PITTSBURGH | Development Rundown III

[GeneW]

Originally Posted by AaronPGH

Oh so *you're* the rambling idiot with the Build Penn Square Facebook account that was constantly shitposting and trolling East Liberty businesses with extremely strange / thinly veiled racist, homophobic comments. Great to have you here.

Posting deranged vaccine conspiracy theories on City Data lately too.

[AaronPGH]

Originally Posted by GeneW

Posting deranged vaccine conspiracy theories on City Data lately too.

I fully cut that site out from my rounds, but sounds exactly on brand for this guy. Hopefully he'll make quick work of outing himself as a lunatic here and we'll be able to keep this thread intact.

[themaguffin]

Originally Posted by AaronPGH

I fully cut that site out from my rounds, but sounds exactly on brand for this guy. Hopefully he'll make quick work of outing himself as a lunatic here and we'll be able to keep this thread intact.

Yeah, the racist anti-science dude keeps trolling mask/lockdown thread, among others. Very similar to really idiotic and racist whose name incorporates a small northwestern PA city.

The fact is that site is controlled by right wingers. A quick visit to the politics page is insane....

[Austinlee]

Originally Posted by AaronPGH

Oh so *you're* the rambling idiot with the Build Penn Square Facebook account that was constantly shitposting and trolling East Liberty businesses with extremely strange / thinly veiled racist, homophobic comments. Great to have you here.

Originally Posted by GeneW

Posting deranged vaccine conspiracy theories on City Data lately too.

Originally Posted by themaguffin

Yeah, the racist anti-science dude keeps trolling mask/lockdown thread, among others.

[mhays]

I love cities where downtown streets aren't also major auto thoroughfares...Pittsburgh, Portland... Maybe it's partially Covid, but you can jaywalk pretty easily and safely here. In Seattle, most of the N-S avenues have a through-traffic role.

Last night was a wedding dinner at a winery, but the night before was Revel + Roost near Market Square, which was good for drinks and "sharables."

[Bricktrimble]

Originally Posted by Don't Be That Guy

The Cork Factory was also built at a time when almost everything was made of labor-intensive masonry, and that labor was cheap to the point of disposable. I don't know if you're an architect or just an enthusiast, but a practicing architect would know the cost and challenges of building anything like the Cork Factory. Just getting a building like that to meet modern energy code requirements would be a herculean task.

Next Pittsburgh reported that the Helm is a $53.7 million project. That would be significantly higher with different materials and architectural features, especially with union labor.

I personally don't love metal panels (even though they work and are on every commercial project) or those color choices, but the ship-like design where every apartment has a riverview balcony is cool and makes great use of a constrained site.

I'm a little late to the conversation on this, but you can absolutely make a brick building meet the energy code and still retain the more aesthetically pleasing architecture than metal panels. You build a cavity wall with an air space between the brick and its backing where insulation is placed in whatever thickness is required. The Cork Factory is the old style brick bearing wall, and yes, meeting the energy code could be a challenge (although you could take brick's thermal mass into account which energy codes don't handle very well).

It always goes back to - you get what you pay for. A brick building will last so much longer than the temporary buildings being built today and may actually be an architectural landmark which will be hard to say for the Helm or any other similar project.

[photoLith]

Here's an actual well done new construction, located on Buena Vista Street in the War Streets from yesterday. I don't know if they had to use brick and a traditional design because its located within the historic district now that its expanded. But I sure do wish more smaller developments would build stuff like this. It looks great. They dont even have tacky ass garages in the front and go right up to the sidewalk like historic buildings do. The only thing that sucks is that a beautiful old 1870s Second Empire mansion used to be located here a few years ago, but I think it had been abandoned forever ago and the historic district hadn't been expanded yet so the building wasnt really protected.

Untitled by photolitherland, on Flickr

[pj3000]

^ yeah those are nice… but those don’t look like rental apartments. I imagine those are built to sell for $500k and up.

There is not the type of demand in Pittsburgh, nor probably anywhere, for rental apartments built to that level of quality.

[Eightball]

Nice construction, but the amount of wires present is insane, no???

[GeneW]

Originally Posted by Eightball

Nice construction, but the amount of wires present is insane, no???

Correct me if I'm wrong but the only areas with buried power lines in Pittsburgh are Downtown and parts of Oakland.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by GeneW

Correct me if I'm wrong but the only areas with buried power lines in Pittsburgh are Downtown and parts of Oakland.

There are a handful of newer-build areas where lines were buried, like Crawford Square in the Hill district. And of course, large amounts of the city have power lines mainly distributed in the alleys, which keeps the main thoroughfares a bit less untidy.

[eschaton]

Here is the HRC agenda for today. I didn't post it earlier because there's frankly little which is new and of interest. The closest things are a new playground in Allegheny Commons, and some outdoor seating for a business in Allegheny West.

[eschaton]

The Julian in Oakland has gotten a slightly updated design. The building is the same height and has a slightly lower square footage, although they have added 20 units (going from 128 to 148) and modified parking (adding more stalls, taking away some bike parking). I think the new design looks significantly sharper, with more variance in brick shades, and some tweaking of window placement and size.

[eschaton]

This is a bit of a surprise - Family House has bought the Shadyside Courtyard Marriott, and is going to be converting it into a single-site complex, with both all of its offices along with all of its 130 rooms available for patients and families of patients looking for short-term housing while undergoing medical treatment in Pittsburgh.

I am a bit let down here, TBH. I heard this morning the hotel was closed (except for the Starbucks) and an announced sale was immanent, but I was hoping for someone with deep pockets who could redesign the parcel. It is built like a suburban hotel, with the large setback and surface parking on Liberty, although with the development of the three corners to the north it does have sort of an "outdoor room" vibe down there now, since the setback of the church from Liberty due to green space is pretty analogous.

This will free up Family House's other properties for redevelopment however, including its main campus, a building on N Neville, this building leased from UMPC.

[photoLith]

Originally Posted by pj3000

^ yeah those are nice… but those don’t look like rental apartments. I imagine those are built to sell for $500k and up.

There is not the type of demand in Pittsburgh, nor probably anywhere, for rental apartments built to that level of quality.

They're going for 590k...

[eschaton]

New Planning Commission presentation up for July 13. Four items for next week - several of them substantial:

1. RIDC is ready to get started on Phase C (the final phase) of Mill 19. We know what we're getting by now - another three-story tech/flex space built within the shell of the mill. Still, it's very smart design - almost a shame that it's hidden so much from public view (both due to being inside of the mill, along with being in an area which gets basically no passers by.

2. CMU is constructing a new health, wellness, and fitness center on the site of the existing building. The new building will be four stories, and 200,000 square feet. The design is fine - typical tan CMU blandness that will mesh very well with the core of their campus.

3. A new nine-story, 243-unit apartment building in the Strip. This is not the first we have heard of this project - which will replace an entire block of industrial buildings on the 3100 block of Smallman - but it's the first we've seen in great detail. The basement and part of the first floor and mezzanine are set aside for parking (259 spaces in all). The building also has almost 14,000 square feet of first-floor storefront which could be used for retail or tech/flex. I think the design is fairly smart - modern, but harkening back to the large warehouses of the Strip District, which is a good typology since this will be occupying an entire block. If I have any criticism it seems a bit too overly windowed, which gives it kind of the vibe of an office building rather than something residential. But this at least means they're defying modern convention on what a residential building should look like.

4. A request to demolish the (now long-vacant) block of rowhouses at Bates Street. This was also recently covered at OPDC meetings, which provided the context that Walnut Capital acquired the site and is doing the clearance. They purportedly have no plans at this time for reuse of the site, but it's almost certainly just a matter of time.

[themaguffin]

Originally Posted by eschaton

New Planning Commission presentation up for July 13. Four items for next week - several of them substantial:

1. RIDC is ready to get started on Phase C (the final phase) of Mill 19. We know what we're getting by now - another three-story tech/flex space built within the shell of the mill. Still, it's very smart design - almost a shame that it's hidden so much from public view (both due to being inside of the mill, along with being in an area which gets basically no passers by.

Which RIDC area is this?

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by themaguffin

Which RIDC area is this?

Almono/Hazelwood Green/whatever the hell they're calling it now.

[AaronPGH]

Originally Posted by eschaton

3. A new nine-story, 243-unit apartment building in the Strip. This is not the first we have heard of this project - which will replace an entire block of industrial buildings on the 3100 block of Smallman - but it's the first we've seen in great detail. The basement and part of the first floor and mezzanine are set aside for parking (259 spaces in all). The building also has almost 14,000 square feet of first-floor storefront which could be used for retail or tech/flex. I think the design is fairly smart - modern, but harkening back to the large warehouses of the Strip District, which is a good typology since this will be occupying an entire block. If I have any criticism it seems a bit too overly windowed, which gives it kind of the vibe of an office building rather than something residential. But this at least means they're defying modern convention on what a residential building should look like.

I'm really digging the design. This is how you do it right!

[DKNewYork]

Originally Posted by eschaton

4. A request to demolish the (now long-vacant) block of rowhouses at Bates Street. This was also recently covered at OPDC meetings, which provided the context that Walnut Capital acquired the site and is doing the clearance. They purportedly have no plans at this time for reuse of the site, but it's almost certainly just a matter of time.

Aren't these the rowhouses Walnut Capital is selling to Pitt? I believe so. There was an article in the PBT. The sale also includes the site on Forbes where WC was about to start construction of its office tower.