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City sees housing boom
Mike Wereschagin can be reached via e-mail or at 412-320-7900.
Whether they're sick of the daily commute on car-clogged arteries, tired of the upkeep on their sprawling suburban homes or just looking for a livelier living space, empty-nesters and young professionals are flowing back into downtowns across the country. In Pittsburgh, these groups and others are fueling an emerging market of new condominiums and apartments in the region's core.
About 3,300 people live in the city's 0.8 square-mile Downtown, but the success of Downtown housing has prompted developers to plan another 1,200 housing units, which will open within five years, said Patty Burke, program director for the Downtown Living Initiative, a partnership of private foundations and Pittsburgh agencies like the city planning department. In the next 18 months, 761 apartments and condominiums at four sites will be ready for new residents, Burke said.
"There is definitely a trend here," Burke said. "I think you're seeing a lot of people who are moving Downtown are suburban people, and they're just tired of the sameness of suburbs."
Downtown developers such as Eve Picker take a different approach than their suburban counterparts. The buildings are already there -- the challenge is to retool some of these towering structures and turn their office space into something unique and livable.
Picker, owner of No Wall Productions, has been creating loft-style apartments in Pittsburgh for about eight years. Her wide-open floor plans and modern designs have always filled a niche, she said. Over the last couple of years, however, Picker said she's noticed more developers taking notice of Downtown and creating more traditional-styled apartments.
"There are people who want to live in more traditional housing, and people who want to live in something a little different," Picker said.
Polished concrete floors, windows more than 15 feet tall and a spiral staircase or two adorn Picker's apartments in the company's property on the 900 block of Liberty Avenue, for instance. Picker is the first to say it's not something for everybody.
"We provide a very different style of apartment that some people are interested in and some people are not," she said.
Though there are no lawns to mow, gutters to clean or shingles to replace, and city dwellers can often walk to work, but living Downtown has it's own headaches.
"Parking is a little more difficult," Picker said. Pittsburgh, with it's nation-leading 50 percent parking tax, can be an expensive place to store your car. "That's probably the only difficulty."
"You have to be more aware of 'Where do I put my car,'" the Downtown Living Initiative's Burke said. "There's not much you can do to get away from that."
It could cost more than $1,000 a year to keep a car Downtown, Burke said, either as an add-on to the apartment's rent or through a separate lease.
The allure of urban living -- dozens of nearby places at which to eat, spectacular views and living spaces that are impossible to duplicate in suburbia -- is enough to override the parking troubles people face. Places like No Wall's apartments and the Penn Garrison Apartments have done so well that Downtown development is no longer a game for risk-takers and avante garde architects.
Many of the Downtown housing construction projects that began in the last year or so were "financed by third-party lenders," said Aaron Stauber, managing director of Teterboro, N.J.-based Rugby Realty, which is beginning its first conversion of a former commercial building Downtown into residential apartments. Stauber plans to turn the six-story building at 930 Penn Ave. into luxury apartments with as many as three bedrooms, with the idea of luring in people who want to live Downtown but don't want to give up the size of their home's living space.
"This is not some wild-eyed, wacko developer saying, 'Hey, I had an idea last night,'" Stauber said. "There really has been a lot of attention given to this. The numbers work now; that's the end result."
The numbers are working so well, that city government is shifting it's Downtown redevelopment strategy to focus more on attracting more residential space, said Burke. The rationale is, the businesses won't have to be attracted to Downtown with taxpayer subsidies if there are enough people to support them.
"It's a real leapfrog affect," said Burke, who plans to make an announcement soon on a grocer that her group enticed to set up shop Downtown. "You get a grocery store, then you'll get more people, then you'll get more bookstores, then you'll get more people."
The lack of a grocery store was the number one complaint on a survey of people who live or want to live Downtown, Burke said. Still, grocery stores are available right across the rivers, such as the North Shore and South Side Giant Eagle supermarkets. Though she wouldn't say who the vendor was who will be moving into Downtown, she said it's "not necessarily a supermarket. They're more of a neighborhood grocer."
The area's geography hems in Pittsburgh's Downtown, making it smaller than those of other cities, Burke said. Denver's, for example, is two square miles, while the Golden Triangle is only 0.8 square miles. As more people move into the heart of the city, Pittsburgh's definition of Downtown could expand with its population.
"We now have this term: Greater Downtown," Burke said. "That could mean the North Shore, the lower Hill District, the Strip District, maybe the South Side. Some people said Downtown is wherever you can walk. Well, you could walk from Station Square to the stadiums if you wanted to. It would probably take you 15 or 20 minutes."
