PITTSBURGH | Development Rundown II

[TBone7281]

Originally Posted by Austinlee

Wow, the sign for Big Heart Pet Brands just went up months ago and now they are consolidating back to Ohio and will be gone by next spring. :/ That was quicker than the lifespan of a hamster.

I saw that on the news tonight and kind of went "wtf?" Seems like they could have planned it out a bit better... though I guess the manufacture of the sign was probably put in motion a while back.

Not to mention this move is affecting 225 employees, only 100 of which are even being offered the option to relocate.

Peace Out Big Heart

[Austinlee]

Originally Posted by TBone7281

I saw that on the news tonight and kind of went "wtf?" Seems like they could have planned it out a bit better... though I guess the manufacture of the sign was probably put in motion a while back.

Not to mention this move is affecting 225 employees, only 100 of which are even being offered the option to relocate.

Peace Out Big Heart

Yeah that sucks, and as the article mentions that's another large block of downtown area office space that is adding to the pretty large glut expected around 2016-2018 that is getting a lot of press.

[WillyC]

Originally Posted by Austinlee

Yeah that sucks, and as the article mentions that's another large block of downtown area office space that is adding to the pretty large glut expected around 2016-2018 that is getting a lot of press.

Local bankers in corporate real estate have been squawking about this for a couple years now. Last year they started saying the same things about hotels. Just yesterday one of them started harping about all the apartments in the pipeline and how Peduto's call for more is delusional. I'm worried we are going to see almost no new developments in a few years.

[JVC]

Originally Posted by Austinlee

Yeah that sucks, and as the article mentions that's another large block of downtown area office space that is adding to the pretty large glut expected around 2016-2018 that is getting a lot of press.

if the realtors are expecting a large glut of pittsburgh office space starting next year, then when heinz workers eventually get relocated to chicago the word "large" is going to need to be charged to "massive"

[East Edge]

Originally Posted by Captain Crash

The oldest house in the city is apparently available for purchase from the URA. The "John Woods House" in Hazelwood was built in 1792 at the corner of Monongahela St. and Tullymet St.

I've never heard of this place before, but the pictures of this small stone homestead are truly amazing. I'm not really sure how to put it into good use. I think it would be a really cool venue for a cafe/coffee shop, but even with the expected increase in development in the area, its location might still be too distant from the main roads for a retail use.

Thoughts?

http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=16096902c0eb51d713451c106&id=9a3bea0c85

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Woods_House

I'll have to check this out for a closer look but sight unseen i think it would drake an interesting overnight accommodation if completely restored. Perhaps it could be made to be completely off grid and tell an eco friendly historic preservation story which would make it part of the draw to make reservations to stay there. Something like this could be in demand the more that area's waterfront is developed. Wouldn't be too difficult to create a non profit organization that manages the project then operates it once complete. I think there has to be a market for vacation rental properties in the area as a complement to the hotel boom happening in the city right now.

[WillyC]

Originally Posted by Austinlee

Nevermind. I looked it up and WOW; That thread went toxic from post #1. Good lord, and that is why I NEVER joined that forum even though I love talking about my city (and other cities). Thanks for the heads up guys.

Haha, wow, found it too and that thread is crazy, angry suburban drivers acting like experts on downtown and someone actually equated making cyclists wait at red lights to the plight of african american in the 60s. Now I remember why I quickly stopped reading that forum.

[themaguffin]

Haha, wow, found it too and that thread is crazy, angry suburban drivers acting like experts

There's a lot of angry suburban everything there, or otherwise cluelessness

[photoLith]

The John Woods house could be a beauty, been there a few times, but its in a terrible hood and I fear its demise will be the crap neighborhood its in now.

[PITairport]

Originally Posted by JVC

if the realtors are expecting a large glut of pittsburgh office space starting next year, then when heinz workers eventually get relocated to chicago the word "large" is going to need to be charged to "massive"

Heinz already left its mark by vacating 276,000 sq ft at Heinz 57 Center last year. Their HQ at PPG Place is 'only' 86,000 sq ft.

So lets add these up:

276,000 Heinz
179,000 Big Heart Pet
600,000 BNY/Mellon
450,000 USS
------------------------
1,505,000 total sq ft

This is a huge amount of space opening up in short order; no wonder Oxford most likely won't be able to find an anchor tenant for a new building.

I scratch my head when some mention corporate headquarters don't matter; in addition Pittsburgh's "tight office market" seemed to be nothing but a bubble.

[photoLith]

So no new skyscrapers til like 2025 maybe.... Ugh. Well at least that means that maybe Oxfords plan to tear down that historic building downtown won't go through and maybe by the time new skyscrapers get built in Pittsburgh the preservation groups will hold more political sway.

[AaronPGH]

Originally Posted by PITairport

I scratch my head when some mention corporate headquarters don't matter; in addition Pittsburgh's "tight office market" seemed to be nothing but a bubble.

Maybe downtown, but certainly not city-wide. And the downtown story is yet to be written. We don't know what's going to happen or what deals are moving in the background. The company I left last year was getting wedged into whatever space was left because of a hotel conversion. Not because of more companies moving in. A shitload of commercial space may be opening up, but it doesn't all need to be offices or Fortune 1000 corporations moving in to fill it.

Honestly, I have always thought the really major new office deals would be tech-oriented and clustered away from downtown., and that seems to be happening. The office industries that are growing quickly are growing out of the east end for the most part. The city is balancing out. Downtown is going more residential and tourism, and other neighborhoods are getting big offices. A friend who works close to the employment numbers at Google (which are super private), pegs things at nearing 1000 once BKSQ2 opens – far above what they're reporting to media. And that's just Google, not the other tech companies moving into the Strip.

The glut is not a bubble, and probably not something to be concerned about. The spaces will fill out in some manner, and it won't take long.

[AaronPGH]

Originally Posted by photoLith

So no new skyscrapers til like 2025 maybe.... Ugh. Well at least that means that maybe Oxfords plan to tear down that historic building downtown won't go through and maybe by the time new skyscrapers get built in Pittsburgh the preservation groups will hold more political sway.

Convention Center Hotel + residential in one tower. Also RiverParc reboot. Maybe optimistic thinking, but maybe not. They've all signaled that they're interested again.

[BrianTH]

2025 is a long way off--if regional and City office jobs keep growing at around current rates then it could be well before that the anticipated glut of vacated space Downtown is absorbed.

That said, I also agree we may be seeing places like East Liberty, the Strip, maybe the Hazelwood LTV and Lower Hill sites, just good old Oakland, and so on collectively taking on an ever-greater share of new office development in the City. Which wouldn't be a terrible thing in my view--on the one hand, more skyscrapers Downtown could be fun, but on the other, that spread and strengthening of other jobs clusters is going to allow more people to have walking/biking commutes, improve the case for investing in more transit infrastructure in the core area, and in general help revitalize more areas of the City.

[JVC]

the case for real estate development optimism is steadily weakening

the national architectural billings index continues to struggle to stay in positive territory (above 50) and has not come close to the 60 level seen during the last two economic expansions

based on the chart it looks like we can expect one last wave of building optimism, then it's all downhill from there again

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by WillyC

Local bankers in corporate real estate have been squawking about this for a couple years now. Last year they started saying the same things about hotels. Just yesterday one of them started harping about all the apartments in the pipeline and how Peduto's call for more is delusional. I'm worried we are going to see almost no new developments in a few years.

At some point the local market is going to reach saturation, insofar as there will be enough (or close to enough) modern urban apartments available for everyone who wants to live in the city. I'm not sure this is a bad thing per se though - it just means we'll have hit relative stagnation at a new, higher level of urban activity.

Unless/until there is seriously great net job growth for the metro, most of what we're seeing in terms of residential demand is the local element of the "great inversion" - housing demand for young professionals shifting from the suburbs to the city. This growth is zero sum to a great degree - the city's gain is the suburb's loss. There's also a relative upper limit, because at some point the mix of prices/amenities (both in the apartments and the neighborhood at large) won't convince many additional people to move in.

Originally Posted by photoLith

So no new skyscrapers til like 2025 maybe.... Ugh. Well at least that means that maybe Oxfords plan to tear down that historic building downtown won't go through and maybe by the time new skyscrapers get built in Pittsburgh the preservation groups will hold more political sway.

I think this is more a bigger issue with our economy - that job growth has been lackluster generally in this "recovery," which I increasingly believe is due to automation beginning to take a serious bite out of some white-collar jobs. According to the BLS, less workers are employed in the information and financial fields today than ten years ago. This isn't barely true for the wider "professional and business services" industries, but many individual industries have seen net job declines in this field, such as legal services. Overall job growth in these areas has been positive, but weak. If you're talking about a lower-growth (population wise) portion of the country, it's easy to see how it could be stagnant or negative - not because the city is doing anything wrong, but just due to the structure of the economy.

Add to this telecommuting, and the traditional office environment is clearly on the wane. With everything which is going on in our broader economy, I expect that CBDs will be mainly civic and residential areas 20 years from now, simply because a lot less of the population will be working (at least full time) and relatively few of them will be working out of a centralized location.

Originally Posted by AaronPGH

Honestly, I have always thought the really major new office deals would be tech-oriented and clustered away from downtown., and that seems to be happening. The office industries that are growing quickly are growing out of the east end for the most part. The city is balancing out. Downtown is going more residential and tourism, and other neighborhoods are getting big offices. A friend who works close to the employment numbers at Google (which are super private), pegs things at nearing 1000 once BKSQ2 opens – far above what they're reporting to media. And that's just Google, not the other tech companies moving into the Strip..

The only issue I have with this is our transit system is set up to get people to Downtown and Oakland. If we head into more of a multi-nodal system, we're going to become a much more car-dependent city. That's a future I don't want to see for this city.

[themaguffin]

These job losses are disconcerting and recently Glaxo announced essentially shutting down their Moon township operation... we don't often hear about gains of 200 or so jobs, only losses...

[GeneW]

I work in tech and tend to keep track of where tech jobs are and who's hiring and in the last five years or so I've seen almost zero of the kind of software development jobs that I might apply to located Downtown. The tech companies are in East Liberty, Squirrel Hill, The Strip, Southside, Northshore and Oakland/Shadyside but almost never in the Golden Triangle. The only major tech companies that I can think of downtown are Maya and Summa and even Summa just opened a new site in East Liberty.

It's sort of annoying because I live in walking distance to downtown but end up having to commute to the East End for work.

[Buzz Pittsburgh]

Originally Posted by themaguffin

These job losses are disconcerting and recently Glaxo announced essentially shutting down their Moon township operation... we don't often hear about gains of 200 or so jobs, only losses...

I was sad to hear that too...but the reason reports of 200 jobs being lost is in the news more often than 200 jobs gained is because most companies don't grow like that (unless they are relocating jobs from another location). Even if it's not newsworthy, I bet we could find 20 Pittsburgh companies that added 10+ jobs this year. It's the nature of the media that hypes these large job losses, because they are clearly bad (and will get people to watch/read), but won't take the time to report on small job gains for 20-30 companies that would equal the same amount of jobs.

[GeneW]

Originally Posted by eschaton;7076079[URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/your-money/when-working-in-your-pajamas-is-more-productive.html"

Add to this telecommuting, and the traditional office environment is clearly on the wane[/URL]. With everything which is going on in our broader economy, I expect that CBDs will be mainly civic and residential areas 20 years from now, simply because a lot less of the population will be working (at least full time) and relatively few of them will be working out of a centralized location.

At least in the software industry, ever since the Agile Manifesto has taken over, working from home is generally frowned upon except for emergencies these days. Co-location of teams is the big thing now. Everyone works in a tight group sitting on top of each other, often at the same desks, and there's a constant stream of discussion and collaboration.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by GeneW

At least in the software industry, ever since the Agile Manifesto has taken over, working from home is generally frowned upon except for emergencies these days. Co-location of teams is the big thing now. Everyone works in a tight group sitting on top of each other, often at the same desks, and there's a constant stream of discussion and collaboration.

Yeah, I know in software the trend has been the reverse. I expect that will eventually be ironed out, insofar as there will be better (and more accepted) ways to engage with coworkers remotely (along with ways to keep track better if workers are actually being productive from home.