Pittsburgh Area Development - Request for Info & Updates (Butler: garden, company)

[wpipkins2]

Originally Posted by Reggiezz

I've been watching a bunch of YouTube videos walking through various cities around the world. Human scale is what we need. The skyscrapers are obsolete and good riddance. Bring it all back to human scale.

Skyscrapers and human scale can coexist.

[gg]

Originally Posted by Reggiezz

I've been watching a bunch of YouTube videos walking through various cities around the world. Human scale is what we need. The skyscrapers are obsolete and good riddance. Bring it all back to human scale.

Very homogeneous cities seem to do well. Many in China. Tokyo is still growing. With the new age of mass communication, I think they will continue to thrive and stay more civilized. Cities in the western world will suffer. Too divided. Enjoy.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Reggiezz

I've been watching a bunch of YouTube videos walking through various cities around the world. Human scale is what we need. The skyscrapers are obsolete and good riddance. Bring it all back to human scale.

I'm not a fan of how skyscrapers interact with street life. Even in NYC the areas most dominated by them, like Midtown and the Financial District, have much less activity on the sidewalk than the midrise/walkup-dominated blocks.

That said, if we knocked down something like One Oxford Centre, you know it would just be replaced, at best by, two five-over-one stick/drywall apartment buildings with a little bit of commercial on the first floor. We'd never get a restoration of the late 19th/early 20th century streetscapes that survived in areas like the Cultural District.

[gg]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I'm not a fan of how skyscrapers interact with street life. Even in NYC the areas most dominated by them, like Midtown and the Financial District, have much less activity on the sidewalk than the midrise/walkup-dominated blocks.

That said, if we knocked down something like One Oxford Centre, you know it would just be replaced, at best by, two five-over-one stick/drywall apartment buildings with a little bit of commercial on the first floor. We'd never get a restoration of the late 19th/early 20th century streetscapes that survived in areas like the Cultural District.

Pittsburgh doesn’t have many skyscrapers, so we should be good. I’m hoping there will be more conversions to residential, but with all the red tape it will be a very slow process. Maybe someday we could even have a real grocery store downtown.

[anthony_c55]

Originally Posted by gg

Pittsburgh doesn’t have many skyscrapers, so we should be good. I’m hoping there will be more conversions to residential, but with all the red tape it will be a very slow process. Maybe someday we could even have a real grocery store downtown.

The World Atlas has Pittsburgh at 15 in the US in total skyscrapers. I would note that I've seen definitions with lower height defined as skyscraper than that source (which would inflate the numbers for every city of course).

[gg]

Originally Posted by anthony_c55

The World Atlas has Pittsburgh at 15 in the US in total skyscrapers. I would note that I've seen definitions with lower height defined as skyscraper than that source (which would inflate the numbers for every city of course).

Yep.

[gg]

Liberty Center goes on the market for $98 million. No doubt will be a very hard sale. In Downtown, the vacancy rate in the second quarter hit 18%. As big leases come up, there will be a huge vacancy rate, but the leases are often long term, so that will make it seem like there are more people by the numbers, but the offices are empty often.


https://www.post-gazette.com/busines...s/202307130089

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by gg

Liberty Center goes on the market for $98 million. No doubt will be a very hard sale. In Downtown, the vacancy rate in the second quarter hit 18%. As big leases come up, there will be a huge vacancy rate, but the leases are often long term, so that will make it seem like there are more people by the numbers, but the offices are empty often.


https://www.post-gazette.com/busines...s/202307130089

I feel like these big, relatively recent buildings have an advantage when it comes to consolidation of commercial renters. It's the smaller dated buildings where we're going to see an emptying out of office use. This is for the best anyway because the prewar buildings make for good residential conversions, whereas something like Liberty Center would be really hard to convert into apartments or condos.

[Higherho]

Certain ones will always stay. For example, the BNY buildings, they are all required (unless approved) to do hybrid 3 days a week or (depends on your department) 20 days a quarter to come into the office. That and BNY might be getting city incentives for doing this, I state this because their buildings in New York for example, they got tax breaks for bringing people back in the office. How do I know this? Three friends work there. For your normal buildings that don’t have big companies in them, they will most likely go up for sale as some big leases last up to 10 to 15 years, so this will not be something quick. It will be interesting watching what happens over the next. Couple of years. City developers really need to think outside of the box with these offices and convert them.

[anthony_c55]

We're still not too removed from the peak of the pandemic to understand what long term trends will be in cities and how significant WFH remains.