Happenings in Pittsburgh!! (Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Butler: environment, property taxes, hoa)

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Maybe this will satisfy your sweet tooth, PApisces. :P I know I'm definitely going to give it a try!!

Pop City - Oh Yeah serves up organic ice cream, fresh fare in Shadyside

Oh Yeah, a new shop located at 232 Highland Ave. in Shadyside, is giving Pittsburghers permission to eat ice cream for breakfast.

Featuring organic ice cream and a dazzling array of palate bending toppings, Oh Yeah is Pittsburgh’s only eatery specializing in Woo City products, known for their Amish cream, high Omega-3 content and unrefined sugars. “It’s an outstanding company—the best producer of organic,” says owner Ethan Clay, who caught the ice cream bug while working in Boston cafes during college. “The concept is the new American morning—an alternative to grease.” After working in a Houston shelter following Hurricane Katrina, Clay returned home to Pittsburgh and launched what could be called the city’s first ice cream boutique.

Clay, who invested nearly $60,000 in the property's transformation, oversaw a complete renovation of the 900 square-foot shop, which features countertops made from bowling alleys and truck tire floors. “We definitely raised the property value,” says Clay, who built a new patio and entrance, installed energy efficient glass doors and fluorescent lights, and culled recylced materials from Construction Junction.

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Here is an extremely interesting and relevant article from 2006 about the housing market in western PA and downtown Pittsburgh among other things.

Pittsburgh City Living (broken link)

When you think of the hot real estate markets around the country Pittsburgh hardly comes to mind. Places like Southern California, Naples, Las Vegas, Washington DC, Atlanta and Dallas/Ft. Worth have experienced great growth over the past decade.

But few cities in America have seen as much change in the character of their housing market as Pittsburgh. With the changing housing options has come even more confidence in the value of housing in Western PA. Whether looking for a typical suburban Colonial or an industrial South Side loft, a buyer in Pittsburgh can count on making money as much as any other city in the U.S. According to PMI Mortgage’s study of the top 50 U.S. housing markets, no city is less of a risk when it comes to home appreciation.

“There is tremendous stability in the Pittsburgh market,” says Helen Hanna Casey of Howard Hanna Real Estate Services. “If you look back to the 1970’s and the loss of the steel industry jobs that followed, and compare what people said would happen to Pittsburgh to what did happen, you see a healthy region.”

Since 1996 more than 50,000 housing units have been built in metropolitan Pittsburgh, which includes Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties. During that ten year span over 33,000 new single-family units were permitted. In 1996 the average building permit cost of a house was $139,286; in 2006 the average cost was $245,826. Now for the real shocker: during the past decade the municipality that has issued permits for the most housing units is the City of Pittsburgh.

It’s perhaps not a coincidence then that the widest variety of housing options being introduced in the past decade was in the urban center of our region, within the city of Pittsburgh’s limits.

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Need a job?

Pop City - Apangea Learning will launch new writing product; hires 10

Apangea Learning, the Pittsburgh company offering online differentiated math tutoring for students, will launch an innovative new writing product next January and has announced the hiring of 10 additional employees this year.

The writing software, still in the development stage, will operate similarly to Apangea's flagship math product, SmartHelp, helping students to develop writing and literacy skills through software and on-demand teachers, says CEO Louis Piconi.

Since March Apangea has added staff in the areas of sales, service, account management, and service teams that work with the schools, increasing its size by 25 percent and bringing the total number of employees in its downtown office to 28 full-time and 5 part-time, Piconi says. Apangea, with revenues of $1.4 million this year, tutors 50,000 students in math in 18 states.

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Need a job, again?

Pop City - Industry Weapon targets unique Internet marketing niche, hires 8

Industry Weapon, Inc., a downtown Pittsburgh e-commerce brand and community building company, has accelerated its growth in the past eight months, acquiring two local companies and increasing its staff from two to 10.

This summer Industry Weapon acquired Simplxstudios, a graphic design company, and Adroit Concepts, a 9-year-old tech company that provided online business solutions. As a result, IW has grown and developed an interesting business niche, helping companies to manage their online business, providing families with a safe way to network within the Internet community and offering non-profits the tools to find and manage grant applications.

And that’s just the beginning.

“It’s all about giving companies the ability to manage their business without having the Internet be a black box mystery,” says David Wible, CEO. “People want to compare us to an ad agency, but that’s not accurate. We’re twisting old technologies, like MySpace, and going after a niche market. That’s where the business is going to explode.”

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Pop City - Children’s Hospital opens first on site simulation center in region

Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh opened a state-of-the-art Pediatric Simulation Center, the latest in technology to help physicians, nurses, and medical staff learn life saving procedures often used in intensive care on children and infants.

The center features “Katie,” one of only two models of highly sophisticated pediatric simulators in the world, manufactured by Laerdal. Katie is a mannequin that represents a 3 to 6 month old infant. Teachers will use Katie to train for high risk scenarios such as shock, cardiac arrest, airway problems, pneumonia, and collapsed lungs.

“We’ve taken an innovative piece of technology and wrapped a curriculum around it,” says Dr. Melinda Hamilton, director. "It’s an entire learning system. This is our first on-site simulation center for our region.”

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Now this is news!! SONIC is coming and in a big way!!

Pop City - SONIC breaks ground on first of 16 area locations

The country’s largest drive-in restaurant chain has landed in Pittsburgh. Southwestern Pennsylvania’s first SONIC is now under construction at 2611 Washington Rd. in North Strabane.

The Washington County site is the first of 16 area SONIC restaurants planned by NCH Hospitality, a franchise holder spearheaded by Kings Family Restaurants founder Hartley King, along with partners Nick Hrehovchak and Chris Whalen.

NCH, who purchased the Rte. 19 property two years ago, plans to open SONIC locations in Greene, Indiana, Allegheny, and Westmorland Counties. A groundbreaking for NCH’s Uniontown SONIC took place on September 24th; a Pittsburgh Mills location will open this year. The closest SONIC to Pittsburgh is located in Athens, Ohio.

“It’s a whole experience with carhops on rollerskates. It’s a throwback, not just a drive-through,” says Shannon Baker with WordWrite Communications, who adds that SONIC has introduced healthy selections to its menu. “Hartley King sees SONIC as a good fit for western Pennsylvania. It’s a fun, family-friendly environment with quality food.”

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Originally Posted by boylocke

Now this is news!! SONIC is coming and in a big way!!

Pop City - SONIC breaks ground on first of 16 area locations

Yea!! I don't have to give up Cheddar Peppers and Grape Cream Slushies. And if I am ever unemployed I can just grab my roller skates

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Here is some very surprising news! The Pittsburgh housing market which is usually very slow-and-steady had quite a little explosion in August!! Usually we have an appreciation of no more than 5%, in August it was over 15%!!

Housing prices grow in region

Could Pittsburgh's slow-and-steady tortoise of a real estate market be outstripping the hares of the nation's racier markets?

For at least one month, yes.

South Side-based real estate information agency RealSTATs reported that in August, the median price of homes sold in Allegheny County jumped to $125,000, a 15.7 percent increase over the August 2006 median of $108,000. For a five-county area that also includes Beaver, Butler, Washington and Westmoreland counties, the median was $129,900, an 8.2 percent increase over the $120,088 from the year-ago period.

In a market where homes have tended to appreciate at 5 percent or less per year, the numbers are striking, especially in comparison with the national figures reported by the National Association of Realtors. According to the NAR, the national median price for homes sold in August was $224,500, up a mere 0.2 percent from August 2006, when the median was $224,000.

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Developers add gym building to Oakland Portal properties

The developers of the proposed Oakland Portal project have added another piece of property to their portfolio.

The group, led by Frank Gustine and Ed Pope, partners of Green Tree-based FWG Real Estate Inc., has purchased the Three Rivers Fitness & Sports Medicine Center at 3216 Fifth Ave. for $2.5 million, according to Allegheny County property records.

Pope declined to comment on the acquisition or the group's progress. Gustine did not return calls seeking comment.

Robert Heaps, who purchased the building and founded Three Rivers Fitness there four years ago, confirmed the sale to FWG Real Estate. He said the gym would continue to rent the building from the new owners for some time, although he declined to discuss specific lease terms.

It appears the full text version is for subscribers only

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Lots of things happening in Oakland!! There has been some news recently about the Oakland Portal project, and if you need a refresher on what's been planned for Oakland, here are two articles from last year that outline it.

New vision for Oakland - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

A major new office-residential development may be coming to the western edge of the city's bustling Oakland neighborhood near Carlow University.
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High-rises coming

Guy Totino wants to park something much larger than cars on the public parking lot at the corner of Craig Street and Centre Avenue in North Oakland.

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