Hotel plan for Mt. Washington still a "Go." (Pittsburgh: real estate market, 2009)

[nuwaver88]

Mt. Washington hotel still on schedule.

Two local projects escape Senate ax

This article is from a few weeks ago. There was talk on a recent thread about skyscrapers that this plan had been derailed by community groups. I had not heard this so I did a little bit of research. It looks like it is on track. Several years ago, like early to mid 1990s, there were plans for a Ritz-Carlton that were derailed by stuck in the muds living up there. Fortunately, there seems to be a new group of residents who are more progressive and who see the big picture. They see the benefit for Pittsburgh. I just wanted to clear this up.

[dugdogmaster]

Thanks. That's awesome news!

[BrianTH]

Done well that could really improve the view of Mt. Washington from Downtown, as well as provide a nice feature at the end of Grandview for pedestrians, so hopefully it keeps moving along.

[greg42]

Yeah, in more reading about this one the other day it seemed it wasn't a community group that was opposed; more just the few residents that would end up right behind it. Whatever Mt Washington community group that was quoted then (in May I think it was) seemed to be all for it.

In the Bloomfield case, the opposition appeared to have seeped into not one but several community groups. The developers still said the project was not done, but they haven't come back with revised plans or anything yet.

Financing is a problem, though, even if it may not have been *the* problem in some of these cases. Article in the Biz Times that I received today says this is an issue. The biggest example is The Chelsea, the big apartment building planned for Craig and Centre in Oakland. They've pushed groundbreaking back a year. This is just another case of lenders being broadly stupid and not taking local conditions into account because we know apartment vacancy in Pittsburgh is only about 1-2% compared with 7% or more on average.

[BrianTH]

I believe this is the article in question:

http://pittsburgh.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2009/10/12/story1.html?b=1255320000^2237051

It is indeed unfortunate the finance people aren't being more discriminating with respect to market conditions in places like Pittsburgh, but to be fair to them the commercial real estate market nationally is just getting worse and worse, and a lot of them are holding onto capital just in order to prevent their losses from causing a collapse of their firms.

[greg42]

Yeah, that's the article. I didn't know if it would be online or not because not everything they put up on the web is available without having a paper subscription.

[Doowlle34]

Just happenned to have a recent photo of the area. We took a walk up this staircase about 6 to 12 mos. ago and there were still some homes (some actually still seemed occupied) along the left side of the staircase. As you can see, the area is now all cleared and there are some survey sticks in the ground.

In order to orient yourself, this staircase ends at Sycamore St. and you can make out the abandoned restaurant at the top right of the photo.

[nuwaver88]

Originally Posted by Doowlle34

Just happenned to have a recent photo of the area. We took a walk up this staircase about 6 to 12 mos. ago and there were still some homes (some actually still seemed occupied) along the left side of the staircase. As you can see, the area is now all cleared and there are some survey sticks in the ground.

In order to orient yourself, this staircase ends at Sycamore St. and you can make out the abandoned restaurant at the top right of the photo.

Thanks for the photo. That looks like it is climbing up the eastern side of the mountain and ends near the end of Grandview Avenue. I do know that there were plans for a new stairway to be a part of the hotel project. My impression was that this stairway would go down the side of the mountain facing Downtown, or the northern face. This is supposed to be grand stairway that is lit up at night. Anyway, those steps pictured could use some fixin,' just like many of Pittsburgh's 712 public stairways.

[Hopes]

Is this the development plans that include the glass staircase going up the Mt. Washington hillside?

[BrianTH]

Last I knew the lighted staircase was officially part of Phase Two of this project, but they might try to get it done for the hotel opening anyway.