized at the highest levels of government. US home buyers are making logical choices to live on larger lots in suburban areas and commuting to job centers like downtown and Oakland because the costs are worth it. If there were much higher gas costs and congestion charges people would start looking at houses closer and closer to the city.
And I agree it's a shame that public transit is considered optional. So backwards.

[AaronPGH]

Anyone have a Bizjournals login? =\

Architecture firm AE7 ready to pursue projects in Pittsburgh
http://m.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/...ana=lnk&r=full

[Austinlee]

Originally Posted by AaronPGH

Anyone have a Bizjournals login? =\

Architecture firm AE7 ready to pursue projects in Pittsburgh
http://m.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/...ana=lnk&r=full

Wow. Bring some of that ambition to Pittsburgh.