More for North Shore (Pittsburgh: high school, price, moving)

[armourereric]

You know, I grew up on Pittsburgh, went to games at both TES and PNC, I live in San Diego now, look up Petco park on Google sometime and realize the immediate area was a dying industrial port slum as of 2004. There are adjoining 40! story condo buildings now. A few with deck restaurants around floor 15 or 20 that overlook the game.

[RogersParkTransplant]

Originally Posted by armourereric

You know, I grew up on Pittsburgh, went to games at both TES and PNC, I live in San Diego now, look up Petco park on Google sometime and realize the immediate area was a dying industrial port slum as of 2004. There are adjoining 40! story condo buildings now. A few with deck restaurants around floor 15 or 20 that overlook the game.

I grew up in SD and live in Pittsburgh now, and I am so glad you said this. I wish everyone in Pittsburgh could see how the gaslamp district in San Diego became what it is, because Pittsburgh has so much potential to do the same thing. We joke that our neighborhood (Spring Hill, Deutschtown) is the Hillcrest of Pittsburgh


(Hillcrest in terms of topography and city views, by the way - not the cultural part...though the area has tons of potential!)

[pman]

How was it developed? Did they have a master developer? Did the team develop it?

[szug-bot]

To the San Diegans...is it true the City of San Diego is under a binding agreement to buy ALL the remaining Chargers tickets that go unsold? This is to assure a sell-out each time.

Correct?

With that kind of thing going on, maybe the boom around Petco isn't totally natural, but helped along by the taxpayers. The Chargers were threatening to move as recently as last autumn, after all. (My daily "NFL is Evil" post of the day).

[pman]

that sounds like a deal related to keeping the NFL team rather than developing the land around the baseball stadium

[pman]

here we go

Under the agreement, JMI Realty, the real estate company owned by then-Padres owner John Moores, was responsible for developing new office parks, retail centers, public open space and affordable housing in the twenty-six-block district. In effect, the city agreed to fund a majority of the stadium in return for the Padres agreeing to revitalize the area around the stadium. More than $3 billion in private money was eventually invested in the district...Moores minimized the office parks and retail centers, which had promised new sales tax revenue for the city. He shrunk the size of the “park at the park” from four to less than two acres and planned no other open space. And he changed plans at the last minute and moved the affordable housing units off site. ...Instead, JMI Realty focused on residential buildings. The modest six-story buildings that voters had seen in renderings at the time of the ballot initiative, were expanded into 20-story condos. Ten years later, more than 14,000 residential units have been added, with more on the way. Sempra Energy — one of San Diego's only two Fortune 500-based companies — is building a new headquarters. The San Diego Central Library opened last year. And JMI Realty received approval in February for a 37-story residential tower directly across the street from Petco Park. It plans to add 688 housing units and more than 55,000 square feet of retail space to the area.

- See more at: Petco Park's broken promise - ourcitysd.com
the article is trying to argue that subsidizing the stadium was not worthwhile (and probably so) but if you are going to subsidize a stadium it certainly makes sense to maximize the return (or minimize the loss). it sounds like pittsburgh followed the same basic script but a) the teams are constantly given a pass on development goals or b) build crap to preserve their parking and c) demand has been more limited. a) is within direct control of politicians but I'm curious how b) was overcome

[pman]

the North Shore facility's Chicago-based owners are considering a plan to build a companion hotel in a lodging market that couldn't be any hotter...the casino was working with the neighboring Carnegie Science Center and Riverlife to eliminate a "paper" street that doesn't yet exist on which the hotel would be developed...Davis added the North Shore's hotels now outperform hotels downtown in terms of occupancy and rates, a dynamic he acknowledged is propelled by the area's smaller hotels with fewer rooms.But he also acknowledged the competitive pressure on the horizon, with 1,258 hotel rooms in Pittsburgh's pipeline right now...The Pittsburgh office of Integra Realty Resources in January noted that Pittsburgh added 896 rooms in 2014 and still managed to increase occupancy levels...
He also sees some challenges in developing a hotel as a companion to a casino in a business climate in which the ongoing influx of new casinos has led many of them to struggle.
McGraw recalled a limited service hotel Concord owned near the Meadows Casino in Washington County never generated huge demand from the casino. Such casinos are typically day-trip destinations, he noted, and gamblers are extremely price-sensitive about room rates in nearby hotels.
"How many people are driving to the casino and staying overnight?" he said. "We don't really see casinos being real demand generators..."Colbert suggested a hotel of more than 200 rooms with meeting space and amenities that would complement the casino...

Pittsburgh's Rivers Casino considering new hotel in a boom market for lodging - Pittsburgh Business Times
I think colbert has it right. mcgraw, perhaps, may be too focused on the casino. I think to do it right they need to have an attractive hotel which will feed its casino rather than a casino to feed its hotel. in other words, I'm in town for business or the steelers but I gamble because the casino is next door rather than I'm staying at the hotel because I'm gambling.

[armourereric]

Originally Posted by szug-bot

To the San Diegans...is it true the City of San Diego is under a binding agreement to buy ALL the remaining Chargers tickets that go unsold? This is to assure a sell-out each time.

Correct?

With that kind of thing going on, maybe the boom around Petco isn't totally natural, but helped along by the taxpayers. The Chargers were threatening to move as recently as last autumn, after all. (My daily "NFL is Evil" post of the day).

Chargers ticket guarantee was a disaster also in that the team immediately stopped fielding a decent team. The ticket guarantee went away around 2003, very old news. Basically for Petco park, it was developed by the team. It was built on a 25 block area immediately adjacent to downtown that 20 years earlier had been big brick wholesale warehouses related to the long gone port. I would say a PGH analogy would be 25th to 30th, Penn to the base of the hill below Bigelow. IN SD the are adjacent to the stadium site was the gaslamp district, the original downtown main drag that by the mid 1980's was slummy but now had the od Wollworths and the like become nightclubs and such. As part of Petco redevelopment, the team got Omni and a Hilton, the Omni has a skybridge right into the stadium. The tam also brought in a good 6-10 20-40 story condo buildings.

A fun fact: from 2000-2009 nearly 80,000 people moved into downtown San Diego, that changes any downtowns dynamic real quick. A good "before" shot of downtown SD can be found in the opening scenes of Anchorman.

As for PNC if they had done it right, I could see Allegheny Center Mall regaining it's need to exist.

[Perryview22]

Recently, I have started to call the area in which this development has taken place "North Shore Campus". I call it that because all of the buildings look alike, which for someone who has a sensitivity to architectural style, is a complete turn off. I think that North Shore development in terms of architecture is a blight on downtown Pittsburgh. The city is coming into greater prominence because of its unique geography and skyline and now look what they have done to the North Shore. It had so much potential.

The only office building in that area that has any type of distinction and style is the Alcoa building.

[pman]

Does anyone know if allegheny center was built to support a tower?