Pittsburgh Commercial News | Week Ending February 11th

 

The last single-family house in Uptown, one with its share of neighborhood ghosts as well as secret plans, has passed muster as a historically valuable property with the Pittsburgh Planning Commission.

 

After the city’s Historic Review Commission voted to reject the nomination recommendation last week by a 4 to 1 vote with one abstention, the planning commission unanimously voted to recommend what is known as the Tito house along with a neighboring garage on to the Pittsburgh City Council for vote as historic properties.

As the divided votes suggest, it’s a property with a fraught past but also development potential for which Uptown Partners, the community organization for the neighborhood, has also been pursuing a conservatorship action in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas. Uptown Partners supported the historic nomination. It was opposed by the owners of the property.

 

The nomination includes both a late 19th century Victorian house at 1817 Fifth Ave. and a neighboring garage property at 1818 Colwell St., a combined entry that integrates a family history of an Italian American family in what is now a predominantly African American community.

 

With testimony from historians, the claim to historic value includes the use as the city’s first beer distributor for Latrobe Brewing Co. and its famous Rolling Rock brand. The history also involved interrelated stories of involvement with organized crime to which some Italian Americans involved took exception; the history also attempts to link onto the neighboring Hill District and the famed Negro League baseball team the Pittsburgh Crawfords that played nearby, stories that inspired a mixed reaction from those familiar with them…Read More

 

A Hazelwood redevelopment that has has been in the works for nearly seven years is ready to move forward, adding more than 50 apartments in the neighborhood, most of them meeting standards of affordability.

 

In the first meeting of the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh for the new administration of Mayor Ed Gainey, the board voted forward three items to enable a joint venture of the Community Builders and the Hazelwood Initiative to redevelop the former Gladstone School into a new apartment project.

 

“This project has been a very long time coming. It’s the largest development site in Hazelwood outside of Hazelwood Green,” said Sonya Tilghman, executive director of the Hazelwood Initiative, noting how her organization has been working to move forward a redevelopment of the property since 2015. “We are thrilled to be on the cusp of breaking ground.”

 

Working with a 9% Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, it’s a nearly $24 million project to convert the 1914-built structure into a total of 51 residential units, 27 of them to be rented at 50% of area median income or lower.

The URA voted through three agenda items on the matter, including spending $2 million in funds the city has received through the American Rescue Act for the project along with an item to put more than $1.7 million in Rental Gap Program loan, a funding source from the city’s Housing Opportunity Fund.

 

The 51-unit project goes forward along with an affordable for sale housing project and two other key projects for Hazelwood waiting in the wings.

 

The URA board also voted on entering into a sales contract for a five parcels in Hazelwood with the Community of Bridges Land Trust. The $20,000 sale allows the organization to move forward with building 12 townhouses to be sold at prices at 50% to 80% of area median income, or a range of between $87,000 and $135,000, for what are expected to be three-bedroom units. The project will participate in the Living Building Challenge as well, building out a host of sustainable building features such as solar panels and higher performing insulation, among others.

“These homes are going to accomplish at least a 70% reduction in energy use from the grid,” said Ed Nusser, executive director of the Community of Bridges Land Trust…Read More

 

One of Pittsburgh’s biggest banks is in the market for a new office.

 

A spokesman for Citizens Bank, the name tenant at 525 William Penn Place where it has well over 100,000 square feet, confirmed it has been scouting and expects to make a decision this year.

That could mean staying put or a move to any number of areas around town, according to Citizens Spokesman Bennett Griesmer.

 

“We are currently evaluating all of our options, including in downtown Pittsburgh and adjacent areas, including the Strip District and the North Side,” he said.

 

He also made clear the company’s search includes “our current premises.”

 

To be sure, it’s a consequential search for the Pittsburgh office market and for downtown in the midst of a pandemic that is reshaping the world of work.

 

Based in Providence, Rhode Island, Citizens (NYSE:CFG) is the fourth-largest bank in the 10-county Pittsburgh region by deposit market share as well as the second-biggest retail bank, with 108 branches in the Pittsburgh metro…Read More

 

As it works on a residential conversion a few blocks away, Washington, D.C.-based Douglas Development Corp. is poised to take ownership of Centre City Tower, a 26-story, 362,000-square-foot office building on Smithfield Street downtown.

 

Norman Jemal, a principal of Douglas, confirmed that his company is now set to take ownership after the building at 650 Smithfield Street went through a sheriff’s sale auction process by the Allegheny County Sheriff’s office at its regularly scheduled event held on the first Monday of each month.

 

“We were the successful bidder,” said Jemal, in a brief phone conversation after the sheriff’s sale auction had concluded.

 

He didn’t divulge too many details, including the final sales price.

 

But he did say Douglas expects to keep the building for office use.

 

“We will make some upgrades to the building to make it more appealing to tenants,” he said.

 

He added he expects to modernize the elevators and the restrooms, as well as add new amenities, including possibly a new gym.

 

Douglas had an established interest to buy the property as well as an inside track after Douglas affiliate Jemal’s City Centre LLC bought the mortgage debt for the building last year.

 

It gave the company a position to take ownership of the building unless an outside bidder offered more than the mortgage debt value…Read More