Turning something old into something new in Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh is making older buildings new again.

 

South Hills High School opened its doors on Mt. Washington in 1917 and closed them in 1986.  The sprawling structure sat vacant for more than twenty years, during which time the Mt. Washington Community Development Corp. replaced the building’s roof and otherwise kept it stable.   A developer finally purchased the building from Pittsburgh Public Schools in 2006 and thanks to the keen eye of architects Rothschild Doyno Collaborative and Thoughtful Balance, it has been reincarnated as South Hills Retirement Residence, 106 units of senior housing with space for community assets such as a day care facility.  The project was recently awarded LEED Gold certification accruing to a mix of co-generation and solar photo-voltaic panels that provide 70% of the building’s power, among other sustainable features.
The South Hills project is a shining example of adaptive reuse, or the re-purposing of older properties for a use other than their original design.  Taking this route can be cheaper than new development, and financing for these projects is often easier to secure.  Pittsburgh is filled with older buildings eager to be re-imagined including office buildings with a prime downtown address and schools whose architectural pedigree has placed them on the National Register of Historic Places. 
Projects currently underway in the city include the RiverVue Apartments, 218 rental units in the former State Office Building that boast Point State Park as their front yard, and the expansion of 31st Street Studios, hulking former brick and metal warehouses that are morphing, Transformer-like, into Hollywood East in the shadow of the 31st Street Bridge.
Who are the next best candidates for adaptive reuse in Pittsburgh?  It all starts downtown at the James H. Reed Building on Sixth Avenue, former headquarters of the Reed Smith law firm.  The building’s elegant entrance screams “hotel!” and who better to do the retrofit than Kimpton Hotels, masters of adaptive reuse?  Imagine “Hotel Monaco” over the doorway and a jewel-toned lobby acting as the living room lounge urbanites crave.  Around the corner is the Henry W. Oliver Building designed by architect Daniel Burnham and close by is the Union Trust Building, whose stunning mansard roof commemorates the cathedral that formerly stood in its place.  Both structures are woefully underutilized and if commercial isn’t the answer, perhaps they’re prime for downtown residential?
Then there’s the question of downtown retail, which has been debated for decades.  Lord & Taylor kept shop in the former Mellon National Bank Building on Smithfield but that structure has been vacant since 2003, and Saks Fifth Avenue has exited its shiny black cube across the street. 
Is it time for the city to rethink large-scale urban retail in favor of cultural attractions?  It’s no secret that business is booming at the Benedum.  Even so, not everyone agrees.  “The mayor is committed to marketing as many properties as he can at the upcoming shopping center conference in Las Vegas,” says Robert Rubinstein, director of economic development for the Urban Redevelopment Authority.  “If owners throw their property into the mix, the city can market a collection of shopping spaces.  Retailers want to come in a pack.”
Eager to revive a one-time cultural gem is Marimba Milliones of the Hill Community Development Corp., which owns the New Granada Theater on Centre Avenue where Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and Cab Calloway once played.  The 1927 Art Deco building possesses National Landmark status and has already undergone a stabilization process.  Its next act awaits.  “From a regional standpoint, it’s one of the hottest reuse options available,” according to Milliones.

 

Read more: http://keystoneedge.com/features/pittsburghadaptivereuse0405.aspx

Energy firms looking to Downtown for office space

Great news for Pittsburgh! Energy firms such as Chevron, Shell and Exxon are looking for office space downtown.

While most oil and gas interests have settled in the suburbs, some may now be casting an eye to the Golden Triangle as space in places like Cranberry and Southpointe gets tighter and tighter.

One major corporation, Chevron, is said to be considering Downtown in its search for more than 140,000 square feet of space to consolidate and expand its operations in the region.

Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald said he has heard that Chevron and two other major energy companies, Shell Oil Co. and Exxon, are interested in space Downtown as well as in the suburbs.

"I think that bodes well for this region that there is competition for these sites. That's something we didn't have a few years ago, and that's a good problem to have," he said.

Likewise, Mark Popovich, senior managing director of the Pittsburgh office of Holliday Fenoglio Fowler LP, a commercial real estate brokerage, said he has heard talk Chevron and Shell could be looking for space Downtown.

"I don't know if we're hearing wishful thinking or speculative thinking, or if there's something real behind it," he said.

California-based Chevron established operations in the region in February 2011 after paying $4.3 billion to acquire Moon natural gas producer Atlas Energy, which was active in tapping Marcellus Shale deposits. The company currently occupies about 140,000 square feet in Moon, including 60,000 at the Cherrington office park.

Shell now occupies 77,000 square feet of space in Waterfront Corporate Park in Franklin Park. It also has another 30,000 square feet in Warrendale as part of its $4.7 billion purchase of East Resources Inc. in 2010.

But with Shell's decision to build an ethane cracker plant in Beaver County, the company may want to raise its profile in the region and that could lead it Downtown, Mr. Popovich said.

Read more: http://shale.sites.post-gazette.com/index.php/news/archives/24478-downtown-catching-eyes-of-energy-firms

Spotlight on Sustainability: Pittsburgh’s Waterfronts

Check out this interesting article on how Pittsburgh is transforming the “Steel City.” Have you noticed the change to the city’s riverfront?

“Pittsburgh’s riverfronts were used as transportation corridors for industrial production, and were characterized by factories, barges and pollution,” Andrews said. “While the environment has improved since then, the land surrounding them has remained relatively unchanged. The riverfronts were designed around industry rather than the community, and the land around them does not connect to our neighborhoods.”

Concerned community members are working to make better use of these parts of town, which otherwise would continue to deteriorate.

“Today we recognize the riverfronts as our most treasured assets that have tremendous potential to improve our quality of life,”stated Mayor Ravenstahl, who initiated the Allegheny Riverfront Vision, a plan to restore the riverfront corridor.

In 2010, the city received 1.5 million in funding from the Department of Transportation’s TIGER II (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grant program and a Community Challenge planning grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to implement a central aspect of Allegheny Riverfront Vision: the Riverfront Green Boulevard Plan.

“I want to thank all of our partners in the federal government for recognizing the importance of this project that will spur economic development and ensure that Pittsburgh sustains its ‘most livable city’ status for years to come,” Ravenstahl added.

The grant allowed the City of Pittsburgh, Allegheny Valley Railroad, Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh, andRiverlife to create a plan to transform an existing 6.45-mile stretch of freight rail along the Allegheny Riverfront into a multi-modal transportation corridor that includes park access, open space programming, neighborhood design, stormwater management and habitat restoration.

Read more: http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/2012/04/02/spotlight-on-sustainability-pittsburghs-waterfronts/

The Rust Belt Revival: What’s Happening in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

If you haven’t been paying much attention to East Liberty, now’s the time to start. Between this article and a powerful video from Pop City Media last week, the neighborhood has been making the rounds in the local news scene, and with good reason. There are a lot of creative people working in East Liberty, and their enthusiasm is sparking a sort of neighborhood revival. Check out the article below to see what they’re doing.

(Waffle Shop)

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
When artist Jon Rubin moved to Pittsburgh in 2006 to teach at Carnegie Mellon University, he decided to experiment with some of the local materials: cheap real estate and good people. "Midwestern culture values openness and community engagement," he observes. Three years ago, he rented a storefront in the city's emerging East Liberty district for $500 a month and opened Waffle Shop, a place where hip locals can enjoy breakfast fare at all hours while participating in Web-streamed talk shows covering topics from "Michael Jackson and Teabaggers" to "Dolphin Breeding in Appalachia." The following year Rubin and artist Dawn Weleski turned the space next door into Conflict Kitchen, whose rotating menu draws from countries that the U.S. government has a political beef with—like Iran or Venezuela—helping expand the community's culinary and cultural consciousness. As Rubin says: "We're creating the place where we want to live now."

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(Sam Franklin, executive director of the Office of Teacher Effectiveness)

THE PUBLIC-EDUCATION MAVERICK
In 2006, when the Steel City's Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and Pittsburgh Public Schools superintendent Mark Roosevelt issued the "Pittsburgh Promise"—that all the city's qualified high-school graduates could receive financial help to attend college—Sam Franklin was still a Carnegie Mellon grad student. Today, as the executive director of the two-year-old Office of Teacher Effectiveness, the Maryland native is trying to ensure that every one of the city's graduates is qualified, with a raft of techniques to evaluate and encourage teachers, funded in part by a $40 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. These include financial incentives and promotions for high performers. "We've historically treated—and compensated—all teachers similarly, regardless of their actual effectiveness," Franklin, 31, explains. Pittsburgh's unique character makes it an ideal springboard for broader reform, he adds. "The city is modest enough that you can actually get things done," he says, "but big enough so they can truly matter on a national level."

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(One of Grow Pittsburgh's urban farms)

THE STEEL CITY'S GRAY GARDENS
Developers are gradually rebuilding Pittsburgh's blighted areas, but more than 20,000 vacant lots remain. Since its founding in 2005, Grow Pittsburgh has been turning these plots into community gardens and urban farms, providing summer internships for kids and health education for all—not to mention food: The organization helps distribute produce to low-income kitchens and works with local chefs to place its lettuce and leeks in high-end restaurants.

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THE URBAN REPURPOSERS
The husband-and-wife-led architecture firm EDGE Studio is driving a renaissance in Pittsburgh's skyline by way of imaginative renovations. Its 2010 expansion of the East Liberty branch of the Carnegie Library used a rain-screen exterior to give the staid Nixon-era institutional building unexpected sculptural flourishes, while last year's Wigle Whiskey distillery turned a bleak warehouse into a glowing space with chandeliers made of whiskey bottles.

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THE ART HUB OF THE FUTURE
Yes, it's the cornerstone of the soon-to-boom Penn Ave Arts District, but Assemble is more than a gallery. The year-old space feels more like an informal classroom where visitors come for the interactive, tech-focused art, then stay for the hacker workshops, PechaKucha presentations, and dance parties. Built by Nina Marie Barbuto, a native Pittsburgher who returned after a stint in L.A., as a hub for aspiring creatives, Assemble is a place for first drafts, manifestos, artistic experimentation—paint the walls, break out the solder guns. In Pittsburgh, Barbuto observes, "You don't need much to make things happen."

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(Jeremy Kulousek (seated) and Eric Dan (right) of ID Labs)

HIP-HOP'S NEW HIT-MAKERS
Detroit has always had Motown, and Cleveland is home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but unlike its fellow Rust Belt cities, Pittsburgh has never been much of a music mecca. Until, that is, hometown hero Wiz Khalifa's "Black and Yellow" became the city's de facto anthem during the Steelers' 2010-2011 Super Bowl run. The guys behind the rapper are Eric Dan (a.k.a. E. Dan), 35, who launched ID Labs as a recording studio in 2003, and Jeremy Kulousek (a.k.a. Big Jerm), 26, who joined him three years later. Around the same time, a teenage Khalifa scored an internship answering phones and sweeping floors, which eventually led to a fruitful collaboration: ID Labs produced (and Dan cowrote) about half the songs on Khalifa's hit album Rolling Papers. For the past few years, the duo have been working with other local hip-hop talent, including Mac Miller (whose viral hit "Donald Trump" has 52 million YouTube views and counting), Boaz, and Khalifa's protégé Chevy Woods. Despite pressure to move to one of the coasts, Dan insists that ID Labs is staying put: "We enjoy being outside the fray."

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(Matthew Ciccone at the Beauty Shoppe)

THE IDEA INCUBATOR
Creative entrepreneurship is booming in post-industrial Pittsburgh, and Matthew Ciccone is a major reason why. After stints working in New York City and Chicago, the 32-year-old developer returned to his hometown to attend graduate school in urban design and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, then in 2009 launched the boutique real-estate company Edile, which caters to the nascent arts and high-tech industries in the fast-emerging neighborhood of East Liberty. Last year, he opened the Beauty Shoppe, a sleek coworking space for fledging start-ups who've outgrown the tables at Starbucks: In fact, the price of a desk—$9 a day with a monthly membership—is based on the cost of three lattes, says Ciccone (if the name sounds familiar, it's because he's a distant cousin of that slightly more famous Ciccone, Madonna). Next up: a second, larger Beauty Shoppe location, as well as a different kind of shared workspace aimed at small manufacturers—anyone from roboticists to whiskey distillers, according to Ciccone—who need somewhere to produce their products. Ciccone is also partnering with the Ace Hotel to open a local outpost in 2014 in a vacant century-old YMCA building. "It's a rare opportunity," he says, "to shape a city where you actually live and hope to raise a family."

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Know This Neighborhood: East Liberty, Pittsburgh
In barely a decade, Sliberty, as the locals call it, has gone from an industrial wasteland to Pittsburgh's answer to Silicon Valley. Two years ago it improbably became home to a major Google office, and half a dozen tech start-ups have followed suit.

THE TOP SPOTS

Dinette: High-end pizza with ingredients from the roof garden.
5996 Penn Circle South, 412-362-0202 ; dinette-pgh.com
Shadow Lounge: A neighborhood nightlife institution, with hip-hop DJs, parties, and film screenings.
5972 Baum Blvd., 412-363-5248 ; shadowlounge.net
Waffle Shop and Conflict Kitchen: 124 S. Highland Ave., 724-681-3886 ; waffleshop.org, conflictkitchen.org
Zeke's Coffee: Its small-batch roasts are served gratis to tenants of the Beauty Shoppe.
6012 Penn St., 412-670-6231 ; zekescoffeepgh.com

FACT: Pittsburgh is America's most livable city, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, thanks to lifestyle factors like culture, education, and infrastructure.

Read More http://www.details.com/culture-trends/critical-eye/201204/rust-belt-revival-pittsburgh-pennsylvania#ixzz1r5HoyTK6

Pop City Features: Why I moved to Pittsburgh

Love seeing stories like this. And there are plenty of them to hear. Every day I run into people who have deliberately chosen Pittsburgh as their home, many of them without a prior connection to the city. Pittsburgh is starting to take off, and it's exciting to be a part of that.

I'd love to see Pop City Media run a series on "Why I started a business in Pittsburgh." Whose story would you like to read?

I thought about the phrase: “You can’t go home again” during a recent trek through Frick Park on a preposterously beautiful early March day with my wife, 12-year-old daughter and Charlie, our brand new puppy.


Enveloped by steep hillsides and wooded trails, I marveled at the notion that we were walking within Pittsburgh city limits.


When had I last ventured down here? Was it really thirty years ago during a middle school field trip?


In June 2010, I moved home to Pittsburgh after 22 years. My wife, Donna, and I had grown weary of Detroit; the newspaper business was exciting, yet taxing, and the foreclosure crisis caused the property value of our city home to spiral. Rampant crime and the safety of our two young daughters also played a major role.


In summary, I quit the Detroit Free Press after 11 years as a reporter and got a marketing job at Chorus Call, a Monroeville telecommunications company. Donna and I put our Detroit home, which we bought in 2001 for $143,000, on the market with little hopes of selling it. A short-sale got us out from ownership of the Detroit property about six months later, with a credit hit. That’s an entirely different, frustrating story. The house sold for $35,000.


Which brings me back to Frick Park and Pittsburgh: It’s amazing that I still discover or rediscover new nooks and crannies of this region, at my age, almost on a weekly basis.


This is a town where you can rent kayaks on the north shore and paddle on to the three rivers. I did this on a sweltering day last summer and jokingly asked a boater for a frosty can of Yuengling. Not only did he oblige, he jumped into the Allegheny and swam it over to me.


I frequently wow out-of town guests with a cheap ride on one of the inclines and a subsequent vista view of downtown. I even toured the Frick mansion in February – I was tired of wondering what it looked like on the inside.


One of my biggest fears about dragging my family here was the possible self-perception of me trying to recapture something intangible or attempting to relive youthful memories.


But this place has changed, and, in most ways, for the better.


For example: several business meetings have taken me inside the Pittsburgh Technology Council building, which sites with other new office buildings along 2nd Avenue on the Monongahela at the site of the former J&L steel mill.The river trails give the region an entirely new vibe.  In-town developments, like the new Target in East Liberty and Bakery Square plaza, home to Google, allow residents to beam with civic pride.  And my childhood neighborhood, Highland Park, which had a pizza joint and a CoGo’s during my teenage years, now has a Thai restaurant; coffee shop and several other swanky places to dine.


I conquered mundane winter nights by joining an ice hockey club at Schenley Park. 


I keep fit jogging through town with the Square Run Club on Sunday mornings. And then there’s “book club,” a monthly male-bonding gathering at various taverns – like Dunning’s or Hough’s - sans books.


Jordan, 12, and Chloe, 9, quickly got over their moving heartbreaks and embraced new classmates and teachers at Sacred Heart Elementary School.  Jordan helped found a school environmental club and Chloe excelled on the third grade instructional basketball team. Donna, who had a medical billing job in Detroit, found full-time work within months in a similar position at UPMC on the South Side.


Renting a home in Edgewood gave me the opportunity to learn the ins and outs of Regent Square, an area I rarely visited while growing up. Now, it’s probably my favorite neighborhood in the region. Chloe got a taste of civics last fall when we accompanied a neighbor to an Edgewood Borough Council meeting to complain about speeding traffic on our street.


To be sure, there are drawbacks like the rush-hour traffic, the Squirrel Hill tunnel and the crumbling bridge infrastructure. My high school, Peabody (class of 1988), is closed and many city schools appear to be in trouble.


I’m also frequently discouraged by some of my suburban colleagues’ disdain for the city and apprehension to venture in. Race relations, in my mind, leave a lot to be desired here (also a problem in Detroit).


Selfishly, I’m thrilled that my daughters now live within minutes of their grandparents: My mother and stepfather live in Friendship and my father and stepmother live in Highland Park. And I’m overjoyed to see them bond with my younger sister, a senior at Pitt.


But it’s the small family moments here that make the move worth it. I remember a summer afternoon last year when we trudged across the crowded Roberto Clemente Bridge looking out at the rivers and beckoning ballpark.


Jordan looked up at me and said: “Dad, I love Pittsburgh.”


Home again.

Read more at PopCityMedia.com.