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  #5361  
Old Posted Jun 20, 2022, 2:51 PM
themaguffin themaguffin is offline
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Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
This is interesting - seven members of OPDC's board resigned due to conflicts with Wanda Wilson.

The subtext I'm getting here is they're pissed at the dictatorial, combative, direction she has taken the organization. I am also presuming that the board members resigning are less anti-development, but that is just a supposition at this point.
Seven is pretty significant. At that point, it's a reflection of her.
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  #5362  
Old Posted Jun 20, 2022, 8:14 PM
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Originally Posted by colemonkee View Post
That chapel is beautiful!
Unfortunately the stained glass has been removed, as have the pews. Its still nice, but the chapel doesn't look like that anymore.
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  #5363  
Old Posted Jun 20, 2022, 9:11 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
This is interesting - seven members of OPDC's board resigned due to conflicts with Wanda Wilson.

The subtext I'm getting here is they're pissed at the dictatorial, combative, direction she has taken the organization. I am also presuming that the board members resigning are less anti-development, but that is just a supposition at this point.
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Originally Posted by themaguffin View Post
Seven is pretty significant. At that point, it's a reflection of her.

Yeah 7 people resigning is crazy. Without knowing much about the situation I would have to think that the one individual is at fault rather that a group of 7 other unrelated individuals.
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  #5364  
Old Posted Jun 21, 2022, 12:52 PM
dfiler dfiler is offline
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Larimer-Homewood Multimodal Greenway Extension

I biked to bakery square for beer and food recently and decided to check out the diagonal railroad tracks between there and the busway entrance on fifth ave. That's where a new road and bike path are planned. Great news, construction is already underway! The tracks are being removed and there is construction fencing with project renders.

The goal is to reduce traffic at the intersectino of penn and fifth. People coming up washington blvd will now have a way to get to the bakery square parking garage without needing drive on penn ave. That part doesn't interest me as much as the rest.

A pedestrian/bike bridge is being built over the busway to connect bakery square to larimer! There will also be a protected bike lane connecting the intersection of mcpherson blvd and fifth ave with bakery square. This completes a few missing connectors to the bike network. Combined with the planned reworking of mellon park, lot's of neighborhoods are about to be better connected for cycling.

Older pdf of the project:
https://static1.squarespace.com/stat...l+Greenway.pdf

Vague article:
https://triblive.com/local/project-t...bakery-square/

Edit: The article incorrectly references a 1.5 mile long connector. However, the repurposed railroad route is only 1000ft long. The whole route behind bakery square, including existing driveways on both ends, totals less than a quarter mile.

Last edited by dfiler; Jun 21, 2022 at 2:13 PM.
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  #5365  
Old Posted Jun 21, 2022, 12:59 PM
seaswan seaswan is offline
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Originally Posted by dfiler View Post
Larimer-Homewood Multimodal Greenway Extension

I biked to bakery square for beer and food recently and decided to check out the diagonal railroad tracks between there and the busway entrance on fifth ave. That's where a new road and bike path are planned. Great news, construction is already underway! The tracks are being removed and there is construction fencing with project renders.

The goal is to reduce traffic at the intersectino of penn and fifth. People coming up washington blvd will now have a way to get to the bakery square parking garage without needing drive on penn ave. That part doesn't interest me as much as the rest.

A pedestrian/bike bridge is being built over the busway to connect bakery square to larimer! There will also be a protected bike lane connecting the intersection of mcpherson blvd and fifth ave with bakery square. This completes a few missing connectors to the bike network. Combined with the planned reworking of mellon park, lot's of neighborhoods are about to be better connected for cycling.

Older pdf of the project:
https://static1.squarespace.com/stat...l+Greenway.pdf

Vague article:
https://triblive.com/local/project-t...bakery-square/
I think I misread OP. Looks like the PDF is older. Hopefully we get the bike path!

Last edited by seaswan; Jun 21, 2022 at 1:07 PM. Reason: misread
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  #5366  
Old Posted Jun 21, 2022, 2:26 PM
dfiler dfiler is offline
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Originally Posted by seaswan View Post
I think I misread OP. Looks like the PDF is older. Hopefully we get the bike path!
The project renders on the construction fences say "8-foot-wide protected two-way bicycle lane". I think that extends from rainbow street to the bakery square driveway. However, it appears that both of those might have sharrows.

Also, with more careful reading, i don't think the bridge is actually happening or at least not yet.
"New pedestrian crossing from future Larimer Bridge Connection"
So perhaps the current project/funding doesn't include the bridge over the busway."
I wouldn't be surprised if the bridge ended up costing as much as the rest of the project. A bridge over a doublestack rail line won't be cheap.

Edit: Yep, the bridge will cost $25 million. However, I haven't found anything about funding being secured.

Last edited by dfiler; Jun 22, 2022 at 12:33 PM.
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  #5367  
Old Posted Jun 22, 2022, 11:39 PM
eschaton eschaton is offline
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6/28 planning commission presentation is now online. There are three new items on the agenda, but two of them have very little information available.

1. Historic nomination of 412 Boulevard of the Allies. This has gone before the HRC in the past (it's the former Art Institute building). The HRC had a pretty detailed presentation, so I'm surprised it's such a stub here. No real disagreements with this.

2. An expansion of the Murray Hill historic district. Again, this has gone before the HRC in great detail, which makes it surprising there's just a single photo here.

3. The only real presentation is façade restoration of 239 Fort Pitt Boulevard. The presentation notes that the façade is far more intact than its "twin" at 235. It seems the changes they desire are pretty minor, amounting to a change in color scheme.
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  #5368  
Old Posted Jun 24, 2022, 10:30 PM
eschaton eschaton is offline
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Two ZBA agendas are now up. The things I miss while on vacation.

7/7 items of note:

1. Infill house in Upper Lawrenceville. Pretty bland/generic modern design. I've seen far uglier, but the blankness of the façade (just one big window upstairs, door/garage door below) makes it hard for me to "read it" as being a house

2. Plans for a new basketball court for South Side Works. This is fitting with the redesign of the complex to be more of a full-service neighborhood with amenities for local residents, and away from a destination retail/office park.

Also worth noting the final sign permits for the Downtown Target are going in. I walk by the site a lot for work (work on Smithfield now, and take the bus from Smithfield) and it's clear the internal work is done and when I last passed by last week they were stocking shelves, so it's opening seems to be immanent.

And 7/14:

1. Three infill houses in Larimer. This is the location. Thankfully the developers are using alley access, with detached garages, and not marring the fronts of the planned houses. It's hard to tell how it will look in the final designs from the crude schematics, but I don't like what's being done with the windows on the front façade, where the second floor is a symmetrical course of three, but the third story has a "great window" and a smaller window (for a bathroom?) set higher than the rest. The fourth story rooftop decks hidden behind the mansards make me think these are not affordable housing, which is a bit surprising (I thought Larimer was a few years yet away from market-rate new construction).
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  #5369  
Old Posted Jun 28, 2022, 2:34 PM
eschaton eschaton is offline
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The July HRC presentation is now online. It's a fairly long agenda, though most of the individual projects are not worth much in terms of remark. Perhaps the only exception is a request for a partial demolition in Manchester on Chateau Street. This is a condemned building held by the owner of La Prima, which has a roasting facility on the next block. Modifying initial plans to demolish the property entirely, they are now willing to stabilize the front brick portion if the frame rear ell can be demolished. The more interesting part is their longer term plan, which involves working with nearby URA-owned vacant lots. This will create something of a mini-complex for the nearby facility, with workforce housing, an alley-facing workspace/storage facility, additional parking, and two gardens flanking the house on Chateau Street. While it's a pretty low utilization of an area which at one point contained five houses, when viewed in concert with a plan also moving forward to restore the home on the corner (which isn't actually collapsing, but is currently blighted and needs a full gut restore) the block could transition from mostly blighted to mostly restored within a few years.
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  #5370  
Old Posted Jun 28, 2022, 3:04 PM
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Oh, and look what I found - the first renderings of first phase of Walnut Capital's new Oakland development - the 426-unit apartment building, with a 438 space garage, a 33,000 square-foot grocery store, and two additional retail spaces with a total of 8,000 square feet on a plaza raised up from Zulema Street.

The design is tailor made to fit under all of the new zoning requirements which have been negotiated (green buffer on the Coltart side, fits the new height requirements, 10% affordable units, etc.). Compared to the existing building, it does go further back on Halket, but there's a "residential plaza" with a small amount of surface parking, along with a single story lobby, which means there is something of a density transition rather than an abrupt rise.

I do have to say while the design looks sharp from Zulema and Boulevard of the Allies, it's a bit uglier from other directions. The view coming down Halket is frankly awful, though of course that block of Halket is slated to eventually be cleared for another apartment building. The view from Coltart is as good as it could be given it's the back side of the building and the garage is visible, but I'm sure the NIMBYS will have a cow.
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  #5371  
Old Posted Jun 28, 2022, 3:38 PM
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^ I've come to truly hate these DC-style mega-block buildings.


Also, that garage-top pool will probably be in shade most of the day.
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  #5372  
Old Posted Jun 28, 2022, 4:12 PM
eschaton eschaton is offline
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Originally Posted by pj3000 View Post
^ I've come to truly hate these DC-style mega-block buildings.
At least they break up the massing/coloration a bit, so it reads more like two separate buildings than a single one.

I feel like in general though a bit too much emphasis was given to the view on Boulevard of the Allies, considering there's the possibility that McGee fills in that surface lot on the corner one day and largely obscures the building from that direction. On the other hand, the westbound view from Zulema is likely "forever," given there is near zero chance of Coltart ever being upzoned. I feel like that's probably a much more important view corridor to get right.

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Originally Posted by pj3000 View Post
Also, that garage-top pool will probably be in shade most of the day.
That's not entirely a bad thing on 90+ summer days.

I do wish they'd reduce the amount of parking a bit. With one less floor of parking, the garage would be more-or-less obscured from Coltart, and garage-top deck will pretty much align with the roofs on that street.
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  #5373  
Old Posted Jun 29, 2022, 1:27 PM
eschaton eschaton is offline
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City Council approved the zoning changes Walnut Capital needs to move along Oakland Crossings 8-1. Deb Gross was the only no vote.

Interestingly, they modified the strictures that the Planning Commission put on the development slightly, allowing buildings with a grocery store to increase from 400 to 425 feet. I believe with that change the new building which has been unveiled is totally "by right" and there's really no way that Oakland NIMBYs can block the project.
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  #5374  
Old Posted Jun 29, 2022, 2:44 PM
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Austinlee Austinlee is offline
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^Wow, the massing looks huge in those first few drawings. Makes the Skyvue and Empire recent apartment buildings look like a warm up.
I wonder if they submitted buildings as large as possible so if/when neighborhood groups give push back they can scale down a bit?
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  #5375  
Old Posted Jun 29, 2022, 4:59 PM
eschaton eschaton is offline
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Originally Posted by Austinlee View Post
^Wow, the massing looks huge in those first few drawings. Makes the Skyvue and Empire recent apartment buildings look like a warm up.
I wonder if they submitted buildings as large as possible so if/when neighborhood groups give push back they can scale down a bit?
The building is now allowed by right under zoning, but they'll still have to get the design past the Planning Commission...and we know they're going to at least throw some conditions for approval up.
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  #5376  
Old Posted Jul 3, 2022, 5:38 PM
themaguffin themaguffin is offline
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I know this is a random comment on FB, but does anyone know what this person is talking about...? ("Ronald Krause")


https://www.facebook.com/pittsburghp...83698033134800
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  #5377  
Old Posted Jul 4, 2022, 4:31 PM
wpipkins2 wpipkins2 is offline
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Originally Posted by themaguffin View Post
I know this is a random comment on FB, but does anyone know what this person is talking about...? ("Ronald Krause")


https://www.facebook.com/pittsburghp...83698033134800
I just read about the preservation plans for the property PNC purchased across from the new HQ. It did not include the large CVS building on Forbes / Fifth. Two of the mid block Wood Street buildings are not worth saving. It would be awesome for a 700 to 800 foot tower to rise in that location.
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  #5378  
Old Posted Jul 5, 2022, 1:55 AM
GeneW GeneW is offline
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I think the era of new office buildings being built downtown is probably for for good or at least for a long time.
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  #5379  
Old Posted Jul 5, 2022, 4:30 AM
wpipkins2 wpipkins2 is offline
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I think the era of new office buildings being built downtown is probably for for good or at least for a long time.
I think the exception would be a large financial institution. PNC may feel the need to modernize and upgrade considering 1 PNC Plaza is dated.
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  #5380  
Old Posted Jul 5, 2022, 2:00 PM
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Is PNC even planning to bring their full workforce back into the towers they already have? If anything, I'd think they'd be consolidating into the newest towers. I know they are still rapidly expanding, but I'm not sure post-pandemic that it will translate into desks downtown.
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