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Originally Posted by eschaton
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Pittsburgh is looking at a dearth of new big projects in the near future. A combination of the impacts of COVID and the City's increasingly antagonistic approach to development has damaged a commercial real estate market that wasn't that hot to begin with. Architecture firms that solely rely on local work are going to be hurting soon.
Universities may not need to increase their instructional and residential space moving forward so that work has dried-up.
Who knows what commercial office needs are post-COVID? Despite a large number of open positions, job growth numbers here are abysmal and have been for years, so that's another concern. Pittsburgh has been sold as a smart place to do business due to the education base, but it has not been business-friendly.
Multi-Family retail demand has declined thanks to COVID, but is looking a little weak in the future since recent projects in Pittsburgh may have finally met the current demand in a market with little population growth.
Word floating around the A&E world is that out-of-town developers that have finished recent projects aren't pursuing new opportunities in Pittsburgh because of the extreme difficulty of dealing with the city government. And the in-town companies are looking for opportunities in the suburbs for the same reasons.
One bright-spot is single-family homes, where there's a huge demand. However, it seems that every project gets held-up in planning review and community meetings, and requires some sort of variance from the zoning code which adds months of delays and thousands of dollars in project costs.
I hate to be negative and hope that I'm wrong, but I have a feeling that the leadership of Pittsburgh has created a situation where we are going to have a harder time bouncing back post-COVID.