An Alarming Number Of Businesses Are Leaving East Liberty (Pittsburgh: tenant, to live)

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by airwave09

Historic facades NEED to be restored in this city. After how much has already been lost, its an absolute travesty that more are still being torn down. A renovated historic building always looks so much better than cheap new construction every single damn time.



This is an embarrassing half-assed attempt to push through shoddy and cheap new construction while trying to keep the preservationists off of their backs. Either preserve them or tear them down, don't be cute about it with this lame attempt at "preservation". All it shows is that the developer has little actual knowledge about what historic preservation is all about. Keeping the materials is meaningless once the building is torn down, the history gone, and the streetwall forever altered. Those materials only mean something when they are together in their original place serving their original purpose. Not as some kitschy "art" display in some crappy alley.

The thing is, if developers still actually built with the same quality as they did in the past, tearing down these two buildings wouldn't be a huge deal. Its essentially the knowing that we will never get back anything that approaches the craftsmanship, scale, and small business friendliness of these old structures that makes it seem like these developers are slowly destroying the city's urban fabric one building at a time. These people still haven't learned any lesson's from the failed urban renewal period of the 50's and 60's and it's maddening.

I'm not saying I'm a fan of the development overall. As I said upthread, I do think it's a shame that some of the nicest remaining storefronts (counting these three and the former Yen's Chinese, which is also soon to come down) are getting demolished, while many of the fugly as hell "blank" storefronts on the north side of Penn are in no immediate danger. But the chance for significant historic preservation within the core of East Liberty was killed when Penn Circle was built. Pittsburgh has its share of "beautiful ruins" - and there's something to be said for having a nexus of modern TOD development within the core of the city, and seeing how it fares.

[UKyank]

These concept & everything done with bakery square apart from the renovation of nabisco building will look terribly dated in 20 years.

[doo dah]

Originally Posted by UKyank

These concept & everything done with bakery square apart from the renovation of nabisco building will look terribly dated in 20 years.

and in 50 years, people will admire them as being historic.

[CFP]

Originally Posted by eschaton

To those curious, renderings of the new "Walnut on Penn" development can be seen in the latest Planning Commission PDF.

Design is blah,

if walnut capital wanted to really get with the times,
they would change their name to WALNUT DAS KAPITAL

[UKyank]

Originally Posted by doo dah

and in 50 years, people will admire them as being historic.

In 50 years it will probably just look dilapidated like the Brutalist architecture of the 50s & 60s

[doo dah]

Originally Posted by UKyank

In 50 years it will probably just look dilapidated like the Brutalist architecture of the 50s & 60s

Victorians were the Modernists of their time!

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by UKyank

In 50 years it will probably just look dilapidated like the Brutalist architecture of the 50s & 60s

Agreed. The new "Bakery Living" apartments look like garbage. The new apartments by Doughboy Square look like garbage. This new development at the corner of Penn & Highland (along with the one also coming soon where Yen's is) will both also probably look like garbage, judging by the renderings.

Americans don't appreciate architecture anymore, so developers can skimp on design detail and materials, knowing full well that the cheaper they go, the more profitable their ventures become. It's a shame. Our city is in rapid growth mode right now (at least the core neighborhoods of the East End; Downtown; and South Side), but everything being built looks like it's a suburban "lifestyle center" concept plopped down in the city.

[UKyank]

Originally Posted by SteelCityRising

Agreed. The new "Bakery Living" apartments look like garbage. The new apartments by Doughboy Square look like garbage. This new development at the corner of Penn & Highland (along with the one also coming soon where Yen's is) will both also probably look like garbage, judging by the renderings.

Americans don't appreciate architecture anymore, so developers can skimp on design detail and materials, knowing full well that the cheaper they go, the more profitable their ventures become. It's a shame. Our city is in rapid growth mode right now (at least the core neighborhoods of the East End; Downtown; and South Side), but everything being built looks like it's a suburban "lifestyle center" concept plopped down in the city.

I don't know if it's this so much as the oddity I've noticed with a lot of recent transplants to the area who outright refuse to consider anything that's not new construction period.

So coupling this market that's there for new construction (and are willing to pay a premium for it) & the city's love of signing off on anything a handful of favored developers propose regardless of design is a recipe for getting proposals that are drab (but cheap to build) which is a guaranteed high return on investment for said developers.

These areas arent risky investments anymore & the city needs to stop treating them as such & demand more.

[PghYinzer]

Originally Posted by UKyank

I don't know if it's this so much as the oddity I've noticed with a lot of recent transplants to the area who outright refuse to consider anything that's not new construction period.

So coupling this market that's there for new construction (and are willing to pay a premium for it) & the city's love of signing off on anything a handful of favored developers propose regardless of design is a recipe for getting proposals that are drab (but cheap to build) which is a guaranteed high return on investment for said developers.

These areas arent risky investments anymore & the city needs to stop treating them as such & demand more.

Pretty sure there is some hangover approvals and what not going on from the days when developers wouldn't touch Pgh with a 10 ft pole. Cheap building, we will take it. Ugly design, we will take it.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by UKyank

I don't know if it's this so much as the oddity I've noticed with a lot of recent transplants to the area who outright refuse to consider anything that's not new construction period.

So coupling this market that's there for new construction (and are willing to pay a premium for it) & the city's love of signing off on anything a handful of favored developers propose regardless of design is a recipe for getting proposals that are drab (but cheap to build) which is a guaranteed high return on investment for said developers.

These areas arent risky investments anymore & the city needs to stop treating them as such & demand more.

Originally Posted by PghYinzer

Pretty sure there is some hangover approvals and what not going on from the days when developers wouldn't touch Pgh with a 10 ft pole. Cheap building, we will take it. Ugly design, we will take it.

I'm inclined to agree with you both. Even with all of these new residential projects coming to fruition there's still a very, very tight (and increasingly expensive for renters/lucrative for developers) rental market here to be had, yet developers are being allowed to build garbage because we still have some people at the helm who think "we can't do any better, so we better be happy with what we ARE getting..."

I can say that even though I'd be able to afford a micro-apartment in Bakery Square Living, I'd never consider living there because the building's exterior design looks, well, bland and Soviet, to reiterate what has already been said. Why pay well over $1,000/month to live in a shoebox in a hideous new building when I can pay far less to live in a shoebox in a handsome old tenement? Can a developer answer that one for me?

Here in Polish Hill it's taken YEARS of community visioning sessions, meetings with the URA, meetings with prospective developers, heeing and hawing, etc., etc. to finally decide upon what is soon going to be built on a fire site just up the street from me in the heart of our neighborhood. The final rendering? Dense new construction, of course, but dense new construction that won't stick out like sore thumbs (see Herron Avenue townhouses) and will actually blend in/complement the existing historic urban fabric. All parties came to a successful consensus, and now the neighborhood will be better off for it, too.