Quote:
Originally Posted by SkyPittsburgh
It really is a shame what happened to East Liberty and for that matter, the Northside as well during the Urban Renewal. I would really like to see some more attention paid to the Allegheny Center Mall mess, if East Liberty can come back, that place can too.
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A fix to the Allegheny Center mess would be welcome, as the property has so much potential. Plus, fixing it---making it more appealing and more of a destination---would further the development momentum on the whole Northside. I have always thought that AC plus the train tracks and 279 acted as a barrier to Northside development...or at least a psychological hurdle to its momentum.
I understand that the complex is controlled by multiple owners: one owns the mall, another some or all of the apartment buildings and a third owns the former IBM office building.
A small first step toward recovery would have been to reopen Ohio Street through the complex. A year or so ago, this was proposed by the city but shot down by the owner of the former IBM Building. The owner refused to waive an easement that would allow the street to be restored between its office building and the parking garage. The convenience and safety of not having vehicular traffic between the two structures was deemed more important than reopening the street. Shame.
The situation could eventually be a bit more promising w/r/t the mall, which is owned by a private, family-run real estate company based in LA. A few years back PHLF had discussions with the mall’s owner regarding an ambitious re-imagining of the mall. The process progressed far enough that a NY architectural firm was retained to bring ideas to the table then flesh out the concept and produce renderings and floor plans. It was a pretty ambitious plan---a complete revamp of the building: recladding the exteriors of both the mall and the parking structure; adding many more windows to the existing office space; adding many large, colorful LED-lit signs (a la Times Square) to the south-facing wall of the mall; and adding newly-constructed office space above both ends of the mall in the form of two new buildings (I recall eight to ten additional stories on both the western and eastern ends). The project, as conceived, re-opened to vehicular traffic all of Ohio Street and Federal Street north of Ohio. It also included reopening Federal Street south of Ohio as a broad pedestrian-only passage way, lined with retail and leading upward from South Commons to the open air plaza at Ohio Street. Not sure if the mall’s owner vetoed the idea of restoring Federal for vehicular traffic or if the architects found it too expensive to do, given all the structural issues of restoring a street through an existing parking garage. This pedestrian section of Federal was seen as---pardon the stretch---the Northside’s “Spanish Steps,” a public gathering spot lined on both sides by retail carved out of the parking structure, partially protected from the elements by the upper floors of the building (the south end) and partially open air (near Ohio). The plan also added more retail to open space on the plaza to eliminate its "dead" areas. Finally, the place would banish the name Allegheny Center and rebrand it as Allegheny Square.
The LA company was apparently initially excited by the proposal but eventually cooled, possibly due to its expense and complexity. But that decision seemed like a generational split within the firm as the primary decision maker, the firm’s president, is preparing to turn over the company to his sons, who were supposedly quite excited about the plan and its potential. Maybe this can be revisited at some point once management is assumed by the sons. At that point, the economics of the plan would have to be better given the continued improvement of the city's---and the neighborhood's---image.
I don't know a thing about the apartment buildings. Are they still well maintained and desirable to tenants? Fully-occupied? I had heard that one of them had structural issues and was nearly empty, which I tend not to believe. The NY architects had proposed that in any revamp of AC would add retail to the ground floor of the apartment buildings along the restored Federal north of Ohio.
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