PITTSBURGH | Development Rundown II

[popstar]

http://www.post-gazette.com/business/201...aragon-Food-service/stories/201311140297

[George Woods]

I wonder if they'd be moving their entire operation. They have a really big building in Lower Lawrenceville now. It would be cool to see more residential below Butler in the Sixth Ward (and the Tenth, for that matter).

[Evergrey]

http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2013/11/1...esidents-not-happy-with-re-urbanization/

Some Older Lawrenceville Residents Not Happy With Re-Urbanization

November 14, 2013 9:52 PM



PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — If you go to Espresso A Mano in Lawrenceville you’ll probably have to wait to plop down your laptop and get a cappuccino.

Matt Gebis took a risk four and half years ago when he opened the business, and now it seems to have paid off.

“When it first opened, I could sit here on the corner for three hours and not see a soul, but it’s not like that anymore,” said Gebis.

Welcome to the new Lawrenceville – home to coffeehouses, hip new restaurants, boutiques, art galleries and constant construction. There’s a new vibrancy in the air, but not everyone’s happy about it.

At the senior center, the ladies say the Lawrenceville they’ve known all of their lives is disappearing.

Some call it gentrification. But maybe it’s more PC to say “re-urbanization,” or people returning to city neighborhoods.

On the upside, stores that sat vacant for decades are being filled with new businesses. On the downside, older residents say they can’t afford to shop or eat in these places.

“We used to have an In & Out down here with a .99 cent breakfast,” said Mary Ellen Purnell, a Lawrenceville resident.

...

[joenicholas9]

A bit more on Pittsburgh's housing market (aside from the Interest.com mention):

Pittsburgh area ranks high for affordable housing

Home sales in the Pittsburgh region were up 10.6 percent this year through September, according to data collected by RealStats, a South Side-based real estate information service. A total of 21,547 homes changed hands during that time frame compared to 19,475 homes sold during the first nine months of 2012.

Hopefully rising interest rates won't screw that up that trend too much.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by joenicholas9

A bit more on Pittsburgh's housing market

Sidenote: that article begins with the line, "Although real estate prices are on the rise and wage growth is weak . . . ."

The notion that wage growth is weak in the Pittsburgh area is one of those things "everyone knows" (note there is no actual backup in the article), and yet turns out to be false in recent years.

Certainly wage growth in Pittsburgh WAS relatively weak in recent decades, particularly from 1980 to 1989, and then again from 1996 to 2005. Since 2005, however, wages have been consistently increasing faster in the Pittsburgh MSA than the U.S. metropolitan average. Despite that trend, we're not all the way back to the metro average yet, which is one of the reasons why our median household income is still a bit below the national median household income--but we're catching up. And if you look at per capita personal income instead of median household income, where there is again the same relative upward trend since 2005, we actually passed the US metro per capita income average in 2008. In fact we are now higher relative to the US metro average in terms of per capita income than we were back at the height of our relative wages in the late 1970s (the difference between looking at average wages, median household income, and per capita income is largely a matter of non-wage transfers, like Social Security, Medicare, veterans' benefits, and private pensions/health benefits).

Anyway, the bottom line is it is no longer true that wage growth and income trends are relatively low here. That is one of the reasons why new higher-rent apartments never seem to have any trouble finding tenants. And yet overall, housing remains affordable because the modest overall trends in housing prices are actually being supported by underlying increases in wages and income.

[BrianTH]

CMU's plans to build a new quad in the Morewood lot just got a big boost from David Tepper in the form of a $67 million gift (one third of the overall $201 million planned for the first phase of the project):

http://www.post-gazette.com/news/educati...s-school-67-million/stories/201311140306

I believe this is the part of CMU's Master Plan they are referring to (although I don't know exactly how much they plan to build in the initial phase they described, and I don't think it includes the building marked 18):



As always, I have some reservations about how much of our urban fabric is being incorporated into large institutional campuses. But the bottom line is that pretty much anything beats a surface parking lot, and at least CMU's plans to expand across Forbes and Neville are likely to create a very impressive new gateway into Oakland from points east.

[BrianTH]

$0.99? That's breakfast for less than 20 bees!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRUj8dma0oo

[BrianTH]

Looks like the Ace Hotel project in East Liberty has finalized its financing and is getting started:

http://www.post-gazette.com/business/201...hts-on-East-Liberty/stories/201311150089

With construction also having started on the Hotel Indigo, this is all very exciting (although it is hard not to be excited about East Liberty in general).

[Steel City Scotty]

Originally Posted by Evergrey

http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2013/11/1...esidents-not-happy-with-re-urbanization/

Haha, this one comment below the article sounds like something Photolith would say...

"What an absolute joke of an article! Who seriously cares what these old people who will be dead or in a home in 10 years at most think? If it wasn't for all of these new and younger people, Lawrenceville would probably be a ghetto by now."

[Topher51]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Courtesy of Chris Briem, the chart in this article shows that there has been a net-inflow of "Millenials" into the Pittsburgh MSA during the post-recession period:

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/11/1...gton-after-abandoning-city-in-recession/

Notably the overall movement of Millenials nationwide is still low by historic standards for people of their age range, which is likely because the recession and slow recovery has depressed their ability to move. However, the fact that Pittsburgh is now ranking relatively well on a list like this (#20 among the top 51 metros for the post-recession period) with a positive trend suggests that it stands to benefit even more as the recovery continues and Millenial mobility (likely) increases. Given the observable trends in housing preference among Millenials, all this specifically bodes well for more urban, walkable, and transit-friendly locations, which in turn means we should likely expect new multi-unit developments in such areas to continue to find tenants with relative ease.

Edit: By the way, Washington and Baltimore, particularly Washington, are also net gainers in the post-recession period. However, otherwise the big Northeast Coast metros (Boston, Providence, Hartford, NYC, and Philly) are all net losers. Some of that is business as usual--in particular cities which are big immigration gateways often see regular domestic outmigration--but still, I think it remains true that high housing prices in the Northeast Coast, particularly in otherwise desirable urban core locations, create opportunities for much more affordable metros like Pittsburgh to peel off younger adults, in much the same way that higher housing prices in California helped spark migration to the Pacific Northwest, Colorado, and so on.

But on a completely random aside--housing remains relatively cheap in the Texas cities too, but their attraction for millenials appears to be dropping rapidly. They do not necessarily need to panic yet--they still rank relatively high--but Texas economic growth is extremely dependent on high rates of in-migration, so they should probably be looking carefully at this trend and trying to figure out how to halt or reverse it. Same deal with the North Carolina metros, Atlanta, and other metros in the Deep South--in fact Atlanta dropped so low it is barely above Pittsburgh in the post-recession period. If continued that would be a terrible state of affairs for Atlanta.

I always thought I was in Gen-Y, but I guess I am actually one the millenials they are talking about. I moved from DC to Pittsburgh in 2012, so I can tell you first hand that the recession basically didn't affect DC that much. I got laid off from a Philly HQed firm in 2009, but found a job within a week at a frim based in DC that did a lot of federal work. Things slowed down after I left to the sequester and similar cuts, but compared to the majority of the country, the recession was a just a speed bump and the job market has remained strong. That is the biggest factor in all this: where the jobs are.

[BrianTH]

I think Millenials and Generation Y are largely synonymous:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials

I guess Generation Y was a little too derivative.

[DKNewYork]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

CMU's plans to build a new quad in the Morewood lot just got a big boost from David Tepper in the form of a $67 million gift (one third of the overall $201 million planned for the first phase of the project):

http://www.post-gazette.com/news/educati...s-school-67-million/stories/201311140306

I believe this is the part of CMU's Master Plan they are referring to (although I don't know exactly how much they plan to build in the initial phase they described, and I don't think it includes the building marked 18):



As always, I have some reservations about how much of our urban fabric is being incorporated into large institutional campuses. But the bottom line is that pretty much anything beats a surface parking lot, and at least CMU's plans to expand across Forbes and Neville are likely to create a very impressive new gateway into Oakland from points east.

Brian, the CMU web site has a site rendering that differs a bit from the one you posted, which I believe is from the school's Master Plan. The plan on the web site shows the Quad more open to Forbes--building 21 is gone and the other buildings are reconfigured a bit. The web site also has a promotional video which shows some images of the completed quad as well as exterior/interior renderings. These images are prominently (and wisely) labeled "artist's concept/not final decision", a notation that Point Park should have considered.

I agree with your take. Better developed land rather than surface parking and Forbes will, if this is done right, look better once the university develops its land north of Forbes. Since the mid 1980s, I have for the most part liked what the university has built (my biggest gripe is with Roberts Hall---a dull building but mostly that it's one story too tall).

The reader comments posted about the Tepper story in the Post-Gazette online are kinda eye-opening. One guy wrote in to complain about the architecture of the Gates Center and two others wondered where everyone would park. That's it. No other comments. Amazing.

[Evergrey]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

$0.99? That's breakfast for less than 20 bees!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRUj8dma0oo

Apparently IKEA serves a 99cent breakfast on Mondays? Perhaps the bitter old Lawrencevillians should relocate to Robinson Towne Centre... there's less purple haired people out there as well.

[Urbana]

CMU's video overview of the project, some interesting renderings included.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCzCag6JSO8

[BrianTH]

From the CMU website:





I'm thinking they left themselves room to still do 21 if they want to, but clearly they are starting just with 19 and 20.

[BrianTH]

By the way, I am now feeling I was a little mean-spirited in mocking the $0.99 lady, and I do think there are real issues involving gentrification (not that we should stop development as a way of preventing it, but we should take active steps to help people who might otherwise be ill-served by it). It just irks me sometimes that things which really have nothing in particular to do with gentrification (like general inflation, the decline of non-chain retail, and so on) get caught up in that conversation. But that was really the reporter's fault.

[popstar]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

By the way, I am now feeling I was a little mean-spirited in mocking the $0.99 lady, and I do think there are real issues involving gentrification (not that we should stop development as a way of preventing it, but we should take active steps to help people who might otherwise be ill-served by it). It just irks me sometimes that things which really have nothing in particular to do with gentrification (like general inflation, the decline of non-chain retail, and so on) get caught up in that conversation. But that was really the reporter's fault.

I understand the worries about gentrification...though I just read an article recently stating that some research showed the opposite - that gentrification actually has an overall positive impact on local residents. I can't remember the source of the study, though. I don't want to get development discussions off track, though.

By the way, I noticed that a Thai restaurant and sandwich shop are moving into the ground floor of the new housing development in East Liberty.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by popstar

though I just read an article recently stating that some research showed the opposite - that gentrification actually has an overall positive impact on local residents.

Yep, although I believe it was specifically home owners that benefited (which makes sense).

Ironically, no one ever talks to the real victims of urban gentrification, which are the people who never had a chance to live in these neighborhoods to begin with, and are now being forced to live out in the cheapest, blandest suburbs and exurbs (with long commutes, bored kids, etc.) because there aren't enough walkable urban neighborhoods with good transit access to go around.

Which in turn is at least loosely a development issue, because there are not enough of those neighborhoods to go around because for decades public policies with respect to transportation, land use, and development in general have been stacked against them. Fortunately we have not really gotten to that point yet in Pittsburgh--if you look outside of the hottest neighborhoods like Lawrenceville, there are still plenty of affordable neighborhoods in Pittsburgh and the inner suburbs--but we'll get there in 20-30 years, or maybe less, if we don't get on a better policy track than our predecessors down this path.

Anyway, rant over. I just wish more reporters would write that sort of story about gentrification, but I guess it would come across as too political--it is safer to just write up someone complaining about the price of breakfast these days.

[dfiler]

I like what is shown here! As a bike rider, I used to cut through from the back side of the school to where bakery square is now. This connected the east side of shadyside with other neighborhoods without needing to venture out onto busy roads where people routinely drive 20mph over the speed limit. Avoiding dangerous roads was nice but it always seemed only pseudo-legal as we passed through the fence onto a maintenance road at the back of the property. Also, the pavement was in bad shape and not really intended for the route we were taking.

This development looks like it is planned with exactly that in mind. It will make bicycle commuting and a bicycle oriented lifestyle possible for another small portion of the population. Little connections like this here and there, and all of a sudden we will find ourselves with a viable bike transit system. Momentum for that seems to be building!

Originally Posted by Found5dollar

Bakery Square 2.0 has revamped their website. Tons of new renders and plans of Living1, the building currently underconstruction.

http://bakery-square.com/introducing-bakery-2-0-2/

some of the better ones:

[Evergrey]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

I do think there are real issues involving gentrification.

http://www.post-gazette.com/business/201...cation-s-reputation/stories/201311130059

Research disproves gentrification's reputation

November 12, 2013 11:55 PM


By Tim Grant / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Gentrification is often thought to harm a neighborhood's original residents who fear being economically evicted because they can't afford to live in a made-over community, but a researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland says data from 2001 to 2007 suggest the opposite is true.

Compared to residents in low-priced neighborhoods that were not gentrified, economist Daniel Hartley found those in neighborhoods that had been transformed to include upscale shops and homes saw an average 8 point increase in their credit scores and a decrease in credit delinquency rates. The share of those with an account 90 or more days past due fell by 2 percentage points in gentrifying neighborhoods relative to other low-priced neighborhoods.

"Homeowners in gentrified neighborhoods receive a more direct benefit of their home values increasing, which increases their overall net worth," Mr. Hartley said. "There are spillover benefits experienced by renters, too. Better schools and a decrease in crime would be side benefits for renters."

...