Amazon is looking for a second HQ. Why not, Pittsburgh? (Bethel Park: school district, square footage)

[Lost_In_Translation]

Originally Posted by gladhands

Amazon employees aren’t a monolith, and surely some will want to live in the burbs, but the kind of people driving up Seattle’s housing costs typically don’t want to live in McCandless. I don’t think Pittsburghers realize how uniquely undesirable our suburbs are compared to most major cities. If you put a younger, highly paid workforce in a safe, affordable city, with lackluster suburbs, people are going to move to the city.

I disagree with the statement that Pittsburgh suburbs are undesirable. Like most cities, there are desirable and undesirable areas, but places like Brentwood, Whitehall, Dormont, Castle Shannon may find a lot of fmailies start moving there if Amazon locates in Hazelwood. Mt Lebo, Greentree, Crafton are already nice middle class and may move up.

[Paul2421]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I presume he's referring to three aspects.

1. Suburban housing stock isn't great. IMHO the Pittsburgh area stopped building nice houses on a massive scale in the 1920s. In the 50s in particular, mid-century modern never caught on here and we were building mostly those brick bunkerlike monstrosities which I guess you could call "colonials." Obviously from the 70s onward styles were more similar across the nation, but later housing just looks like everywhere else, which isn't an asset.

2. The number of high end walkable suburbs in Pittsburgh is very, very small. I mean, you can count it on one hand and still have hands left over.

3. There's limited "sense of place" to a lot of the newer suburbs in the Pittsburgh area.

i'm not denying these things are true but i think people wildly overestimate how much the normal person cares about these things. people care about a nice affordable house in a safe area with good schools to raise a family. of course these areas exist in the city as well but they have the same downfalls as the suburbs. i understand we are talking about the "amazon employee" which for some reason is held as the ultra elite high income urban dink foodie trendy individual, but i'm not sold that this is the kind of person that will have critical mass at the hq.

i dunno. you definitely raise some good points. im just not sold that people are flocking to dense areas for any other reason than that is where the jobs are.

[Goinback2011]

No one I know living in the suburbs wants to live in the city. Most avoid the city if they can, except for an occasional trip to the Strip or the theater district.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Goinback2011

No one I know living in the suburbs wants to live in the city. Most avoid the city if they can, except for an occasional trip to the Strip or the theater district.

How many late 20s/early 30s techbros do you know?

[Goinback2011]

I knew quite a few at work. Men and women. Many ethnicities. None lived in the city. Most were late 20s/early 30s who worked downtown, lived in the burbs, married, with little kids. It's the under 25 men who seem to live in trendy places. We didn't hire anyone with little experience.

The city has a third of the population of Allegheny County.

[gladhands]

Originally Posted by Paul2421

please expand on this. i think many employees would kill to have an affordable house in a top ten district in the country 20 minutes from downtown. are you saying they lack public transit access? i could see that compared to the other big cities. you have to go considerably farther out to get that though. obviously there will be an urban preferring group though that would like the city.

Pittsburgh doesn’t have a lot of quaint, walkable, urbanized suburbs. It also has a paucity of highly-developed upscale suburbs. What it does have is lots of old mill towns, and drab towns/villages/boroughs that peaked in the 60s. Add in bad, windy roads, pinch points at bridges and tunnels, and you can get some pretty bad commutes from underwhelming areas.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Paul2421

i'm not denying these things are true but i think people wildly overestimate how much the normal person cares about these things. people care about a nice affordable house in a safe area with good schools to raise a family. of course these areas exist in the city as well but they have the same downfalls as the suburbs. i understand we are talking about the "amazon employee" which for some reason is held as the ultra elite high income urban dink foodie trendy individual, but i'm not sold that this is the kind of person that will have critical mass at the hq.

i dunno. you definitely raise some good points. im just not sold that people are flocking to dense areas for any other reason than that is where the jobs are.

I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with the Pittsburgh suburbs, FWIW. I just think that what sets Pittsburgh apart from other metros is mostly the condition of the city of Pittsburgh proper, which experienced relatively little white flight for a rust belt city, and has lots of intact and desirable middle-class neighborhoods. Pittsburgh's suburbs, on the other hand, could literally be anywhere in the country. Low housing costs and short commute times do make them somewhat more attractive, but there are plenty of other metros with core cities which are hollowed-out messes which could say the same thing. Basically, if you relocate to Pittsburgh and live in the suburbs, you're missing a significant majority of what makes this area so special.

[gladhands]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with the Pittsburgh suburbs, FWIW. I just think that what sets Pittsburgh apart from other metros is mostly the condition of the city of Pittsburgh proper, which experienced relatively little white flight for a rust belt city, and has lots of intact and desirable middle-class neighborhoods. Pittsburgh's suburbs, on the other hand, could literally be anywhere in the country. Low housing costs and short commute times do make them somewhat more attractive, but there are plenty of other metros with core cities which are hollowed-out messes which could say the same thing. Basically, if you relocate to Pittsburgh and live in the suburbs, you're missing a significant majority of what makes this area so special.

This is exactly it. I they’re simultaneously undervaluing AND overvaluing the city. Much of the benefit of living in the city of Pittsburgh is the city itself. When you’re looking at 50 minute commutes (say, Mt Lebo to East Liberty), you can find comparably priced housing in larger, more dynamic metros. Why be 50 minuets outside of Pittsburgh, when you can be 50 minutes outside of Chicago, DC, Houston, or Atlanta.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by Goinback2011

The city has a third of the population of Allegheny County.

A quarter, actually.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by PGH423

It looks like people are really trying to push the market right now in Pittsburgh.

It's called greed. My landlady was trying to get $120/night for the unit above me as an AirBNB and eventually dropped it to $90/night when the person listing it for her realized there was nobody biting because just Polish Hill alone had multiple other AirBNB options for less.

Come to think of it part of the rental affordability problem in the city these days can probably be attributed to the explosion of AirBNB rentals. That's probably also partially behind the relatively low occupancy rates of local hotels as of late (coupled with continued overbuilding of new hotels).