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Originally Posted by BrianTH
Why? I am not talking about anything notably different from The Gardens, or the planned Oxford Tower. I don't think the pace of development has to pick up by a multiple of five times to make that realistic on a medium time frame.
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The current pace of downtown development appears to be 1-2 market-rate projects concurrently. If the current schedule keeps, the new downtown Holiday Inn will be done next year, and the Oxford Tower in 2018.
It's also worth noting that both the major projects under construction now had major elements helping them along. The new PNC building had a baked-in anchor tenant of course. And although The Gardens will have office space, the hotel was probably needed to be integral to the project to secure the financing. Oxford's own down-scaling (along with pushing back the project by two years) just shows there isn't a market for large-scale speculative office space in Downtown yet. Rents just ain't high enough.
I'm also being generous calling the downtown Holiday Inn a major project, because the planned project is pretty small (eight stories, 99 rooms - way below some of the hotel conversions Downtown). But AFAIK that's the only new building likely to go up in Downtown (discounting the ones already under construction, and PPT) within the next two years.
Of course it's a good thing that we have continued new construction in downtown. But if the most we can do is have one building built per year - maybe two in a good year, then we won't be facing a major shortage of developable parcels in the next decade - possibly even the next two decades. This is slow and steady growth, not a renaissance.
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Originally Posted by BrianTH
That's a Chris Briem line, but I don't think it is quite accurate. According to the PDP's 2014 State of Downtown report, Downtown employment was steady at around 108,000 in 2005 and 2007, then dropped to about 106,000 in 2009, then shot up to over 113,000 in 2011.
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That's "Greater Downtown" not Downtown proper, right?
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Originally Posted by BrianTH
This stuff is hard to track accurately, but you also have supporting evidence like parking operators reporting record high occupancy rates. Meanwhile outside investors are buying Downtown office buildings, doing some renovations, and reporting increased occupancy.
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At the same time, a lot of older office buildings are being converted into residential uses. So it's unclear to me if the actual amount of square footage available Downtown is rising or falling.
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Originally Posted by BrianTH
Generally, employment in the Pittsburgh MSA and the City of Pittsburgh is growing, including in fields heavily represented Downtown. I actually think it would be surprising if Downtown was NOT getting its fair share of that employment growth, and I don't think we are going to be surprised.
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If it's happening, it's in dribs and drabs so small that it doesn't make the local press. I've seen press releases with sizable numbers of jobs being relocated into the Downtown fringe (e.g., Strip District, or North Shore) but nothing regarding a major employer commitment to Downtown itself.
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Originally Posted by BrianTH
I'm not sure why it has to be the "strongest in the city" for residential development. Among the top areas for residential growth would seem to suffice.
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It matters because we have unique assets that many cities do not in our outer neighborhoods. First, we maintained a core of middle-to-upper-middle class wealth within the city (the East End). Secondly, while we wiped out our historic first-ring residential neighborhoods, the second ring are still intact. Many sun-belt cities basically lacked any urban neighborhoods 20 years ago, and had to rebuild Downtown as an urban mixed-use neighborhood to attract young people. And many other rust-belt cities didn't maintain the bones of strong commercial districts outside of Downtown, such that the focus of nearly all the redevelopment is in/near the CBD (I'm looking at you Cleveland and Detroit). Pittsburgh is simply a lot more decentralized. That's a great things in most aspects, but it means our Downtown (and even its fringe) will never be as popular of a place to live as many other cities. Will it continue to get better? Sure. But I think it's going to play second fiddle to the East End for a long time to come yet.
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Originally Posted by BrianTH
So yeah, different neighborhoods offer different things. But Downtown is in a class by itself when it comes to providing a market for people who want to walk to work.
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I'm not sure I'd argue that.
IIRC the percent of people who walk to work is roughly similar in Oakland. Oakland has way less jobs than Downtown (something like 53,000 if you include CMU's campus, which is technically mostly in Squirrel Hill). But given the demographics of the workforce, I'd guess a higher proportion would want to live within walking distance versus commute by car or mass transit. I'd expect that once Oakland builds a few of those modern high-end apartment buildings that are proposed the amount of non-students willing to consider living there will rise.
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Originally Posted by BrianTH
What makes you think that?
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I still post on City Data, and I pay attention to the relocation threads. If the posters are any indication, Downtown just isn't on the radar of a lot of people. Most people who relocate, even if they want an urban neighborhood, want somewhere to park their car, which leads them to disqualify Downtown. Those who want a car-free lifestyle are generally young people with more modest incomes, and steered mostly to Bloomfield.
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Originally Posted by BrianTH
I think you are underestimating how much CBD employment in particular benefits from nearby residential development. CBDs are expensive, but one of the main reasons companies still locate in them is that they are centrally located and usually the center of the road and public transit systems. That in turn means that businesses located there can draw from a larger potential labor pool, or conversely give employees a larger selection of possible residential neighborhoods. However, the more residential development is pushed out into farther and farther rings, the less that works in favor of CBDs. Conversely, the more residential development that is relatively close to the center, the more that favors CBDs.
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I realize all that. I also suspect one reason why we've kept a very healthy CBD is we never built a ring road which made cross-suburban trips easy. And development along transit lines is of course good for the City, since it ups transportation utilization and decreases Downtown parking pressures.
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Originally Posted by BrianTH
So to the extent more of their potential employees in the future choose to live in a place like East Liberty or the Strip rather than somewhere deep out in the suburbs, the more businesses will be able to justify the expense of locating Downtown. In turn, that will attract even more of the residential people whose #1 concern is convenience to work.
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I can see the merits of this argument. But I think more of the reason why major employers don't leave Downtown is inter-suburban commutes. Young professionals will drive far for work if they can live in an urban neighborhood. I know people back in Lawrenceville who drive to Southpointe every day. But if an established company with an older workforce moves out of Downtown and to Cranberry, they may lose a large proportion of their workforce who live in the Mount Lebanon/Upper Saint Clair/Peters direction.
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Originally Posted by BrianTH
Again, I think it is a mistake to think of these neighborhoods as all being on the same path but at different points along it. Downtown is going to be a unique residential neighborhood, with unique pros and cons. As a result, some people won't even consider it, but for others there will be no near substitute.
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As I said though, Downtown is going to be a niche area. I suspect it will always skew a bit richer, older, more buttoned down, and less "hip" than the outlying urban neighborhoods - both because it will be the most expensive place to live, as well as some of the Downtown amenities (e.g., hotel guests for conventions, and theaters) skewing the crowd older. I just don't see it becoming the "next" South Side, Lawrenceville, or even East Liberty. It doesn't need to be, of course, but there's a limited supply of high-income professionals who work downtown and want the total urban experience, which means the market will remain somewhat limited.
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