County Redevelopment Authority OKs $1M In Grants

Allegheny County Map

Allegheny County's Redevelopment Authority has approved almost $1 million in grants to help cultural, educational and recreational institutions carry out major projects.  Those monies will go to:


-  Improvements at the Jewish Community Center in Scott. ($250,000)
   Carpeting and locker room equipment will be replaced.

-  Modernization at the Teamster Temple in Lawrenceville. ($250,000)
   Upgrading of the building's heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems.  Other changes will help make the structure more accessible to people with disabilities.\

-  Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre.  ($200,000)
   Part of a $6 million expansion project for the dance company and its ballet school in Pittsburgh's Strip District.

-  Great Allegheny Passage improvements in McKeesport. ($100,000)
   The new on-street trail will have marked bike lanes along Fifth Avenue, Locust Street and Strawberry Alley.

-  A community center in Penn Hills. ($50,000)
   Improve basketball courts, a playground and sidewalks

-  USS Requin docked outside the Carnegie Science Center on the North Shore. ($125,000)
    Restore the outside of the submarine.


Allegheny County
Carnegie Science Center
Great Allegheny Passage
Jewish Community Center
Lawrenceville
Metro Pittsburgh Real Estate
Penn Hills
Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre

North Side Redevelopment Well On Its Way

North Side's Garden Theater

Throughout the 1990s, one building after another on the Federal Street and North Avenue corridors of the Central Northside (Mexican War Streets) went dark because of the Garden Theater's then-status as a porn movie house.  Now, 23 years after the first effort to declare the corridor blighted for redevelopment, the wheels are starting to turn.   It was almost five years ago that the city's Urban Redevelopment Authority bought the theater for $1.1 million and six years ago that the Supreme Court made its long-awaited decision that exonerated the URA for trying to seize it.

Nakama, a chain of Japanese restaurants, recently completed a lease agreement to open a second Pittsburgh location in the former Masonic Hall beside the Garden Theater.  Between eight and 12 apartments are planned for the upper three floors.  There are arched windows reminiscent of Moorish architecture overlooking Allegheny Commons Park.  This type of building should prove to be premier living space with occupancy expected by summer of 2013.

Franjo Construction Co. has begun to stabilize two small late-19th century buildings at 1113 and 1115 Federal.  The basement beams and floor joists need to be shored up and new roofs need to be installed.
Big beautiful cast iron columns and tin ceiling panels were discovered when the buildings were first cleaned out.

Across the street, Lawrenceville developer Bill Barron has been stabilizing a former hot dog shop for its redevelopment as a proposed taqueria.  Lease agreements for two other restaurants along North Avenue have been signed by owners of the Round Corner Cantina in Lawrenceville and the former Firehouse Lounge in the Strip. There's also interest from a yoga studio and photography studio for the upstairs of the theater itself.

The best-case scenario is there are shovels in the ground by early summer on redevelopment of the adjacent Masonic Hall, Garden Theater and former Apache Lounge.  Philadelphia-based Zukin Realty is redeveloping about a dozen blighted buildings the URA spent more than $5 million amassing since 1994. The buildings are all in the block within Federal, North, Eloise and Reddour streets.
The facade and front half of the Garden Theater, the last nickelodeon-style specimen in the city and one of the last in the country, will be saved.

Parking for 25-30 cars will be carved out behind what remains of the theater. The developers are working on an agreement for additional parking for residents of the Masonic Hall in a 500-space parking garage on Federal.

The first rehabbed retail property in the two corridors was a formerly blighted bar that had been vacant for at least two decades.  As that rehab progressed, a stunning building with iron doorway columns and arched side windows was revealed.  That building is now a Crazy Mocha coffeehouse.  And beside that, an empty building was turned into the Deli on North.

Those two and the ongoing rehabilitation of the former Toula's Hot Dog Shop on Federal have received funds from the URA's Streetface Program.  The momentum began with completion of a new Carnegie Library branch late in 2009 and the rapid sale of 23 Federal Hill townhouses, with 19 more to follow.

The redevelopment of the neighborhood is long-awaited but extremely exciting.  And it is definitely now in high gear.

Metro Pittsburgh Real Estate
Mexican War Streets
North Side

Summer 2012 Groundbreaking For Gardens At Market Square

Artist's rendition of Gardens At Market Square

Washington County developer, Millcraft Industries, plans to break ground on a $76.6 million office and hotel project by midsummer, marking its fourth major redevelopment Downtown.  Millcraft's chief operating officer says the company hopes to have the Gardens at Market Square completed in the first quarter of 2014. The project, located on the south end of Forbes Avenue between Wood Street and Market Square, will feature 95,000 square feet of office space, a 175-room Hilton Garden Inn hotel, 23,000 square feet of retail space, and a 325-space parking garage.

Office and retail portions will hopefully open by December 2013 and the hotel by March 2014.  Two unnamed tenants have already signed up to take half the office space.  Millcraft also will be looking for "destination" type retail, as well as entertainment and restaurants, to fill the retail space.

Metro Pittsburgh Real Estate
Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership

Even Larimer Is Seeing New Development!

Community and Business Leaders (from left to right):  Scott Smith of
East End Brewing, Chris Koch of GTECH, Craig Marcus of
Marcus Studio, and Neil Stauffer of Penn's Corner Farm Alliance.

Lots of surprising developments in Larimer!  Equipment and supplies are being loaded into a warehouse in the 6500 block of Hamilton because Sweet Tammy's Baking Co. is moving in.  Just three months ago, GTECH Strategies moved into their new quarters next door and has already sublet space to Penn's Corner Farm Alliance, a Regional Sustainability Consulting firm.

Scott Smith had no idea when he finally found the right place to expand the East End Brewing Co. that he was getting in on a Larimer wave.  What seems like sudden synergy in Larimer is the payoff from years of tending one vacant lot after another. Nested against East Liberty and Shadyside, Larimer was ripe for a strategy in 2008 after residents, business owners and other advocates finished their neighborhood master plan.

Rob Stephany of the Urban Redevelopment Authority says they ahve been working for the last four to five years on a housing plan for Larimar which will help that neighborhood get a shot at a piece of the new economy that seems to be unfolding in Pittsburgh.  As proposed, it will bring 70-100 units of mixed-income rental to a chunk of land along East Liberty Boulevard to Larimer Avenue and then into the heart of Larimer Avenue to Meadow. There seems to be a market for young new people who aren't afraid of places like Larimer.

Nearby developments in East Liberty and infrastructure improvements, including the $7 million Penn Circle conversion, should have a domino effect in Larimer.

Furniture maker Craig Marcus moved his studio into a Hamilton Avenue warehouse seven years ago and purchased a second warehouse down the street in October. GTECH moved in as the first tenant in April.  GTECH, or Growth Through Energy and Community Health, had filled a large lot on Larimer Avenue with sunflowers to decontaminate the land several years ago. That land is now a community garden a block long. Across Larimer Avenue, another large vacant lot will become an expansion of the "Village Green" that the Larimer Consensus Group conceived during the planning process.


The mayor's office insists that "Larimer's day will come."  Maybe this is the official start.


Larimer
Metro Pittsburgh Real Estate

Good Things Happening In East Liberty!!

Emily & Sten Carlson work on their Borland Green rowhouse.

For many years, Maria Piantanida has been part of a group who had a dream of creating a "co-housing" development in the Metro Pittsburgh area.  A co-housing community is a group of residents who share a lifestyle vision.  And so for many years, Maria and her group kept searching for a place that was suitable or had potential to accommodate them. The group eventually split into those who wanted to build new and those who wanted to be in the city and reuse existing housing.  Maria's group, the "City" group, found exactly what they were looking for in a stretch of (seven) brown-brick rowhouses on Black Street behind Peabody High School.

The rowhouses had been in the process of falling apart when East Liberty Development Inc. bought them out of foreclosure last year. Since then, the agency has assembled eight more residences on the blocks within Borland, Black and Beatty streets as part of a bigger plan.  It was this "bigger plan" that caught the eye of Piantanida's group.  They took the plunge, bought the distressed properties and promptly named their new co-housing community "Borland Green".

The community started ahead of renovations by establishing a garden on a large tract that was remediated by three years of sunflower and canola planted by the non-profit GTECH. The 18,000-square-foot garden lot will be developed to include an orchard and other edible plants. East Liberty Development still owns that land and is working with the city to get title for two more parcels. Maureen Copeland, GTECH's community programs manager and now a Borland Green resident, bought and moved into the most habitable unit in May. Pat Buddemeyer, an original member of the co-housing group, expects work to be done on her unit in October.  Sten and Emily Carlson are other members of the group who presently live in North Point Breeze as they renovate and restore the unit they recently bought.

Piantanida says it was the green space Borland Green had to offer which cinched the deal for the group.  She and her husband live in Churchill and do not have a move-in date yet. "I've lived in [Churchill] for 32 years and hardly know anybody. This is sort of where my heart is now."

What are some of the benfits of "co-housing"?

"Sharing resources so you don't need seven lawnmowers, just one," said Sten Carlson.

"Having someone look out for your house while you're out of town," added Ms. Piantanida. "Another advantage is that elders have support while they pool their resources to get care at home instead of having to go to a nursing home."

These are the staples of what makes co-housing attractive to a growing number of people. Diana Leafe Christian, a national expert on co-housing, said at least 116 communities are established across the country and roughly another 150 are in the stages of finding and purchasing land.

For further details on this exciting project, read the entire Post Gazette article:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11227/1167402-53.stm

PNC To Build Green Downtown Skyscraper

PNC purchased three lots from the Urban Redevelopment Authority, the last in a series of properties needed to build a 40-story, $400 million office tower that will incorporate the latest green building principles.  PNC paid $1.1 million for the three lots and the project is being hailed as evidence of Pittsburgh's progress in the face of national economic woes.

Occupying the three lots now are worn buildings that URA executive director Rob Stephany called some of Downtown's "biggest liabilities." Construction is scheduled to begin next year and be completed by mid-2015. The building will occupy a block on Wood Street in the Fifth and Forbes Avenue corridor and create much-desired temporary and permanent jobs.



Metro Pittsburgh Real Estate
PNC Bank

East Liberty Redevelopment In High Gear

Eastside shopping complex in East Liberty

The renewal and revitalization of East Liberty has progressed bigger, better and faster than anyone could have hoped for.  Home Depot opened the only store located within Pittsburgh city limits in 2000.  Whole Foods opened two years later and became one of the highest grossing stores in the Austin-based chain. Then came the Mosites Co.'s Eastside development, the hipster haven Shadow Lounge and several small, high-end restaurants.  This July, a new Target will open on Penn Avenue just down the street from where Trader Joe's is thriving.

The commercial scene is obviously a success, but residential housing may yet eclipse that accomplishment.  Two homes in the neighborhood are now under agreement for $340,000 each!  Who would have ever thought? Even the guys who helped make that happen -- real estate specialists at East Liberty Development Inc. -- were staggered. The average sales price of a single-family home in the area in 2008 was $75,000.  The average hit $146,000 last year, when ELDI sold a house for $315,000.

For the past seven years, ELDI has been buying abandoned, vacant and liened properties. The portfolio now totals $10 million and accounts for almost 15 percent of the neighborhood's parcels. Payment of liens alone has East Liberty looking more like Shadyside than its neighbors to the east and west on a demographic map.

So what's next on the list?  The agency's target area for renovating and selling homes is East Liberty's historic core ..... Between Penn Circle and Stanton Avenue and Negley and Highland Avenues.  Last week, city and agency officials cut a ribbon at the Boulevard Apartments, a new six-unit building on East Liberty Boulevard and Euclid Avenue. It is solid brick, has hardwood floors, balconies with hand-crafted iron work and energy efficiency that exceeds Energy Star standards.  The agency is also working with developers to turn three existing buildings into market-rate apartments. They include the Highland Building and former YMCA, both in the business district.

The neighborhood agency's strategy is atypical.  Most community development corporations depend on public money and build homes on spec.   The East Liberty group builds for a waiting buyer.
Rather than going to the URA for money to renovate,they use the market and let the flippers take the risk.  They have legal safeguards in place that require the flipper to sell to a homeowner instead of an investor. 

What kind of homeowners have decided to make East Liberty their new home?  New residents include those who moved to Pittsburgh from out of state, some to work for Google and American Eagle, and people who have relocated from other neighborhoods and area suburbs.  After almost a decade of very aggressive work, there is a bona fide market-rate housing market in East Liberty.

Who would have ever thought .....

East Liberty

Metro Pittsburgh Real Estate

Urban Redevelopment Authority