PITTSBURGH | Development Rundown II

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Evergrey

My stance is that Pittsburgh's terrain is more rugged and relentless while SF has greater elevation change.

Originally Posted by AaronPGH

accurate

Yep.

Pittsburgh is in the middle of a plateau which has been carved up by waterways of all sorts into valleys, ravines, and so forth. So there are no really huge mountains/hills, but there is LOTS of upanddownandupanddownandupanddown . . .

Edit: According to this, the difference between the highest and lowest point in SF is 934 feet, versus 660 feet in Pittsburgh.

http://egsc.usgs.gov/isb//pubs/booklets/elvadist/elvadist.html

That's actually closer than I would have guessed, but still confirms that SF has a greater total elevation change.

LA crushes the competition, however, thanks to Mount Lukens at 5074 feet. But of course most of where people actually live in LA is relatively flat.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Evergrey

I think in the previous renderings those river-facing lawns inside the U-shaped buildings were surface parking.

They were parking screened and decked above. I actually don't think they have changed that much--the renderings are just a bit nicer.

Generally, I also like the general approach east of the 16th Street Bridge. I'd like a few more floors on a few of those apartment blocks, but overall that is what I think the Strip needs and is in keeping with the character of the neighborhood.

Like everyone else, I hate all that surface parking west of the 16th Street Bridge.

[billholdings]

When is this Buncher site to begin construction and are they going to be in phases?

[AaronPGH]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Edit: According to this, the difference between the highest and lowest point in SF is 934 feet, versus 660 feet in Pittsburgh.

That's actually closer than I would have guessed, but still confirms that SF has a greater total elevation change.

Faaar closer than I would have guessed! I think it has a lot to do with how wide open the views in SF are. Things look drastically taller.

[Brentsters]

The plus side of the planning doc is 311 apartments for the Macy's building, including a rooftop pool. Also, 2 floors remain open, presumably for that new concept hotel that was previously mentioned.

[Brentsters]

And nearby, apparently 9 restaurants are in the works around Mellon Square.

http://m.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/blog...ntown-2015-more-restaurants-show-an.html

[photoLith]

That land could greatly extend downtown to the Strip but Buncher will make it look like suburbia, great.

[eschaton]

In my mind, the least defensible element is the continued surface parking along Smallman Street. One can make the argument that if Buncher wants to tart up their own private road with surface parking, that's their business. It will be sort of an extension of Railroad Street, but it's still going to be a low-traffic road unless you live/work back there.

Smallman though is a major public corridor - and only getting more important since so much new development is happening around it. There is going to be that extension of the Eleven building which will add height to that block, along with the existing massing of the History Center and the Hampton Inn (which isn't perfect, but is at least only minimally set back from the street). There is no reason to have such a break in the development of the street wall.

BTW, whatever happened to Buncher's plans to put parking lots underneath the highway?

[BrianTH]

That re-do of 5001 Baum's facade is also welcome (not ground-breaking, but a big improvement). They did a great job with the building across the street, and it could become a nice sort of gateway.

In contrast, I'm a bit bummed they are not doing more to change the Macy's Annex.

[BrianTH]

Shell announces absolutely nothing about possible cracker:

http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/bl...racker-plant-decision-expected-soon.html

They might make a decision sometime soon, or not, it really all depends . . .

[Austinlee]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Shell announces absolutely nothing about possible cracker:

http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/bl...racker-plant-decision-expected-soon.html

They might make a decision sometime soon, or not, it really all depends . . .

They recently announced that the decision to build or not in Beaver County will be made by the end of 2015.

[Austinlee]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

That re-do of 5001 Baum's facade is also welcome (not ground-breaking, but a big improvement). They did a great job with the building across the street, and it could become a nice sort of gateway.

In contrast, I'm a bit bummed they are not doing more to change the Macy's Annex.

The Macy's annex completely blows. Made worse by the fact that it replaced the high rise of Andrew Carnegie that built this city into a powerhouse.

[BrianTH]

I will say I am overall excited about the Macy's project. Getting those windows fixed up, and of course more nighttime people Downtown, will be nice.

Anyway, The Cultural Trust is in early talks to bring a general-interest movie theater back to Downtown, perhaps in the former Bally's (which is a former theater):

http://www.post-gazette.com/business/201...ntown-movie-theater/stories/201505160063

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.443472,-...3m2!1sBNikaAc3i_4LSTTALlE4cQ!2e0!6m1!1e1

Unfortunately the gorgeous original theater (the Alvin) had a roof collapse and was remodeled:





http://digital.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/...d;rgn=main;view=text;didno=US-QQS-MSS258

"The Alvin"

Charles Lindsey built The Alvin Theatre, commonly referred to as "The Alvin", in 1891. It was named for Alvin Joslin, a character that Davis had played successfully in the 1880s. This 2200 seat elaborate theater was located at 115 Sixth Avenue, Pittsburgh.

The interior was in the lush late Victorian style decorated in colors of light ivory, silver and gold toned with a delicate pink. There was also a large dome with an incredible painting of seven allegorical figures. The Alvin Theater was operated by the Harry Davis Enterprising Company with feature productions of the Shuberts beginning in 1919. Thus, for a while, it became known as the Shubert-Alvin Theater.

In 1931 Davis Enterprises was bought by the Stanley Corporation and the playhouse was converted into a motion picture theater in 1932. It was redecorated in the Modernistic Style. The roof collapsed in 1940, but the house was rehabilitated and reopened as the J.P. Harris Theater and later known as the Gateway.

And a long-planned senior housing project in Carrick may finally be moving ahead thanks to an award of state housing tax credits:

http://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2...gle-site-in-Carrick/stories/201505160043

http://www.pittsburghpa.gov/rss/print.htm?mode=print&id=4476

[GeneW]

I would be very happy with another movie theater Downtown. We go to a lot of films and it's annoying that we live within walking distance of Downtown but always end up driving to Homestead, Sq. Hill or Regent Square to see films.

I love that half the comments in the PG story are about parking as if no one ever paid to park when going to a movie theater. Or took transit, or a bike or walked.

[greg42]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Shell announces absolutely nothing about possible cracker:

http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/bl...racker-plant-decision-expected-soon.html

They might make a decision sometime soon, or not, it really all depends . . .

Such is apparently the way with a large multinational company considering a multi billion new investment. The scale is such that they are spending tens of millions at least in prep so far and they might still turn around and not do it. Foreign to me but makes sense to them.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by GeneW

I love that half the comments in the PG story are about parking as if no one ever paid to park when going to a movie theater. Or took transit, or a bike or walked.

There are a lot of people who really don't have a clue about how much Downtown has changed in the last 15 years, and what is driving those changes. Fortunately, most of those people are totally irrelevant to those trends anyway.

I wonder if they will try to get a liquor license ala The Manor.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by greg42

Such is apparently the way with a large multinational company considering a multi billion new investment. The scale is such that they are spending tens of millions at least in prep so far and they might still turn around and not do it. Foreign to me but makes sense to them.

And truthfully, none of this would bother me if there had not been such a rush to give them all sorts of corporate welfare.

[photoLith]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

There are a lot of people who really don't have a clue about how much Downtown has changed in the last 15 years, and what is driving those changes. Fortunately, most of those people are totally irrelevant to those trends anyway.

I wonder if they will try to get a liquor license ala The Manor.

Yinzers are out of the loop and are stuck in the 80's, they are far removed from modernity/current trends and the faster they remove their Steelers selves away from the city proper the better off this city will be. It just cant happen fast enough IMO.

[BrianTH]

Depending on how you define "yinzers" I am not sure that really captures the right group. I would tend to define "yinzers" as white, working-class, multi-generational-natives of the region. But some of those folks in my experience actually are plugged into what is going on. Meanwhile, the people bashing Downtown in things like local newspaper comment sections are not necessarily (or even typically) working class, and I am not sure they are necessarily people with long ties to the region.

I'd say this is more a political thing than anything else. The various factors that led to post-WWII "white flight" eventually got baked into a sort of reflexive anti-urbanism (with racist and classist undertones), and exploiting that proved useful to certain political elites. So now they continue to encourage it, including through their captive media outlets.

So this is just a guess, but if you were trying to build a predictive model of ignorance of what has been going on in Downtown Pittsburgh, I think you would obviously start with something like distance of residence from Downtown. But the next factor you might try adding is something like Fox News viewership, and I wouldn't be surprised if at that point you already had a pretty good fit.

[GeneW]

I'm pretty sure that the tension we see between Pittsburgh urbanites and suburbanites is a pretty common dynamic around the country. There are people all over who think that you should never go downtown because it's full of "the bad element" and can't imagine why you'd pay $5 to park (or take the bus) when there are acres of free parking at suburban shopping centers. Fortunately it's largely a generational thing and attitudes will change as the Millennials take over.

Personally, a movie theater downtown would be the best thing for me. We hit the movie theaters at least three times a month and having to head over to Homestead or The Southside Works is annoying both because of the drive and because of the lack of any good restaurants near those theaters.