PITTSBURGH | Development Rundown II

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by dfiler

I would hate to see entire neighborhoods of buildings with their ground floors as garages. But for streets without pedestrian destinations such as stores or restaurants, it appears to be a worthwhile, modern compromise.

As an interesting comparison, consider new vs old suburbs. Old suburbs put garages on the side or back of each lot. Newer suburbs attach garages the front of homes. In my opinion, the older neighborhoods are more pleasant. Rather than garage doors and driveways being the focal point of every home, there is actual architecture and landscaping held as paramount.

Another point I have heard raised in this context is that in older urban neighborhoods, you wouldn't necessarily expect every street to be lined with storefronts. Instead, the model was a main street with contiguous storefronts, and then mostly-residential streets with a few "corner stores" and such.

So these residential buildings with just a bit of non-contiguous ground-floor activity (retail, lobbies, and so on) are not necessarily too far off that model. But you still want to make sure the screening/disguising is of good quality, and also you should make sure there is still a nice walkable "main street" commercial district nearby.

[BrianTH]

Buncher Co. gives Pittsburgh 6 months to market Strip produce terminal

So everyone appears to be acting reasonably and in good faith at this point, which is quite nice.

[BrianTH]

Some of these practices for dealing with blight and tax delinquencies seem like they could be very helpful:

http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburg...a=twt&page=all

[Austinlee]

Originally Posted by dfiler

Agreed, that whole "pittsburgh is unwelcoming to outsiders" notion is based on rather illogical reasoning. "Experts say"? Only a couple of misinformed "experts" that recently got a tiny bit of publicity. I remember laughing at their conclusions when originally published.

The reason why pittsburgh hasn't seen an influx of immigrants in the past few decades is because nobody flocks to cities with high unemployment. When the steel mills were shutting down, there was massive unemployment and half of the city's population left to find work elsewhere. Half! And on top of that, there weren't even any construction or agricultural jobs to offer. Well of course foreigners aren't going to move to such a city.

And that's not coming from a born and bred yinzer who is feeling insulted. I came to study at CMU and ended up staying. As a student in a program with many foreigners, I got no impression of pittsburgh being particularly welcoming or unwelcoming to outsiders. To me, it seemed and seems pretty much average in that regard.

Pittsburgh is average! A glowing review.

[Austinlee]

Originally Posted by Evergrey

Congratulations. It appears you and Glowrock are two of our most senior contributors. Hopefully both of you continue to enrich us with your commentary and contributions for another decade.

haha. Says the guy with 23,000+ posts. Evergrey, you are THE king of SSP Pittsburgh. Your epic set of Pittsburgh neighborhood tours will go down in history.

Originally Posted by Evergrey

But haven't you heard that Bitcoin isn't a thing anymore?

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...,5968430.story

Nah, I'm safe. I have my whole life savings in a place called Mt. Gox. I mean, it rhymes with Ft. KNOX for god's sake.

[Wave]

I agree about the area east of Hot Metal St. being less of a neighborhood and more suburban or at least non-retail/walkable in comparison. Unfortunately we already have a pretty awful example of a first floor garage on the block just WEST of Hot Metal St. in the Hyatt Place. That first floor garage is very disappointing and kills the energy on that stretch of street. The rest of that block has at least some street life component in the American Eagle Headquarters which has relatively attractive office space front the street and decent architecture. The Hofbrau House, which though rather disneyesque at least is also vibrant and creates energy. The rest of the retail accross the street also mostly adds to the vibrancy of that block (claddagh, the former wine restaurant, REI etc.) and to the overall feel of that part of the SSW.

The Hyatt's parking is quite glaringly not well hidden and I only wonder how much better the project would have been with a first floor lobby opening out onto the street instead of a second floor lobby and conference rooms, dining etc. It would've changed the entire feel. Frankly I don't think its beneficial for a hotel in attracting repeat guests either. It's like "welcome to our garage" instead of "welcome to our Hotel" and the interaction with the rest of the SSW is partially lost. Think how much better it would've been with outdoor seating, large windows into the dining area, large windows into the lobby and landscaping instead of the parking right in your face. I do understand there may be financial and design challenges, but the parking could've easily been placed in the back (with the entry to the parking on the side) or on a second level or some other solution. The minimal would be to have created a sliver of at least an attempt of first floor "hotel" space on the area adjoining the walkway/front with the parking just behind it and a side entry.

Originally Posted by BrianTH

There is a lobby/common-space area on the corner of Hot Metal and Sidney, but I believe that is mostly correct.
I'm not sure how common it is in existing projects, but I believe there is at least one more proposal like this for this part of South Side Works (east of Hot Metal). Buncher wants to do something similar with the apartment buildings behind the Produce Terminal, the East Liberty Transit Center/Eastside III will also be similar (although in that case the parking will be two levels and pushed back to the Busway side), East Liberty Place South is also similar . . . and I suspect we will see more in the future.

I agree this could be bad if it was the norm everywhere. However, it sure beats surface parking lots, and it can come off better or worse depending on how well they disguise it. I also think context matters a lot.

For example, in this case, the parts of South Side Works east of Hot Metal probably were never destined to become quite as walkable/commercial as the parts west of Hot Metal. That is because the serious pinching-down of the South Side Flats is beginning around there, the train tracks emerge from the tunnel, and so on. In fact, I am actually kinda amazed they jammed the SpringHill Suites in where they did--I don't like its surface parking lot and maybe that can be converted to structured parking/mixed-use eventually, but that was still an awkward lot and it is nice to see it being used.

Anyway, given all that, I am more or less fine with this particular example. As noted above, I am a little bummed they cut the height and unit count, but on the other hand, it appears they eliminated a level of parking, which helps with respect to this issue. So as long as it looks reasonable along Hot Metal Street, I think it will be a nice addition.

[BrianTH]

Yeah, the bottom couple floors of the Hyatt House are horrible:



At least it is on the other side of the Tunnel Park, but still--awful.

[Austinlee]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Yeah, the bottom couple floors of the Hyatt House are horrible:



At least it is on the other side of the Tunnel Park, but still--awful.

Also the top floors. It's just an ugly hotel. That is a Damn shame about street level though. What were they thinking?

[Austinlee]

And although I'm not a regular and never would be; I like Hofbrouhaus because its quirky and that is perfect for the Southside.

[photoLith]

A new little grocery store going in on Arch St in the War Streets.


East Liberty busway development from this afternoon.


And whats going on here in SoHo on 5th Avenue, there about 3 or so half blocks getting developed or something, I havent seen any renders for any new development in SoHo.

[Evergrey]

Thanks for that update on the new grocer on Arch St. I was saddened when the former grocer closed recently, nice to see a replacement. Sadly, it looked like Saturday was the last day for the Buena Vista coffeeshop.

[George Woods]

The word on the street is that someone new is opening a coffee-shop in there within a month or so.

[doo dah]

Originally Posted by photoLith

<snip>

And whats going on here in SoHo on 5th Avenue, there about 3 or so half blocks getting developed or something, I havent seen any renders for any new development in SoHo.

Housing project in Pittsburgh's Uptown emphasizes energy efficiency

Can't seem to find any renderings though.

[GeneW]

Originally Posted by George Woods

The word on the street is that someone new is opening a coffee-shop in there within a month or so.

If so, that'll be the third in five years at that spot. Seems hard to make a go of it there.

And still no coffee shop over here in Allegheny West.

[photoLith]

Affordable housing is good but I'd much rather see market rate housing in SoHo to make that neighborhood a better place. It has so much potential and making more section 8 housing in SoHo and the Hill isn't going to help matters. Id much rather see section 8 housing in suburbia and make a bus connect to it or something. That may sound harsh but oh well.

[BrianTH]

There is no reason places like Uptown/SoHo can't be a mix of both market-rate and lower-income housing.

[GeneW]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

There is no reason places like Uptown/SoHo can't be a mix of both market-rate and lower-income housing.

There are lots of existing neighborhoods with a mix of section 8 and higher end units. Much of the lower Northside has such mix and we all manage to coexist.

[BrianTH]

It also appears to me the prominent Uptown landowners have gone back into land-banking mode as they wait to see what happens with things like the Lower Hill site and the BRT proposal. So if we are going to see much action at all in Uptown in the near future, I think it will mostly be projects like this which in part address pressing needs. But conversely, once the floodgates do open in Uptown, I don't think a few projects like this will do anything to slow it down.

[photoLith]

Oddly enough now that I think about it, thats probably the newest new building construction other than the Penguins Stadium and a shitty 70's gas station Uptown has seen since like the 50's. So thats a pretty good sign I guess. Unfortunately a completely intact block of row houses just lost one beautiful row house a few months ago; so the rate of destruction is still pretty fast in Uptown and a lot more will be lost there in the coming years before development can catch up.


photo from yesterday

In other news here a photo from the Westin today of PNC.



Also took a photo of this beautiful house getting restored in Deutschtown.





Heres a history of the house by Carol Peterson, a Pittsburgh house historian.

"On Middle Street in Deutschtown, I came across these wood houses being liberated from their aluminum siding. Turns out the owner is an architect who has worked on historic preservation and adaptive reuse projects in that neighborhood, so the end result should look nice. Deutschtown seems to be Pittsburgh's epicenter of re-exposed or never-covered wood siding- although I'd love to see other neighborhoods (Upper Lawrenceville? Troy Hill?) try and challenge them for that title.

Note the nearly three-foot roof overhang at far right. I've seen several houses in the adjoining areas of Deutschtown, Spring Garden, Spring Hill and Troy Hill with that feature, all wood frame dwellings built between around the Civil War and the 1880s. Neighborhood-specific construction idiosyncrasies from that era can be found in practically all of the neighborhoods that developed in or before that time. Construction of all but the grandest buildings was then done by building contractors working within several blocks of their own homes, and had not yet become standardized in the way that it was by the 1920s. Do you think that whoever built the overhanging-roof houses of eastern Allegheny City in the post-Civil War period anticipated that people would be pointing them out in the 21st century?"

[BrianTH]

The Animal Rescue League is planning a $15 million campus in Homewood:

http://triblive.com/news/allegheny/5...#axzz2upqZrGIY

Apparently it would take up this whole long block:

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4555.../data=!3m1!1e3

I have mixed feelings about this. On the plus side, it would be a very large investment for Homewood. On the minus side, that is an awful lot of land to use for a single project, within just a few blocks of a Busway station, and there are also at least some historic structures in that block that I would like to see reused.