Oh FFS, really?
Quote:
Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto said the city soon needs to decide to demolish its 538-space 9th and Penn parking garage and could offer to sell the property to the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust in the wake of a development deal between the Trust, the Pittsburgh Parking Authority and Boston-based The Davis Cos. falling apart late last week.
Last July, the Pittsburgh Parking Authority chose Davis in a competitive RFP process originally expected to include 185 condos along with retail space that also came to include plans for a luxury hotel.
Peduto said the project, which was estimated to cost in the range of $180 million to build, fell apart when the hotel opted to not go forward, leaving the city and its parking authority with a big decision on a well-used public garage that is in major need of physical repairs.
“We have basically a runway of six months before we have to make the decision on the garage,” he said. “We’ll probably have to tear it down during in the next six months. The Cultural Trust can buy the garage, if they choose.”
The original plan called for the Pittsburgh Parking Authority and the Trust to hash out a plan with a private developer to replace the public garage in the context of a new development that could be built on the garage site and extend onto neighboring property owned by the Trust as well.
The plan reached with Davis, which called for replacing a 583-space garage with a larger project of more than 900 spaces, originally called for a four-phase development for much of a city block bordered by Penn Avenue, Fort Duquesne Boulevard, 8th Street and 9th Street.
Peduto said the requirement by the Trust to build the project in one phase resulted in Davis seeking public subsidies for the project, which he emphasized was never part of his administration’s expectations.
“We were very clear in this process that public subsidy was to be minimized or not (used) at all,” Peduto said. “Downtown is a very hot market and shouldn’t require subsidy to create market-rate housing or market-rate office.”
It remains to be determined if the Pittsburgh Parking Authority will offer to sell the parking garage property to other possible bidders through a public process and if the sale and potential redevelopment of the garage property will require maintaining a parking component as it did in the deal with Davis.
Peduto said he expects to discuss the property with the Trust in the near future, emphasizing an ongoing requirement that no public subsidies be involved in a new development plan.
“We’ll be reaching out to the Cultural Trust to make sure that they understand what options are available to them to make this public property part of their private development,” he said.
The deteriorating condition of the garage will require a decision by the end of the year, Peduto emphasized.
"At this point, we don't have a lot of time with the garage," he said. "The garage needs a lot of repairs just to stay operational."
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So, this article reminds us that The Davis Companies was selected as the developer not by the Cultural Trust, but by the Pittsburgh Parking Authority. The Cultural Trust, even though it had more of the overall property, basically came along for the ride. They then began adding all kinds of strictures to the deal which were not originally part of the agreement - such as requiring the whole development be built out in one phase - which torpedoed the deal.
Now, since the city/Parking Authority is left with a garage which will need to be demolished in six months, they're looking at the possibility of selling to the Cultural Trust - potentially not even having the sale go out for public-bid to private developers?
WTF?!?!