Category Archive: City Living
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Seattle can identify with Pittsburgh’s Plan C
By Dave Copeland
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, April 4, 2002As Pittsburgh officials begin to move forward with a Downtown redevelopment plan that won’t allow them to use eminent domain, developers in Seattle say the task will be difficult, but not impossible.
Seattle civic leaders reversed the decline of the Pacific Northwest city’s downtown retail core in a state that prohibits the use of eminent domain for redevelopment projects. It was one of the cities mentioned by Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy on Tuesday, when he announced he would move forward with the Plan C Task Force proposal for Downtown redevelopment while attempting not to use eminent domain.“I would encourage you to go look at other cities in America, because you can see the good of what can happen and the bad of what can happen,” Murphy said. “There are areas in Seattle that looked very similar to Fifth and Forbes five or seven years ago that have been completely rejuvenated.”
Downtown Seattle is one of the projects that city planners and private developers love to cite when they talk about urban business districts that work. The city redeveloped three blocks, putting in more than 1 million square feet of new retail space from 1996-98. The development, known as Pacific Place, sparked an urban renaissance of sorts.
The retail-heavy redevelopment led to new housing space, new office space, a more vibrant cultural district and an expanded convention center.
“I think the best thing is that at almost any time of the day — not just on normal weekdays, but on Saturdays and Sundays and weekday evenings — you can walk out on Pine Street and see all these bobbing heads,” said Matt Griffin, one of the key developers in Seattle’s downtown redevelopment effort. “It reminds me of walking out on a street in New York City. People are coming to downtown Seattle.”
Griffin and three partners formed Pine Street Associates in 1993 to begin working on the plan.
At the time, retail was dying downtown. The historic Frederick & Nelson department store closed in 1992, and two years later L. Magnin followed. Nordstrom Inc., the national retailer based in Seattle, was threatening to move its flagship store and corporate headquarters to Seattle’s suburbs.
Pine Street Associates put together a plan to buy the old F&N store and trade it to Nordstrom for their smaller store and an adjacent building Nordstrom was using for office space. In addition to rebuilding a parking garage, the plan called for Pine Street Associates to refurbish the old Nordstrom store and fill it with retail and office tenants.
Griffin acknowledges that despite only having four major property owners to deal with, acquiring the property for the three-block redevelopment effort was difficult without having eminent domain.
“One or two property owners can hold out and you end up paying too much,” Griffin said. “We really only had to deal with four property owners, and we clearly ended up paying at the high end of our range.”
Where Griffin and his partners only had to conduct negotiations with four property owners, Pittsburgh officials are eyeing a redevelopment area that has more than 60 individual property owners. While not all of the properties need to be acquired, and some of the substantial property owners are already backing the Plan C Task Force proposal, Pittsburgh officials concede acquiring all the property will be difficult.
“I believe it will be difficult, and I think finding a developer willing to go forward without eminent domain will be difficult,” Urban Redevelopment Authority Executive Director Mulugetta Birru said. “But the mayor is very adamant that he doesn’t want to use eminent domain.”
Without eminent domain, the developers used corporate investments, such as Nordstrom’s commitment to stay in downtown Seattle, to convince property owners to join the plan. The redevelopment has been successful not because it offers many options that can’t be found in suburban shopping malls, but because it offers several options in a single place, Griffin said.
“You’ll never find the fabric we have downtown in a suburban shopping center. It’s not a question of just having national stores and being able to see ‘A Beautiful Mind.’ It’s being able to see the symphony or visit the arts center as well,” Griffin said. “Those things will never be replicated in a shopping mall. We both have great stores, but it’s the idea of having all these things come together.”
Dave Copeland can be reached at dcopeland@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7922.
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Downtown welcomes Plan C’s apartments
By Sam Spatter
FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, March 9, 2002The proposal to add 480 new apartments Downtown as part of Plan C is welcome news to members of the Downtown Neighborhood Association and the estimated 5,000 people who call that section of the city home.
Through the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority, a number of initiatives have been put in place to encourage developers to convert some of the older, vacant or underused buildings into apartments.The most recent opening was the 117-unit Penn Garrison Apartments in the 900 block of Penn Avenue, where two former office buildings have been converted by the Regional Industrial Development Corp. into residences.
Approximately 30 of those units have been leased, including all of the larger loft apartments.
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Fifth-Forbes New Plan
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation has served as a member of the Plan C Task Force appointed by the Mayor to develop a new plan for the downtown central retail area, the plan was released on March 10th. We issue the following statements in support of the plan prepared by Hunter Associates, the consultant:
1. We feel the Hunter plan largely substantiates the Eckstut plan that we submitted two years ago and adds some useful new ingredients with the proposed hotel/condominium and the move of the public market to Murphy’s.
2. The Hunter plan also calls for purchase of properties, or in lieu of cash participation by building owners in the plan on an equity basis, something we advocated with the Eckstut plan.
3. We have learned that if URA is to be involved, eminent domain must be on the table legally. There is no way around it.
4. We believe the improvement of downtown retail offerings must be accompanied by significant housing, new and loft, specialty office space, hotel, public market and parking. The Hunter recommendations include those.
5. Negotiations that entail cash acquisitions will be carried out with eminent domain in the legal background because we understand that it will alleviate capital gain taxes for the property owners and enable them to obtain more money than fair market value for their buildings at perhaps 120%. That is the fairest route for the property owners; otherwise if the plan does not go forward the value of their buildings will probably go down.
Eminent domain is part of the required legal system affecting redevelopment authorities under Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Law, but it is not to be used as a threatening tool here, but rather as a financial tool to the benefit of the property owners.
6. Therefore we support the plan and Hunter’s recommendations on the basis that all property owners whose properties are needed for the execution of the plan will be offered cash sale or various ways to participate in the plan rather than accept cash acquisition if they wish it and may benefit financially if URA is the agent of acquisition.
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Task force backs eminent domain
By Dave Copeland
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, March 8, 2002A blueprint to redevelop much of Downtown, unveiled Thursday, calls on Mayor Tom Murphy to abandon his pledge not to use eminent domain.
The Plan C Task Force development strategy proposes a $360 million overhaul of Fifth-Forbes, including a hotel tucked between Market Square and Liberty Avenue, and retail, housing, office and entertainment space. Financing for the plan would include $51.5 million in public money, $39.5 million from corporate and philanthropic investment and $264 million in private investment.Highlights of the plan:
A 600-room hotel with 100 luxury condominiums on top of the hotel tower.
Up to 580 market-rate apartments.
A “shopping experience” in an open-space market to be built in the G.C. Murphy building, similar to Faneuil Hall in Boston.
Formed to build consensus on redevelopment proposals for the Fifth-Forbes corridor, the task force could not reach a consensus on eminent domain — a major sticking point in Murphy’s original plan. Some task force members continue to oppose its use. The report did not say which members favored using eminent domain, or how much of a majority of the 13-member body endorsed it.In a written statement, Murphy said he would take the committee’s report under review. He did not mention eminent domain.
The task force was formed in November 2000 after Murphy’s redevelopment plan fell apart. The plan called for the demolition of up to 62 buildings, one reason historic preservationists criticized it.
Cathy McCollom, a spokeswoman for the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation and a member of the task force, said the Plan C proposal was similar to a plan the foundation put together in 1999 as an alternative to Murphy’s plan.
Like the foundation plan, the Plan C proposal calls for more preservation of historic buildings and facades and has a strong housing component.
“The mayor’s plan was a demolition plan, but in this plan, a lot more buildings are retained,” McCollom said. “We’re pleased that preservation has remained a significant issue.”
Unlike Murphy’s original plan, the Plan C proposal includes residential and hotel components designed to bring more people who would support more businesses Downtown. The report notes that the strategy looks to combine local and national retailers.
Meanwhile, the Institute for Justice, a Washington, D.C., watchdog group that fights eminent domain, announced it would hold a news conference in Pittsburgh this morning. Scott Bullock, a senior attorney with the institute, said the group would make the same pledge it made during the debate over Murphy’s first plan: to defend Downtown property owners against eminent domain abuse.
“We are, of course, extremely disappointed that the task force has made the recommendation to use eminent domain,” Bullock said.
Bernie Lynch, a task force member who does not want to use eminent domain, originally called the institute to Pittsburgh. Lynch declined comment yesterday.
An e-mail sent by Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership Executive Director Mariann Geyer to partnership board members said that she had been told it could be several days or weeks before the mayor comments on the plan.
Geyer said in the memo that the partnership would work to implement the plan but would not take a stand on eminent domain because it “is not a decision for the PDP to make.”
If Murphy accepts the redevelopment strategy, the next step would be to issue a request for proposals to interested developers.
Any plan would need to be approved by several city bodies, including the planning commission, the Historic Review Commission, the Urban Redevelopment Authority and, finally, City Council.
Much of the report is based on the work of Don Hunter, an urban economist the task force hired last year. Yesterday’s release included a Feb. 26 memo from Hunter where he outlined 12 alternatives to eminent domain, while acknowledging he preferred using eminent domain as a course of last resort.
Hunter’s alternatives included negotiated sales, land swaps, leasing arrangements and partnerships.
Dave Copeland can be reached at dcopeland@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7922.
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Mayor says eminent domain possible
By Dave Copeland
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, March 2, 2002Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy said Friday eminent domain would have to be used for Downtown redevelopment plans if property owners refuse to sell their property at reasonable prices.
“We obviously would like to move forward working cooperatively with the existing owners in the Fifth-Forbes corridor,” Murphy said. “I did take (eminent domain) off the table and my preference is to not use it.“But we also have to face the reality about the expectations that some people have of what their buildings are worth.”
Murphy could receive a proposal for redeveloping the Fifth-Forbes corridor from the Plan C Task Force as early as Thursday. The plan is expected to include eminent domain, breaking a pledge Murphy made to take the controversial redevelopment tool off the table when the task force was formed in November 2000.
The task force was formed to build consensus on redeveloping the Downtown when Murphy’s own plan fell apart. Known as Market Place at Fifth & Forbes, Murphy’s plan was criticized for its use of eminent domain, the relocation of local merchants to make way for national retailers and the leveling of up to 62 Downtown buildings.
City Council would have final approval over any plan presented for redeveloping Downtown. The plan also would go before the Urban Redevelopment Authority, the planning commission and the historic review commission.“I wouldn’t support it, because I don’t believe in taking private property. There are incentive programs that can help that area,” Councilman Alan Hertzberg said. “You give people incentives to do things — you don’t force people to turn over their property.”
Hertzberg, Councilmen Jim Ferlo and Bob O’Connor were the only consistent opponents on council to Murphy’s original redevelopment plan. O’Connor, who brokered a relocation deal with Vento’s Pizza Shop in East Liberty so the city could avoid using eminent domain to build a Home Depot, said the city should work on relocating private business owners along the Fifth-Forbes corridor.
“I don’t see the necessity,” O’Connor said. “You have to give everybody a fair deal, and if you’re doing things right with the plan, every business owner should want to be a part of it.”
Council President Gene Ricciardi said eminent domain should be used with caution.
“It needs to be a tool of last resort,” he said. “I really believe if you work in an honest fashion with all of the property owners, and if all of the property owners would benefit from the plan, I don’t see a need for eminent domain because people would naturally buy into it.”
Councilman William Peduto, who wasn’t on council in 2000 when Murphy’s plan divided the body, said he doesn’t support using eminent domain to transfer property from one private owner to another.
“But I do not rule out using eminent domain when it’s one person who is trying to stop the entire project or trying to get rich,” Peduto said. “You have to use common sense in the process.”
Councilwoman Barbara Burns said she doesn’t necessarily oppose eminent domain, but acknowledged it can be a hardship for business and property owners who are forced to relocate.
“I’m not surprised that eminent domain has re-emerged in the discussion. And I’m not inherently opposed to it. I just believe it should be done with a lot of thought,” Burns said. “I believe Fifth and Forbes is blighted, so I’m pleased there is a Plan C working to get something done.”
Dave Copeland can be reached at dcopeland@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7922.
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Eminent domain may be back in Downtown plans
By Dave Copeland
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, March 1, 2002Plans to redevelop Downtown could include the use of eminent domain, despite repeated promises by Mayor Tom Murphy that the controversial tool had been “taken off the table.”
The Plan C Task Force hopes to present a final draft of a sweeping redevelopment strategy for Downtown Pittsburgh to Murphy on Thursday. Task force members have been working under a mandate not to discuss the plan publicly. Details have been kept under wraps, with task force members saying only that it will include retail, housing and office space, and will try to leverage development off of the existing Downtown department stores.Eminent domain is expected to be part of the final plan, according to three people who have seen it. The controversial government power would be used if private property owners declined to sell their buildings and land to the city in negotiated sales.
The task force was formed in November 2000 after Murphy’s own Downtown redevelopment plan fell apart. Known as Market Place at Fifth & Forbes, Murphy’s plan was criticized for its use of eminent domain, the relocation of local merchants to make way for national retailers and the leveling of as many as 62 Downtown buildings.
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A landmark himself, Kidney remains devoted to city’s architecture
By Patricia Lowry,
Post-Gazette architecture critic
Wednesday, February 27, 2002You have to envy Walter Kidney’s commute.
Monday through Friday, he leaves his seventh-floor Grandview Avenue apartment, walks across the street to the Monongahela Incline and, when he gets to the bottom, crosses the street to his Station Square office. That’s living — city living, and Kidney, architectural historian at Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, wouldn’t have it any other way.
“You sort of miss things like trees and so on because you’re above them,” he said in his down-to-earth office at One Station Square, stacked with plat books dating to 1889 showing how Pittsburgh evolved from farmland to dense neighborhoods. “But it’s a very nice outlook and a real surprise up there. You realize how the relationship of things to one another spatially is so different. You find that things are a few degrees off from where you think they ought to be.”
Kidney, who moved to his perch on Grandview last fall, has lived on Mount Washington since 1978, when he took up permanent residence here after moving in and out of the city most of his life.
Late last month, when he celebrated his 70th birthday over lunch with a group of friends and colleagues at the Grand Concourse, Kidney officially became a Pittsburgh historic landmark — so proclaimed the citation presented to him by PHLF’s executive director, Louise Sturgess.
Over more than 20 years, Kidney has written five books about Pittsburgh buildings, rivers and bridges, but the road to honorary landmark status was anything but direct.
Born in Johnstown, he moved with his family to Philadelphia in 1942, where his father had taken a job teaching Latin and English. For many years, he spent summers at his grandmother’s rooming house in Oakland, a big, circa-1900, red brick place at the corner of Fifth and Lothrop where “there was always space for her children and their wives.”
He was about 8 years old, he remembers, when he noticed an Ionic capital on someone’s porch.
“I thought there must be such a thing as architecture,” he said. Later, “I went to the [Oakland] Carnegie Library and looked at the doorway facing the Magee memorial. At that point I knew that there was such a thing as architecture, and I really liked it.”
Although he considered studying art history at Haverford College, he chose philosophy, and after graduation he took a job in New York writing definitions for the Random House dictionary, for terms related to architecture, art history, Oriental religions, engineering, technology and philosophy.
Then, through a college classmate, he found a job as a writer on the staff of Progressive Architecture magazine. Pennsylvania was part of his beat, and through it, in the late 1960s, he met PHLF co-founders Arthur Ziegler and James D. Van Trump, when he wrote a story on Pittsburgh’s architecture and nascent preservation movement.
But after two years, he and the magazine parted company: “You know I was too old-fashioned for them, really.”
It was, after all, the eclectic architecture of the Oakland civic center and the Colonial, Greek Revival and Victorian buildings of Philadelphia that had shaped the man.
But the experience led to what Kidney calls “a crisis in conscience.”
“I wanted to write something that might settle my own mind about eclecticism” — buildings inspired by historical or contemporary styles from other countries and eras. “I was feeling rather guilty and shallow about liking these things because they’re a masquerade. I decided I wanted to be a modernist, but did I really want to reject all this eclectic stuff?”
In 1974, New York publisher George Braziller brought out Kidney’s “The Architecture of Choice: Eclecticism in America 1880-1930.” In it, he explores why the eclectics built the way they did — partly as a reaction to the overwrought Victorian styles — and how they were trumped by the modernists.
In the end, “The more I thought about it, the more I thought modern architecture was sort of a Barmecide feast,” Kidney said.
Hmmm, spoken like a lexicographer. What kind of feast?
“It’s a byword for plenty of nothing. I’ve never understood why people get thrilled by Louis Kahn, for instance,” although he does admire the work of Frank Lloyd Wright.
After a brief sojourn back to Pittsburgh, writing a how-to book on historic preservation for Ziegler, Kidney moved to Connecticut in 1976 to edit dictionaries for publisher Laurence Urdang. Then it was back to Pittsburgh two years later for a writing and editing job with the now-defunct Pittsburgher magazine. When a new editor decided stories should be written in the New Journalism style, he once again moved on — this time to a stable position with PHLF. He free-lanced for about a decade before joining the staff in the late 1980s.
His long-awaited current project — “Hornbostel in Pittsburgh” — is expected to be published in October, documenting 70 projects Henry Hornbostel designed between 1904 and 1939, from the Carnegie Tech campus to a house in Monroeville. Kidney has been at it for more than a decade.
“It’s been a long, long time. I started working on that in 1990. It was held back [from publication]. We had other things to do, and you have to raise money for these things.
“Hornbostel’s works have a touch of brilliance that you don’t find in other people’s. It’s not so much the grandiose beaux-arts stuff that you find in other architects but a certain verve and wit and grandeur. For instance, you have this big corridor in the City-County Building, and the glass ends, where people look like they’re walking by in thin air.”
Next, he hopes to write a book about eclecticism in Pittsburgh.
“I’d like to write about some of the brilliant stuff we have here, because it’s regarded as superficial,” he said. “I’m thinking of calling it ‘Dressed for the Occasion.’ ”
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Revitalize city by building on its natural strengths
By Jack Markowitz
FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, January 6, 2002Here are some old ideas for improving the business situation in downtown Pittsburgh, especially in the so-called Forbes-Fifth Corridor.
You read it right. Old ideas, not new ideas. Cheap ideas, too, mostly.A public-private committee is working at this moment on ways to reinvigorate the central business district of Pittsburgh, after several renaissances that haven’t quite cut it. Before January is over, we are told, a so-called “Plan C” ought to be in front of Mayor Tom Murphy and other decision makers. Plans A and B for one reason or another misfired. No disgrace that. Everybody is well advised to keep at it.
Well, here is a guess that Plan C will click if it includes:
Making several blocks of either Fifth Avenue or Forbes Avenue, at long last, into a pedestrian mall. That is, an open-air place for exclusive use by people on foot, in wheelchairs, and baby buggies, from wall to wall of the building lines, nothing but people. Vehicular traffic would be banned.
This is a very old idea and there have always been obstacles to its realization. Yet in a fair number of cities such a pedestrian-dedicated thoroughfare works very well. It creates a special sort of urban delight as well as being good for business.There is a temptation to expand on these virtues, but first some additional inputs to Plan C:
The beautification of downtown’s southern backdrop: that is, the high cliff wall of Mt. Washington and Duquesne Heights.
Here is an immense garden-in-waiting. It was at least 50 years ago that the late Gilbert Love, a columnist for The Pittsburgh Press, proposed planting it with thousands of shrubs and trees (even as the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy now does so nicely with more level bits of public real estate). Horticulturally the mountain wall would be timed to blossom at varying intervals March through October, creating a natural curtain of modulating colors to please the downtown eye. Along about November, true, the escarpment would revert to wintry drab. But only by day. Multi-hued lights, as at Niagara Falls, might play over the craggy face at night. Think of the statement that a wall of shimmering reds, whites, and blues might be making right now, for instance.Mt. Washington could be exploited even more, as a kind of “vertical park.” A steep pathway, lighted by night, with park benches along the route, would be a challenge to hikers from bottom to top. Lunchtime joggers downtown, already a hardy breed, could cross a bridge, “do” Mt. Washington and get back before the first afternoon appointment. Where else in America?
By all means, when it’s time to paint them again, let’s have a different color for every bridge in the city. We’d feature a rainbow of river crossings, as proposed some time back by the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation. And why not illuminate all those bridges, too, a favorite idea of the late Pittsburgh stalwart Walter F. Toerge? Strings of light bulbs playing on vari-colored arches and trusses above and reflected in the rivers below. Talk about pretty.
Tax incentives ought to reward the voluntary painting, cleaning or repair of downtown building facades. Architectural beauty is a king of public benefit. And it would spur more residential living downtown, already a well-advanced goal.
Possibly no big city mayor has more correctly emphasized cleaning up the litter problem than Tom Murphy. Whatever it takes – more trash cans, more volunteers, Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, civic, school and religious groups – this is doable and affordable. Why not “the cleanest city in the country?” It’s an honor up for grabs.
But back to the idea of making a pedestrian mall of Fifth or Forbes:The two long blocks between Smithfield Street and Market Street appear the most rundown and vacancy-ridden. Yet they are blessed with the most preservable low-rise buildings. Get the cars, trucks and buses off those blocks (but let them run as now on the Smithfield, Wood, and Market cross-carriers). Let people walk freely, and that’s where they will go.
There is something liberating and cheerful about a busy street without cars. Restaurants likely will put tables out; specialty shops and kiosks will open. This happens along Church Street, which used to carry most north-south vehicular traffic through downtown Burlington, Vt. It happens along charming Washington Street, in Cape May, N.J.; and in any number of European cities, even in a neighborhood of West Los Angeles.
Why hasn’t the idea taken hold here? Political inertia and perceived business risk (“if cars are kept out, will the people come?”). Also, the costs, inconvenience, and transplanted congestion of rerouting public transportation, and the scheduling of truck deliveries in the wee hours of mornings. All these are natural enough concerns.
But the Forbes-Fifth corridor never seemed like such a sore point before. Now it does.
So take it away, Planners C.
Retired business editor Jack Markowitz writes Sundays and Wednesdays. E-mail him at jmarkowitz@tribweb.com.