New planning commission presentation. Five items:
1. Historic nomination of the "tufa bridges" in Schenley Park. As always with these nominations, there's far more detail here than you could possibly believe (137 pages worth). One interesting fact is since tufa is a calcareous rock formed through groundwater flow, and the bridges have stood for a century, some of the tufa cladding has effectively "melted" along drip lines, with stalagmites beginning to form.
2. AAA seeks to replace the windows on
the Centre Avenue side of its building at 5900 Baum Boulevard in East Liberty. Apparently a very minor, like-for-like replacement - the back set of windows on that facade was already replaced in 2015 and you can barely tell.
3. Allegheny General Hospital is submitting an institutional master plan. It's involves a pretty minor 10-year construction plan. The biggest element is
a new cancer center in a gap in its current front facade. In the longer term, they plan on redeveloping their garage on Sandusky Street.
4. The formal plan for Phase II at 350 Oliver has arrived. Nine floors of condo space, plus a terrace floor. 86 units in all. We've seen a lot of this before, so I won't comment on it in detail, except to say I'm glad it looks like it's getting built, although with condo buildings, it seems there is often a delay until a certain number are sold.
5. The "Phase II" for Fort Willow Development in Lawrenceville has landed, and as was rumored, the sister project to Foundry @ 41st is an office building. The first phase involves the construction of a new, four-story office building. The second phase will restore
a small machine shop which was retained when the rest of the old mill building was demolished. This was done my by wife's firm (albeit not by her...I think) so I'm probably not entirely impartial, but it looks a cut above the average office block we've been seeing in the area.