Happenings in Pittsburgh!! (Greensburg, Washington, Carnegie: lease, jobs, health)

[guylocke]

An article about the growing revitalization effort going on in East Libery and specifically the beautiful EastSide Complex project (picture included).

Cornering the Market on Good Design - East Liberty's latest revitalization effort avoids mistakes of the past - Art - Architecture - Pittsburgh City Paper - Pittsburgh

A good building knits urban pathways together, encouraging pedestrians to move a bit further along the street, maybe to the next store or the next purchase -- any place but back to the car. Walk in either direction on Highland Avenue near Centre, for example, and you will encounter the Stevenson Building, a pleasant, vaguely neoclassical building of 1896. It has just enough renaissance detail in its arched windows and columned entry to seem slightly formal, and it curves instructively around the corner to Centre, urging pedestrians toward further exploration.

More than a century later, the role of architecture and urban design in this part of East Liberty has not been forgotten. The question, as explored in the growing EastSide development, is to what degree good design intentions can hold off the onslaught of automobiles and concrete.

To get The Home Depot to move to East Liberty in the late 1990s, the city felt compelled to offer a site swept clean of all buildings, a blank slate that allowed for a suburban-sized parking lot. The EastSide team has been shrewder, having fought hard to make the development more urban and pedestrian-friendly.

The final design results from an intensely collaborative process involving the developer, the Mosites Company, architects The Design Alliance and East Liberty Development Incorporated, a nonprofit revitalization group. Faced with a long, slender five-acre parcel of land between Centre Avenue and the East Busway, the project needed to encourage tenants to come to the neighborhood without turning it into a suburbanized desert of parking.

The EastSide complex as a whole is four buildings along Centre, where tenants include a Borders bookstore, a Walgreens, a state liquor store and other storefronts. In the first three buildings, the material palette combines the orange brick of a number of nearby structures (including the Stevenson Building) with a more modern aesthetic of expansive glass and aluminum windows. Some trendier mesh screens and corrugated metal panels appear also. It's telling that the design team had to lobby hard with tenant Walgreens to put in windows at all.

[guylocke]

More about Point Park University and how it is shaping up a good portion of certain downtown areas (in a good way).

Curb appeal: Like a good neighbor, Point Park checks its look

Point Park University has been one of Downtown Pittsburgh's slowly unfolding good-news stories.

Since its inception in the 1930s as a secretarial school, to its conversion to a liberal-arts college in 1966 and its attainment of university status four years ago, the institution has been making a larger and deeper footprint on the Golden Triangle.

With its growing real-estate holdings along Wood Street, the Boulevard of the Allies, Forbes Avenue and now Fort Pitt Boulevard, Point Park University is the second-largest property owner Downtown, after the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. Despite the nonprofit's positive impact in terms of bringing vitality and curb appeal to the neighborhood, one downside to its creeping growth, particularly in previously existing buildings, has been the lack of a unified "look" to its campus.

That is difficult to achieve in a busy urban business corridor that includes many handsome and historic structures, not to mention a street grid used by workers and shoppers, but the Urban Land Institute would like to give it a shot.

[guylocke]

Buses return to Market Square

Port Authority buses will return to Market Square in mid-September but, apparently, not for long.

The city is planning to remove buses permanently next summer as part of an effort to revitalize the square and create a more inviting environment for workers, diners, visitors and merchants.

"We are looking to do that, yeah," said Joanna Doven, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's spokeswoman.

The city began detouring nearly 600 buses a day from Forbes Avenue in Market Square in June to assess the impact on the square and other areas of Downtown. About 3,000 riders a day have been affected by the move.

What started as a one-month test run has lasted most of the summer. Buses will be rerouted back to Market Square in mid- September because of construction of the Three PNC Plaza office building on Fifth Avenue.

Port Authority spokesman Bob Grove said that is expected to last only until June, when the city wants to permanently reroute the buses from the square.

"My understanding is that the city is basically happy with what they've seen [in removing buses] and they're looking at making that a permanent situation once we get on the other side of [the PNC] construction project," he said.

While the rerouting this summer has inconvenienced people who boarded in Market Square, it did not result in a loss in ridership and "there has not been a major hue and cry from customers about it," Mr. Grove said.

"As a whole our riders just dealt with it," he said.

At the same time, the city received positive feedback about not having buses in Market Square, Ms. Doven said. Merchants were among those happy about it, she noted.

"The mayor really believes it has brought life back to Market Square," she said. "It makes sense for Downtown's vitality."

[guylocke]

An interesting article about Regent Square!

Regent Square an example in neighborhood vitality

Regent Square takes portions of four municipalities to express the full measure of its identity -- a sliver of Pittsburgh, a chunk of Wilkinsburg, a fragment of Edgewood and a notch of Swissvale.

That would be anomaly enough.

But the neighborhood is unusual in other ways.

On the wave of a commercial boom, it is largely unscathed by crime and blight and has almost no vacant homes. The population as defined by the Regent Square Civic Association is roughly 2,000; the Pittsburgh portion is 1,100.

In the 17 years since Edgewood Towne Center was built across the parkway, the small commercial heart of Regent Square along Braddock Avenue has never been stronger.

The annual "Run Around the Square" 5K and fun-run festivities is playing out today in Frick Park for the 25th year, a milestone that serves to show how Regent Square's business district has adapted but maintained its coherence.

Regent Square earned the highest score in the neighborhood vitality index, a city planning tool, with 10.5 against a perfect 11.

"It's the kind of community that has the old-fashioned feel, but it's also sophisticated and artsy," said Maureen States, a Realtor and owner of Neighborhood Realty Services.

She said many homebuyers are "university folks and people from the medical community. ... You hear about the housing market being down, but I'm not seeing that here. Prices are pretty much holding, and we are not feeling the impact of bank foreclosures."

[guylocke]

More about the Capital Grille and the Fifth/Forbes Corridor development.

First Fruits: Fifth/Forbes corridor shows signs of progress at last

The developer at the forefront of efforts to revive the Downtown Fifth and Forbes corridor tomorrow will give people something to sink their teeth into.

[guylocke]

I wanted to slip in a little side bar that should be obvious. Everyone realizes that the quotes I add are just snip-bits of the full article? Ok, good.

[guylocke]

Subway work puts squeeze on Gateway Center traffic

(pic included)

Construction workers deliver supporting tubes to the North Shore Connector project site outside PNC Park yesterday. A tunnle-boring machine will start digging the twin tunnels this fall. The 1.2-mile light-rail extension will connect Downtown to the North Shore.

Subway construction will put another squeeze on traffic around Gateway Center starting at 6 a.m. tomorrow as a Port Authority contractor moves closer to boring twin tunnels beneath the Allegheny River.

An additional lane of Penn Avenue through part of Gateway Center will be closed through early December, leaving only one lane open toward Commonwealth Place and the Fort Pitt Bridge/Parkway West.

The contractor needs the extra room in the front of the Three Gateway Center building to erect a batch plant that will produce concrete grout. The material will be used to stabilize excavation 55 feet deep on one block of Stanwix -- the "receiving pit" for a huge worm-like machine that will bore 22-foot-diameter tunnels under the river.

The closing is part of the first construction contract for the $435 million, 1.2-mile light-rail extension from Downtown to the North Side.

Original plans called for the batch plant to be located in the grassy triangle bordered by Stanwix, Penn Avenue and Liberty Avenue. Since then, city officials told the authority it needed that area for the Richard S. Caliguiri/City of Pittsburgh Great Race on Sept. 30 because Point State Park, the usual finish point, is closed for reconstruction.

"We didn't expect to have to further restrict Penn Avenue," where one lane is already blocked off, authority spokesman Bob Grove said.

[guylocke]

More good news and an interesting twist on the downtown living market.

Downtown condo, country estate will be auctioned off next month

They're both dream homes, but they couldn't be more different.

One is a 20th-floor unit in Gateway Towers that offers views on three sides of the Allegheny River, North Side and Golden Triangle in a well-designed, nearly 4,000-square-foot contemporary Downtown apartment.

[guylocke]

More about restaurants downtown, especially Capital Grille!!

Downtown's restaurant renaissance - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Now, whenever Kristing Klocek gets a craving for cheesecake during the middle of the workday, she has a place to satisfy her urge.
She and her co-workers from Point Park University crashed The Capital Grille's soft opening for lunch last week, and after just one visit, Klocek, 23, raved about the dessert. The restaurant, at 301 Fifth Ave., Downtown, officially starts serving the public tonight at dinner.

"They're setting the pace to bring more people to this part of Downtown," said Klocek, a marketing and public relations associate.

Twenty-eight new restaurants have opened Downtown so far this year, compared to 41 in 2006 and 30 the year before, according to the Allegheny County Health Department's Web site.

And these ones are more interesting places, developers said.

Palate, a French restaurant, opened on Sixth Street in May, while Courthouse Tavern started serving American fare on Forbes Avenue in June.

[guylocke]

A few other members have been talking about this article which I missed, so I added it to this thread as well! Thanks, it's an interesting one!

Pop City - Guru.com takes the job search to a new level, hiring 21 new positions

Shadyside-based Guru.com, touting itself as the world’s largest online marketplace for freelance talent, will double its size this year from 19 to 40 employees as it prepares to launch an innovative new web site.

Next month, Guru.com will make blogging and video available for its more than 629,000 professional clients. Free to prospective employers, Guru.com helps thousands of free agents in the world to find work locally, nationally, and globally through a unique platform of job postings that, among many features, allows employers to interact with prospective employees.

“We’re an eBay for freelance projects,” explains Eric Spaulding, company spokesperson. “It’s an interesting job landscape. We do everything from graphic design and professional outsourcing to contractors bidding on jobs for kitchens. We’ve helped people find landscapers.”