Reclaiming The Riverfront (Pittsburgh, Homestead, Lawrenceville: apartment, houses, school districts)

[nuwaver88]

City making plans for Allegheny riverfront


While driving along Route 28 for years on my way from Downtown, I would look across the Allegheny River to all of the industry lining the riverfront. I realized that it was that very industry that developed the town of Lawrenceville and those old houses cascading up the hillside. I also wondered if those industrial buildings would be there another fifty? one hundred years? This announcement yesterday will be the preliminary step in reclaiming the riverfront. It will take years and years for that whole stretch to entirely change what we see while looking across the river from Route 28, but it is great to see some action. It has to start somewhere.
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[Little Mizz Pittsburgh]

Originally Posted by nuwaver88

City making plans for Allegheny riverfront

This is great. I hope they throw some retail in there somewhere as well.

[Geeo]

It's a natural extension of the Strip and will open up hundreds of acres for new development. I think it will be done well, with a mixture of light industrial, residential, and retail, not to mention parks and trails.

[khyron]

Originally Posted by Geeo

It's a natural extension of the Strip and will open up hundreds of acres for new development. I think it will be done well, with a mixture of light industrial, residential, and retail, not to mention parks and trails.

Sounds awesome to me!

[nuwaver88]

Everyone must remember that this will take several years before it comes to full fruition. This is over six miles of riverfront that already has hundreds of stuctures that either need to be razed or redeveloped. There are some readily developable parcels like the Buncher land around the convention center and the produce terminal, the towpound in the middle near the 31st Street Bridge and the far end by the newly cleared land by the 62nd Street Bridge. In a way that is good to have these open parcels at bookends and in the middle. This will hopefully make it easier and increase the demand for the rest of the land to be developed more expediantly once these parcels are developed. Mayor Ravenstahl had some Chinese investors in town last week. If they can get involved, maybe it will happen sooner rather than later. Wouldn't that be something to see a 2nd Avenue type light industrial park all of the way up the Allegheny?

[Awesomo.2000]

Good thread Nuwaver, It is just a shame that on this forum a thread like this gets so little responses opposed to a "Pittsburgh is old and dying" type thread.

I see this land being renovated as all hell once we get out of this recession. It is one of the last remaining urban brownfield sites in the city (not the metro) that needs urban infill. It would be nice to finally see those abandoned factories be torn down. They may not be fully abandoned as some are used by companies for storage, but it would be far more usefull with new modern developements on those sites.

I hope to God that it doen't come to be another lame Waterfront development. A bunch of big box retail in a sea of parking lots. I would love to see another southside works type of project, but not the exact same. Something unique and different, but on a urban scale with parks and receration. Just god forbid if it is another traffic filled sea of parkinglots like the mistake in Homestead.

[scrapp]

Originally Posted by Awesomo.2000

I see this land being renovated as all hell once we get out of this recession. It is one of the last remaining urban brownfield sites in the city (not the metro) that needs urban infill. It would be nice to finally see those abandoned factories be torn down...

I think the Hazelwood brownfield (up the Mon from the PTC) also has interesting potential.

I will concede that Homestead waterfront has its flaws, but overall I think we are better off with it than without it.

[Awesomo.2000]

Originally Posted by scrapp

I think the Hazelwood brownfield (up the Mon from the PTC) also has interesting potential.

I will concede that Homestead waterfront has its flaws, but overall I think we are better off with it than without it.

I agree with you 100%. I know there is a desire for big box stores, and we all use them. It would be a complete lie if I said I never went to Homestead to shop at target. The fact is there are apartment items, and other things that are just much cheaper at target then a small shop in Squirrel Hill.

I just hate the fact that they tried to revitalize homestead by a project that brings people there to shop, and then leave to the place they came from. If there was more of a southside works style reclaimation of a brownfield there it would benefit the town of Homestead much more.

[fleetiebelle]

I just hate the fact that they tried to revitalize homestead by a project that brings people there to shop, and then leave to the place they came from.

Right. The shopping area is walled off from the rest of homestead by the railroad tracks, so all that development hasn't bled onto 8th Ave the same way South Side Works has really helped that end of Carson St. develop. I don't if anyone remembers the Alexander Graham Bell restaurant that later became a vegan place--they were counting on attracting some of the people who came to shop at the Waterfront, and it just didn't happen.

[JoeLeaphorn]

The problem is that many years ago, the County merged its Planning Department into the Office of Economic Development. Now the purpose of a Planning Department is to encourage sensible growth whereas the purpose of an Economic Development office is to encourage developers to spend dollars.

The last great achievement of the old Planning Department was a Master Plan which include the preservation and enhancement of greenspaces. It also would have protected large chunks of all of the riverfronts from overdevelopment. You can still get copies of it from the County and it is quite nice to look at.

It was also highly unpopular with the land speculators (I won't mention any names but they are familiar to Pittsburghers). They lobbied the County hard to tone down the notion of a "Master Plan" and eventually convinced our great county commissioners that the sensible thing was to put the department under the thumb of Economic Development. Most of the good people simply left.

The result has been the cannibalization of established economic entities by new developments which produce no net increases in benefits to the community. The Waterfront took business from Monroeville and Ross Park, as well as Station Square, and the South Side Works pretty much put the nail in the coffin. Cranberry cannibalized Ross Park and Kilbuck was ready to do the same thing with an ill-planned WalMart until the hillside fell down. The Point at Robinson and the shops in North Fayette, similarly, stole customers from other, already developed, retail centers and all of these virtually killed downtown.

The Pittsburgh Mills shuttered much of Natrona, but is, itself, in danger of collapse.

Most of these projects were built using Tax Increment Financing whereby property taxes are waived in order to allow the deferred taxes to be used for infrastructure improvements. The National Education Association did a study showing that in states like Pennsylvania, because of the way that school districts are funded, TIFs actually HURT the school districts which is why it was comical to see School Board Superintendants lobbying County Council for TIF status when their own organization was advising against it.

Sure, these new places are, in some cases, exciting. But at what cost are we allowing development to go unchecked?