City Home News

2009-05-26T09:51:00.000-07:00

Follow Eric Miller on Twitter at EricWMiller

Visit his web site at http://www.ericmiller.me

2009-01-22T12:39:00.000-08:00

Pittsburgh's residential and commercial real estate markets are bucking the national trend down. Moody's recently rated the commercial market number one. The New York Times reported that most residential markets were down in 2008, while Pittsburgh enjoyed a 2.2 percent gain. Pittsburgh Business Times Article

2008-11-07T18:29:00.000-08:00

Pittsburgh is amazing. The other day I received an email about one of my properties from Zillow.com and it said the value had increased by $24,000. I am aware that may not be the acual case, but I don't doubt that city properties in Pittsburgh are still undervalued. As far as the Allegheny City flats are concerned, I have heard news about great retail--Rita's Italian Ice on East Ohio Street and a new Thai restaurant on Western Avenue, which I suspect will be the first of three restaurants to be in that spot recently to survive. If you're looking for an investment in Pittsburgh, check out 1417 Sandusky Street offered at $54,900. For more information on Pittsburgh, email me at pghcityhomes@gmail.com

2008-05-17T16:37:00.000-07:00

POLL QUESTION RESULTS

In the coming year, 57 percent of respondents expect prices in Pittsburgh to rise, 14 percent say it will decline and 28 percent look for it to stay the same.

2008-05-09T08:09:00.000-07:00

If you've been listening to Lynn Cullen this morning, there's been a great discussion about gas prices, mass transit and how its going to impact the suburbs. Also in my Small House Talk email I received this link to an article that could just be outlining a double wammy for the suburbs The incredible shrinking house

2008-05-05T04:42:00.000-07:00

INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY Looking for a solid investment? 33 Solar Street, $19,900, Move in Condition, minutes to highway, walk to town. Short walk to a number of buses to Oakland, McKinight Road, downtown, more. Covered front porch.

2008-05-01T05:58:00.000-07:00

INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY $64,900... Located in the Mexican War Streets Historic neighborhood, this home is completely renovated. Spacious bedroom suite with study, bookcases and closet. Newer mechanics. Eat in kitchen, security system. Buy, rent and save for retirement! WALK SCORE: 77!!! email: pghcityhomes @ gmail.com

2008-04-30T16:36:00.000-07:00

EVENT: Mark your calendars for Wednesday, May 21, 2008, for the Fifth Annual Walk and Dine: a downtown(Pittsburgh)living tour. Make sure you check out www.DowntownPittsburgh.com for event details and to order your tickets. You can also order tickets by calling the PDP office at (412) 566-4190.

2008-04-30T10:17:00.000-07:00

EVENT: Brighton Heights Chocolate House Tour, Sunday May 18, 1-5. BrightonHeights.org

2008-04-30T09:51:00.000-07:00

INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY Brooklyn Brownstone beyond your budget? Here's an 1859 townhome in a historic district for $164,900. Six rooms, marble bath, AC and more! Rent it now and save it for retirement. DETAILS

2008-04-30T09:37:00.000-07:00

I'm here in Brooklyn, New York. Statistics released this morning show that foreclosures are up in the country, but also in New York (which many thought could escape the national housing crisis). Of the five boroughs, Staten Island is faring the worst, and Brooklyn the best. Pittsburgh of course is also suffering in this respect (called "undervalued" and "safe" a few short months ago). Still after years of construction investment in high-end residential properties, New Yorker's with less than high-end incomes are facing paying increasing percentages of their incomes to rental housing, and Pittsburgh remains quite affordable. I am able in part to finance my existence in New York with rental properties in Pittsburgh. While Pittsburgh won't escape the housing crisis, it is far from being among the hardest hit areas and investments there remain a viable option for those in higher-priced markets to supplement their income.

2007-12-16T19:03:00.000-08:00

A web site called WalkScore lets you enter your address and be scored on the walkability of your neighborhood. Putting in my East Allegheny address, I get an 82. A random Arch Street address nets a 77. The 15212 zip code, however gets only a 43. My sister north suburban address is in the 30s, while the Shadyside zip code gets an 88. If your in the market for a home, the walk score is a good way to judge how convenient transportation will be, how easy it will be to walk outside and get the things you need and how much you'll need excercize equipment, a car or a gyme membership! Check it out by entering an address at http://www.walkscore.com

2007-11-16T11:50:00.001-08:00

Finding Allegheny Allegheny has been a part of Pittsburgh for a century now and its identity has to some degree ceased to exist except in a few neighborhood names, an unappreciated center and as a neighborhood in the “Northside” of Pittsburgh.

Allegheny took longer to settle than Pittsburgh, but in the mid Nineteenth century historical accounts noted that prominent Pittsburghers preferred to live in “suburbs” like Allegheny.

Today we think of Allegheny more in terms of a central city than a suburb. The part of Allegheny closest to the river has become little more than an extension of downtown Pittsburgh.

This past year has seen much discussion over what’s to become of Allegheny’s Center, now known as Allegheny Center. Talks of new parks and “re-connecting the grid” abound. Yet in an area where countless people had businesses, worked, shopped and lived, only a handful of institutions have ownership stake in Allegheny Center today. “re-connecting the grid” will not be able to change that and only bring 21st century auto traffic into an area originally defined in the Nineteenth century.

Its true, there’s no sign of the Allegheny of 1850 there today, and even little of the Allegheny of 1900. But why not bring a little of the history back?

I’d like to throw a twist out there on an earlier suggestion, that of reconstructing the market house. Not the market house that many old timers remember, but a market house in a structure that would reach back to the original town. Rebuilding a building to replicate the original town hall would both take Allegheny back to her roots a market to bring life back into Allegheny.

The reconstructed building need not be on its original spot—the old Buhl Planetarium is there, it could be anywhere in Allegheny Center and there are plenty of spots where this building might fit. If it were constructed close to the place where the farmer’s market is held in the East Commons, that institution could simply be moved inside for fresh produce year-round.

Commemorating the anniversary of Allegheny’s annexation and approaching Pittsburgh’s 250th birthday, looking back before our own memories, before the age of steel to the age of canals and glass, grazing land and ship building will provide the best foresight into the future. Rebuilding the City Hall as a market would help provide this window for Allegheny.

2007-11-13T19:54:00.000-08:00

Homes near transit are still selling! Read all about it!

2007-10-19T10:04:00.000-07:00

I heard recently about a University graduate who was hired by a company which opened an office in Pittsburgh for no other reason than the fellow they hired didn't want to move. That says a lot for Pittsburgh and a lot for the importance for companies in being somewhere employees want to live.

Along those lines, I had an interesting exchange with someone in Memphis, Tennessee recently. We were discussing Memphis and its attributes. This person seemed to like her city, but it couldn't, in her opinion, top Pittsburgh. "I love Pittsburgh," she said, "though Memphis has its charms I can't imagine someone trading Pittsburgh for it."

This person obviously had been to Pittsburgh in recent times as it was clear any opinions she had weren't outdated. As I've discussed before, there are lots of people out there who love Pittsburgh and would love to live here if the opportunities were presented. To many of those moving here it might be the lure of an affordable market, yet here was someone in an equally affordable market who still thought well of Pittsburgh and its possibilities.

There are some out there with enough wealth that they can move here and have enough of a financial cushion that finding purposeful employment can take sometime. Still, most can't be lured by cost of living or even quality of life alone. They need an opportunity to bring them here. Its only when an opportunity in Pittsburgh can be weighed with an opportunity elsewhere that we'll get a substantial number of people looking at Pittsburgh as a real option.

For this reason, research should be done on just how well potential residents like Pittsburgh and the results presented to companies who need to be where employees want to live.

2007-10-17T14:48:00.001-07:00

I just toured a house with some folks who I believe had been on the Deutschtown House Tour. It soon became apparent these folks had minimal appreciation for old houses and instead wanted to remove all the interior walls to create large, modern spaces. I really wish people who appreciated the antique nature of our homes could be found to live in them. I don't see much point in living like a Victorian, but I don't understand the desire to make these old townhomes look like a downtown condo with an old stairway. There's a certain charm in the antique, and unfortunately that seems lost on many of today's urban homebuyers. I'm big on city life, but there are those who are better suited to the suburbs. If you want big expanses of space, better to build new and slap in an old mantle.

2007-09-26T05:49:00.000-07:00

If your house is listed at the high end of the pricing range and it hasn't sold, never fear--it could sell soon. According to an article in today's Post-Gazette, appreciation last month in the region topped fifteen percent. Sales, however were down. Is there a mass rush to buy property in Pittsburgh? There's some of that, but I suspect because of a tightening by lenders means the median price may be up because the middle and upper range houses are selling faster than those on the lower end of the price range. This reminds me of a cartoon I saw on a placemat in an East German restaurant in San Francisco. A girl sat slouched on a rock under sunshine and surrounded by flowers thinking about how to mentally make sunshine and flowers a bad thing. Yes folks, fifteen percent appreciation can't be all or even half bad.

On an urelated matter copper theives are still at it and now targeting Mount Lebanon and some other suburbs Watch the news story

Buy a Copper-Free Sticker for your window

2007-09-12T09:53:00.000-07:00

More apartments will soon be available downtown as the Century Building is converted to accomodate rental units ranging in price from $525 to $1150. The building has long been one of my favorite and is ideally situated for use as a residential building. It's a half block from the Benedum and a half block from the Seventh Street Bridge, and will be steps away from the new grocery planned for the space at Fort Duquesne Boulevard and Seventh.

The other great building I'd eally like to see rehabbed (shown) is at the corner of Liberty and Seventh. I believe the use is already residential, but it definitely has that "signature" building quality and could use a restoration. There's even a building designed with this structure in mind on Market Street in San Francisco.

2007-09-11T11:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Pop City Media was host to a panel discussion dealing largely with the reality and future of Pittsburgh. While each panelist had interesting insight, nothing could make ears perk up like they did when Warhol director Tom Sokolowski stood up and said something to the effect of Bob O’Connor’s death having been the best thing to that's happened to Pittsburgh. Unfortunately Sokolowski didn’t have the microphone when he was making his comments, but I would love to have heard more of what he had to say and hope he’s invited to a future panel.

O’Connor’s name was first brought up by Michael Edwards, president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership. Edwards applauded the former mayor’s simple vision of a clean and safe city. He also echoed a notion I’ve had for some time, that there’s nothing wrong with native Pittsburghers leaving. It’s only with the experience of other cities that many come to realize what a great city Pittsburgh is. The problem for us is a lack of energy and talent flowing in to replace them.

Lenore Blum, a professor of computer science at CMU seemed to disagree with Edwards when she lamented that only five percent of graduates stay in Pittsburgh, a percentage much lower than say Stanford. I suspect there was not the disagreement there might have appeared to be as it seems Edwards and Blum were talking about two different groups of people. Edwards might have meant the children of Pittsburghers and Blum students born elsewhere.

All the panelists seemed to agree there’s a buzz of sorts in Pittsburgh now we haven’t felt before, at least not recently. We’re on the verge of being in a happening place. I have myself observed that ten years ago it was hard to find a student or young person who didn’t want to move from Pittsburgh. I remember reminding one acquaintance of the availability of affordable housing here maybe ten years ago, to which I heard “you have your house, I’ll have a life.”

We don’t live in that Pittsburgh anymore. Now I hear many students—familiar with San Francisco and New York-- and young people say they would like to stay in Pittsburgh if the opportunity presented itself. Google recently opened its office here and gave as a reason that its employees wanted to live here. We may not realize it, but we’ve won half the battle already. Yet we continue to aim marketing efforts at students, when perhaps we’d get further by trying to get across to companies that the educated workforce that’s often tough to entertain likes Pittsburgh. With CMU ranking at the top of computer science schools to some degree the new Pittsburgh is here, they want to stay, but are often forced to leave. If we could get the message out to corporate America that potential employees want to live in Pittsburgh, that could at least put us on the radar for location scouts.

This could be a worthwhile project for Carol Coletta, President and CEO of a group called CEOs for cities. The only one to travel for the presentation, Coletta advocated catering to the retiring boomers, who large in number, also like much of what young workers like—condo life and a lively downtown. More, Coletta noted Pittsburgh's head start in green building, but sadly a fact that's been lost and the image shed to other cities "because your mayor is not engaged."

Oh, Blum also noted that to her knowledge, the CMU campus has never been visited by a Mayor. Mr. Ravenstahl may take note that it might be a good start to ask them to stay.

Finally Dr. Eric Beckman, the Chief Science Officer for a company he founded called Cohera Medical talked about a Silicon Valley misnomer-that the tech companies exist there because of advances made at Stanford. Beckman says instead its because Stanford teaches scientists to be entrepreneurs, that the region provides ways to connect scientists with business people and because there’s financing for projects that may not be much more than an idea scribbled on a napkin.

Grant Oliphant moderated the event and started out with a monologue on how we as Pittsburgh see our self. He quoted Jospeh Jaworsky from his book Syncronicity “We do not describe the world we see, but we see the world we describe.” That may sound like power of positive thinking garble, but with that in mind let me end with a quote from Lewis Mumford: "Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition mind."

Oh, and thank you Eve Picker for arranging such an important discussion.

2007-09-04T16:22:00.000-07:00

Bicyclists don't want to live on the hills. Young homebuyers are often without autos--foot and bike primarily and if necessary transit. They want to live where they can get around town easily on a bike. No matter what the price, homes on a hill are out of the question.

Tonight at a meeting of the Pittsburgh Climate Change Initiative I heard of an innovation I was not aware of... a pully system to get bikes up hills. "They have them in Europe," I was told.

This would completely open up new worlds for Pittsburgh's bicyclists and bring more affordable housing within their reach.

If you have a climate change suggestion, there are several meetings coming up. Visit the Pittsburgh Cliumate Change Initiative on the web

2007-08-31T17:03:00.000-07:00

I've wanted to have a half bath on the first floor for some time now, but without tearing out the back staircase there is no room for it. There is a space under the front staircase where there's enough room for a toilet, but not a sink. I thought about having a urinal and a sink installed, but it seems a lot of bother for half the usefulness! I heard about the great toilets in Japan (where space is at a premium) with sinks on the top of the toilet tank. I presumed it was a special toilet that I'd have to ship from Japan for who knows how much, but alas, there is light! The device is rather an adjustable retrofit sink that will fit over most any toilet tank! It uses water right from the tank allowing you to pee, fush and rinse without using extra water. The best part, it's only $89 plus shipping! If you have a space that's not quite big enough, take advantage of an improvisation that Japan has known for years and save water too! LINK

2007-08-26T12:47:00.000-07:00

Photo:Retail businesses in residential buildings help New Hope, PA thrive with sidewalk traffic making the area attractive to residents and visitors alike.

Neighbors Chime In On Zoning

Respondents to a recent City Home News survey like the idea of having small shops and other businesses being opened in residential buildings. From Greenwich Village to Savannah, small shops and offices in residential buildings help to keep a city healthy and vibrant. Good examples here are Ellsworth Avenue in Shadyside as well as Craig Street and Atwood Street in Oakland.

Eighty-eight percent of readers responded "yes" to the question of "Many cities have small shops mixed into urban neighborhoods, sometimes with boutiques in old houses. Should this be encouraged/allowed in Pittsburgh?" Just eleven percent responded "no."

Opposition to commercial uses in Pittsburgh partially comes from the idea that an existing commercial business would buy up houses and tear them down for parking if the houses were zoned for commercial uses. There are many examples of this happening. The solution may be to create a new zoning category for small retail businesses that don't occupy more than the typical ground floor square footage of a typical house, say 1,000 SF. They should not allowed to accomodate for parking, with the business relying primarily on foot traffic.

Another possibility could be an ordinance allowing artists who work in their home to hang a shingle and sell their products from their living room. This could apply to the entire city or just specific districts.

Also creating additional historic districts and protecting buildings from demolition could allow for commercial uses, encourage lively neighborhoods and prevent a suburbanization effect when properties are demolished for parking.

I agree with the majority of respondents when they say shops should be able to open in residential buildings, because single-use neighborhoods--places where there is primarily or exclusively housing-- is a suburbanizing affect of another sort. Photo: Imagine how Chestnut Street could benefit from small shops and galleries in the homes...

2007-08-21T07:22:00.000-07:00

One of the great experiences in life can be bringing an old house back from the edge of oblivion. Its increasingly difficult these days to find a house with enough character to invest a lot of time and energy in. Dunn Real Estate currently has a home listed that in my opinion, has what it takes (if you do) to be a great home. Its a Victorian with a central hall, only four rooms and an attic, but the rooms are of a decent size. It needs everything from the interior to the exterior, but all of the details and charm are intact (if you can see through the mess). Not only that, but there's a view of downtown Pittsburgh. Check it out at Dunnrealtor.com or drive by 840 Vista Street in East Allegheny/Spring Hill.

2007-08-01T17:54:00.000-07:00

Most respondents to a recent City Home News blog poll chose a food co-op over major grocery chains as their most wanted neighborhood addition. Thirty-one percent of respondents chose the co-op compared to twenty-five percent who chose Trader Joe’s. The chain called Wegmans tied with Whole Foods for third place, both with eleven percent. Giant Eagle Marketplace and ALDI tied for fourth place, each with nine percent. Two percent chose the “other” category. Forty four readers voted in the poll.

2007-07-30T08:27:00.000-07:00

I had been aware of how much watering all these flowers was adding to the water bill, but never really thought there was something that could be done about it. This weekend I found an article about collecting rainwater. I thought about it for a minute and couldn't quite comprehend how exactly one does this. Yet, even a small city townhouse the amount of water that goes onto the roof and down the spout would seem considerable. Placing a (covered) plastic barrel at the bottom of your downspout with an overflow hole or hose at the top would likely allow the collection of enough water to at least keep the plants watered. These systems could also help in seperating rain water from sewer water in a city that has only one line in most of it.

Collecting rainwater isn't new of course. I remember a house on Ohio River Boulevard that had a large barrel in the attic that held a water supply before the days of indoor plumbing. A windmill ran a pump that sent the rainwater collected to the attic. A large underground cavern held the rainwater. "Rainbarrels" were also commonplace yard "ornaments" before the days of indoor plumbing.

I haven't tried this yet and I don't have a good idea of where one can buy a large plastic barrel locally. There are a number on this web site starting at about $109.00 plus shipping. If anyone knows where to purchase a rainbarrel locally or has a rainwater-collecting system, please let me know.

2007-07-25T10:18:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal recently publiched an article about green building running head into historic preservation. I have two basic thoughts on this. First, you don't have to get carried away with either, and second, like historic preservation, green living is a mindset rather than a strict set of guidelines that must be adhered to.

Regarding the article the author fails to consider that restoration itself is a green practice because it involves recycling and hey, you can have a much greater impact recycling a home than you can a plastic bottle. More, in the case of townhomes, I would be an uninsulated townhome attached on two sides could use less energy per square foot that a fully insulated house with five sides (roof) exposed. Its also about the size of your living space. An uninsulated smaller space will use less energy than a green palace that's way oversized.

Saving energy is great, but I don't think we need to get really crazy with the energy-saving stuff. Putting windmills in the yard, solar panels on the roof and collecting rainwater is nice, but doing the little things, insulating the attic and filling cracks matters most. There's a diminishing return when you go too far beyond that. Remember by living in an old house instead of a new one you're already keeping alot of debris out of a landfill.

I had replaced some of the windows in my home, and while they aren't bad now I wish I hadn't. I wasn't aware of the alternatives available then, and as the article points out there are even more available now. A company called Jeld-wen will create a new sash for old frames that's insulated. A local company called Allied Millworks will also build a sash to fit an old frame. No, in terms of energy-efficiency, they might not be as good as replacement windows with frames, but in terms of historic preservation they're not as good as old single-pane windows with wavy glass.

They are a good way to embrace two worthwhile fields of thought.

2007-07-16T10:28:00.001-07:00

Western Pennsylvania and Ohio dominate a new list of the most affordable towns to live in. This ranking doesn't deal with cities specifically. Smaller communities near Pittsburgh include Penn Hills, West Mifflin and Brentwood. Maple Heights, Ohio
outside Cleveland also made the list as did towns in New York State and Michigan. My advice? Why live in Penn Hills when the City of Pittsburgh is so affordable? As Ed Koch once asked, "Have you ever lived in the suburbs? It's wasting your life."

2007-07-12T18:13:00.001-07:00

Buffalo, New York was the destination on a recent day trip. Driving towards Buffalo from Erie, Pa is a treat. Traveling along a small road line with grape fields and early Nineteenth Century houses, one is confronted with our rural past. Its easy to enjoy the untouched countryside not marred by Wal-Marts and gas stations. I have not yet been to upstate New York specifically to visit vineyards, but I look forward to it. I've been to Buffalo several times before, crawled through the abandoned Central Terminal and gander ed at the magnificent city hall. Buffalo has beautiful architecture, but it's missing life--at least life downtown. I didn't notice much condo construction and old buildings in the central city are still being demolished. Central Terminal may be secure, but its still quiet.

I'm not writing this to Buffalo-bash, but I couldn't help but think Buffalo doesn't have much when compared to Pittsburgh. I think compared to a lot of similar cities, ours has undergone an unparalleled transformation. I would like to say that Buffalo has just as much to work with (as Pittsburgh) and is well worth exploring as a trip destination or a place to relocate to.

On the way back my friend and I stopped in Erie, PA for lunch. Now here's a nice center surrounded by "blah." The drive in is enough to make most travelers hit the pedal for the highway. Stay with it, the downtown has a number of early buildings, an attractive art museum, a great train station and some town squares. What it needs is building context and more streetscapes that aid the walkability. Hey Erie, build, build, build. Fill in the empty spaces!!! There's a lot in the right place to work with here too.

2007-07-12T10:51:00.001-07:00

There's a parking space for sale in Manhattan right now, and priced at $225,000 and there's a waiting list. I'm not sure what all we can read into this-- a further indication that the gap between rich and poor in the U.S. is growing? Support for the idea that the super rich are congregating along the coasts (where they just might be moving into the path of global-warming related storms and flooding)? I don't know too many people, here in Pittsburgh anyway, who paid more than $225,000 for their home. I'd place the value of a parking spot here at around $5,000 in most neighborhoods. I'm sure there are plenty of people, even in Manhattan, who shake their heads wondering just who can plop down $225,000 on a parking spot. It's a good thing that most people in Manhattan don't need cars or parking.

Also, One of my clients sent along a quote from a recent Newsweek editorial, not about expensive parking spaces in Manhattan, but another obnoxious indulgence, monster houses. Quoting Robert H. Frank's new book, Falling Behind
.

rising affluence condemns us to self-defeating consumption contests. People want ever-bigger homes, because their friends have ever-bigger homes. But the extra pleasure of owning these grander homes is muted, because (yes) all our friends have them, too. Meanwhile, the added debt to buy the house may make us more anxious; and we may regret sacrificing some leisure-working harder to buy the bigger home.

Greater individual wealth does not bring greater collective welfare. Moving farther out into suburbia for a bigger home increases traffic congestion and our commutes. Roads grow more clogged, pollution worsens. We engage in behaviors that are smart for one, dumb for all.

more here

2007-06-26T07:05:00.000-07:00

The National Association of Realtors says home sales should narrowly fluctuate narrowly with a gradual upturn. The national median existing-home price should ease by 1.3 percent to $219,100 in 2007 before rising 1.7 percent next year. The median new-home price will probably fall 2.3 percent to $240,800 this year, and then grow by 2.6 percent in 2008.

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is likely to increase to 6.6 percent in the third quarter and then hover at that level through 2008.

This reinforces the fact that buying a house, whether its an investment or a home to live in, is a long-term investment. Not unlike the stock market, price declines only really matter if you are forced to sell. The value of investment properties must be weighed against the prospects for other investments, but an owner occupant has a much better chance of benefitting from homeownership as a home for this purpose must primarily be weighed against a cost without prospects for profit--renting.

2007-06-20T12:34:00.000-07:00

Worried about housing prices declining? An article about the Chicago condo market I read this morning (on a condo-promoting web site!) made me wonder just how far down the market would go. By afternoon it had reached my inbox that if you live in Pittsburgh there was little reason to fear price drops. According to PMI, the Pittsburgh market has the least risk of declining.

PMI Mortgage Insurance ranks the nation's 50 largest metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) according to the likelihood that home prices will be lower in two years. The ranking showed Texas, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania MSAs constitute the lowest ranked group-those facing a less than 10 percent chance of lower prices.

Nine MSAs-West Palm Beach, FL, Oakland, Sacramento, and San Diego, CA, Boston and Cambridge, MA, Detroit and neighboring Warren, MI, and Cleveland, OH-saw slight year-over-year price declines.

Of course this only matters if you're trying to sell a house, and the authors point out in their press release that buying a house is a long-term investment. "If you already own, you need to take the long view and have realistic expectations about how much your property may appreciate. Building equity in a home is still a great way to build wealth over the long term."

2007-06-14T19:13:00.000-07:00

If there could be a better choice for a show to be the first performed in the Garden Theater since closing as an x-rated movie venue, it may be possible conceive of what, but I can't imagine conceiving of how. Quantum Theater's performance of the Collected Works of Billy The Kid was superb. I also enjoyed being in the audience and seeing inside the Garden for the first time in my life (I am telling the truth!!). I had anticipated getting a bite to eat at Max's before the show, but it was getting late and if its busy in there it can be slow. So we drove to Giorgio's on Western Avenue and then back. I didn't park near the Garden, I drove back home-- just to experience for the first time walking out my front door and down to the Theater. I am used to walking downtown for a show, but today I had the opportunity to go directly West toward the bright lights. I had a friend visiting a few years ago who saw the lights down the street. I told him it was a porn theater and he said "I'll be back." He returned sooner than I thought and lamented, "it's closed. What kind of porn theater closes at nine?" We blamed it on Pittsburgh.

Just now I bit on the skin between my thumb and pointer finger and then reminded myself I had just returned from the Garden. I don't think I touched much of anything, except a plastic wine glass and the sink faucet. The sink faucet? Ugh. From the bathroom stall I heard someone say "I think this is one place it might be better not to wash your hands!" Yea, the Garden was pretty dirty. Cobwebs are in place, plaster is falling off the walls and the lights are dim as ever (as ever I imagined they were of course). The audience couldn't sit in the theater seats, to the relief of many--it wasn't built for plays anyway. A steeper seating area was built near the front and we all got to sit on folding chairs.

Sure, maybe they should have cleaned the place up first, renovated it and had a grand opening. There's something endearing about having the Garden Theater appear in the event listings almost immediately after ending its former life, however. Continuity, continuance. That's good--unusual even. I can always tell when you walk into a house that has continuity. There's a lot that's lost when you walk into a place that's been gutted and rebuilt. It just doesn't have that organic feel that one that's been lived in for fifty or a hundred or more years has. The Garden has been there for a long time, and tonight, there we were. You couldn't help but think about what had gone on in there.

It's kind of like looking at a photograph of Billy The Kid. There he is, or was, and there we were. There's some truth to every tale, but much of it is imagination. After such a long time waiting, it was wonderful tonight to walk down the street towards the lights and imagine.

On the way out I took a photo of the seats. "The good old days," someone joked.

2007-06-06T08:35:00.000-07:00

Pittsburgh's 2002 base-year system for assessing property values has been thrown out. While the system was far from perfect, the decision is a blow to hundreds of thousands of homeowners and would-be purchasers who continue to have little idea what their taxes might be. The system may have been difficult to comprehend, but it was a system and thus provided some stability. Investments, markets and all things financial do not like instability. It has been said that companies can operate in an economically controlled environment such as the former Soviet Union or pre-1990 China, they just don't do so well when conditions are subject to change on a whim. That's not so unlike the tax system today in Allegheny County. Residents, potential residents and builders are unable to foresee for any period of time into the future what exactly their taxes will be. The system needs to be solidified as quickly as possible. Unfortunately for those desires its now the Pennsylvania State Government we're dealing with. Update: ONOROTO SAYS "No Reassessments."

2007-06-06T05:27:00.000-07:00

BREAKING NEWS!!! Tax breaks designed to attract home builders to Downtown and 28 neighborhoods won City Council's OK yesterday.

In addition to Downtown, eligible neighborhoods for the tax break are: Allentown, Arlington, Beltzhoover, California-Kirkbride, East Allegheny, Elliott, Esplen, Fineview , Hays, Hazelwood, Homewood North, Homewood South, Homewood West, Knoxville, Larimer, Lincoln-Lemington/Belmar, Lower Lawrenceville, Manchester, Marshall-Shadeland, Mt. Oliver, Perry South/Perry Hilltop , Sheraden, Spring Garden, the Strip District, the Upper Hill District, Upper Lawrenceville, Uptown and the West End.

Reports indicate the tax breaks also apply to substantial improvements to existing properties. What that means exactly is what I'll be trying to find out.

Full Story in the Tribune-Review

2007-05-24T13:24:00.000-07:00

Its Not Easy Being Green and Big At the same time “green” is the buzz of the real estate industry, the size of American homes is getting bigger. While many are choosing renewable materials, the square feet of space and the amount of materials it takes to construct a home has continued to increase.

This is the result of viewing the concept as “green” as buying one thing instead of another—using bamboo instead of oak. What’s lost on this monster home greening is the space that needs to be heated increases, the footprint of the home increases and likely the distance it takes to travel to and from the home increases. That may be buying green, without thinking green.

I was in a hotel watching one of those real estate shows on cable. There was a house somewhere that had been remodeled and expanded using renewable materials like cork, stone and raw wood. The agent was excited because its easy these days get green for something that looks like green.

It was clear this home was three times the size it had been when the well-intentioned couple started down the green road, and it was located on a large, wooded lot that might have required owning an SUV to access.

According to the National Association of Home Builders, the average home size in the United States was 2,330 square feet in 2004, up from 1,400 square feet in 1970. That means we’re heating and air conditioning more than twice the space we did during the oil crisis of the 1970s. We have more wiring to such electricity, more gas pipes, more heating ducts, more spaces to insulate with green insulation, more appliances, more floors to vacuum, more countertops to clean with green products.

Green is not just about what we buy, it’s about how we live. Green is about how far we live from our work and shopping, its about how often we walk or use mass transit, its about how much space our home occupies and about how much energy we use getting around. Sure, being green is about buying and building with renewable resources, but its also about re-use and restoration and about being conscious not only of what we buy and do, but how much we use.

2007-05-14T19:14:00.000-07:00

This doesn't have much to do with City Home News, but rather concert halls and the great one we have in Pittsburgh. I've been to quite a few now and I always thought that no lobby anyway I've seen can match Heinz Hall. Tonight at the Tony Bennett concert he relayed that after touring halls around the world with Lena Horne, she took him by the hand and pulled him into one lobby--the Heinz Hall lobby and said it was the most beautiful in the world. I haven't seen them all, but I bet Tony and Lena have seen most. Enjoy it Pittsburgh, we have the best.

2007-04-28T14:55:00.000-07:00

The Why of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh is the most livable city again, at least according to Places Rated. It's also been listed as number three in a list of cities of the future. I remember once a few years back being told by a fellow in the Bahamas that I was from the "future" when I told him I lived in San Francisco. Now San Francisco is only second most livable and doesn't even rank on the cities of the future list.

The rankings that place Pittsburgh at the top are actually pretty consistent. Pittsburgh has never ranked lower than 14 and been named "most-livable" twice. Just last year the Economist Intelligence Unit named Pittsburgh, tied with Cleveland, as the most livable.

So how do we explain the frequent response of "why" when local find out they have a visitor in their midst.

They know why, we don't.

I guess if Pittsburgh were a laundry detergent, the most popular would be the most sold. That's apparently not the case with cities though. It was only a few weeks ago the news came that some sixty thousand people voted with their feet and left Pittsburgh between 2000 and 2006. Had they stayed to see the rankings they might still be here. Despite last year's rankings, folks also left Cleveland.

Maybe they didn't know what they had.

While many are leaving, or dying, others are coming in. I see them all the time in the real estate industry. Folks from California, Maine, Florida, Maryland, New York and elsewhere, in numbers are looking at Pittsburgh. Just because the population numbers are going dowwn, doesn't mean tumbleweeds are going to be blowing along Grant Street. Its just that the number coming in isn't at a point where the tide will turn and result in a net increase yet.

Those coming in know the why of Pittsburgh. It's certainly got a look to it. Streets wind up and down green hillsides the sun rises over three rivers and shines on a cluster of steel and glass skyscrapers. Neighborhood streets and a downtown theater district bustle with activity. Housing is inexpensive and it has some of the best sports teams and cultural institutions in the world.

I stopped by a house on Troy Hill a friend (from Oregon) had bought. They were energetically tearing it apart. "This is great," my friend said. "Thanks." I told them Pittsburgh has a lot of neat stuff, like houses and infrastructure, it just needed more people with some energy.

They know what they have.

It's hard to keep that energy level when you've been here a few months or years, and that's our challenge. Sometimes folks who have been here for years look at the energetic newcomers and shake their heads. They know how it is and their quiet world is interrupted. Sometimes Pittsburghers ask "why" when they should be asking, "why not?"

Hey folks, we gotta believe, we gotta be welcoming, and we gotta change.

Each time I travel I am re-energized about Pittsburgh--I am reminded of the why of Pittsburgh. I'm writing this from Nashville, Tennessee. Its sunny here and the city has a lot of energy. There's no shortage of construction--the number of condos going up in downtown Nashville make the construction in downtown Pittsburgh look pale in comparison. Parts of the downtown are lively and there's a beautiful park along the Cumberland River. Still as I walked along Broadway (Nashville's Broadway), past the concert stage, Tootsie's Orchid Lounge and looked out at the General Jackson paddle boat on the Cumberland, I couldn't help but think experience lacked something compared to what I see leaving Heinz Hall and walk across the Roberto Clemente Bridge towards a late game at PNC Park. Even better are the nights when the symphony runs long and you can hear the boom of fireworks from inside Heinz Hall.

A few blocks from PNC Park and I'm in some of the best neighborhoods in most any city in the country. Row after row of Victorian and even civil-war era townhouses, brick and stone, a beautiful Art-Deco hospital, all surrounding a park bigger, even if less appreciated than Boston Commons. These are features the urban Nashville wannabees can't dream of having.

Just looking at data, all this may not have ever been seen by the folks who named our city most livable once again. Yet we're still #1!.

We don't always see what we have from inside. To us its just Pittsburgh. Its the tunnels and the bridges and the Steelers. Wake up! Pittsburgh really is a livable city, even the most livable city-- more than we could ever expect from a city of its size and cost is here and somehow it gains the recognition as most livable sometimes in spite of ourselves. They know the why of Pittsburgh. We need to rediscover it.

2007-04-27T05:42:00.000-07:00

A little more on Allegheny CenterThe urban-renewal experienced by urban America from the 1950s onward is generally accepted today as failed policy. Where once urban streets were closed off to auto traffic and traffic loops and underground garages added, a new paradigm would bring back a street grid. Today “restoring the grid” is an often-heard catch phrase when taking about re-revitalizing urban areas.

Allegheny Center in Pittsburgh is one such place. In the 1960s, the “center” of a city once known as Allegheny was redeveloped. All but a few buildings were removed and replaced by apartment buildings, office towers and a retail mall. Allegheny Center was to be a city within a city.

The street grid was removed from Allegheny. Through-traffic was prohibited, instead directed onto a circle that swept around the center. The center then was a park-like space. Apartment residents and mall residents could access the mall, and keep their cars in lots on the outer-edges of the circle. Those who were not residents of Allegheny Center could access the retail mall either by walking into the park area or by parking in a garage located under the retail mall.

While Allegheny Center today is far from vacant, the city within a city is without retail. Most of that had closed by the early 1990s. By the turn of 21st Century talk began of opening the East-West axis in the center to vehicular traffic. More recently proposals to “restore the grid” have come forth. In the case of Allegheny Center, a full restoration of a grid would mean significant demolition of buildings that are occupied, generally attractive, in good repair and not a half-century old.

Original plans for the City of Allegheny show a checkerboard of sorts of squares placed some distance from the Allegheny River. The layout of Allegheny appeared to be a fresh breath of order in a chaotic landscape, especially when looking across the river to the chaotic street patterns of rival city Pittsburgh.

The center four squares of the thirty-six square grid were reserved for public use and included a park, a space that would come to be occupied by a neo-classical city hall. The idea of public use was strong and one of the squares seemed well-suited to Andrew Carnegie’s desire to construct the first public library in the United States. The fourth square would for many years be occupied by a market house.

In contrast to many of its eastern counterparts and cities along the Ohio River, Allegheny resembled a New England town, complete with a public square and public buildings at the center. It stood in contrast to the chaotic, commercial cities with irregular street grids and commerce and industry as their central focus.

In the 20th Century Allegheny grew to be more like neighboring Pittsburgh. More and more of the squares came to be occupied by commercial buildings and the density increased to the point to where any resemblance to a New England town was lost. Department stores, diners, theaters and other commercial enterprises served the needs of the growing city.

Today when nostalgic talk about “restoring the grid” is uttered, it’s the commercial Allegheny that’s referred to, not the spirit of the original city.

Yet as we see with retail development today, the places it occupies go in and out of fashion. Entering a department store our grandparents might have known is an anomaly. When city planners started looking at Allegheny in the 1950s, many of the stores had become vacant, underutilized and deteriorated. This is a normal process in the retail cycle. Likewise the mall that was to replace the commercial Allegheny Center existed for some decades before its time too had ended. We look at it today as a failure, yet the mall at Allegheny Center lasted longer than many of the strip mall businesses in our suburbs and longer than many of the businesses in our downtown—without the street grid. Its this portion of Allegheny Center that most needs attention rather than the entire complex.

That doesn’t in any way negate the value of the street grid. The parts of the Allegheny City Center grid designers wish to restore today are in fact still in place. The issue is not the grid exactly, but the facilitation of automobile traffic through the grid. Part of the grid is off limits after mall hours (the mall is now an office building) and that is indeed an impediment to the vitality of Allegheny City Center.

A testament to the value of such a grid design with central squares is the fact that remarkably, despite attempts of complete destruction by powerful forces, the central four “public” squares of Allegheny essentially exist today. More it should be added that the original plans for Allegheny did not provide for interior intersecting “streets”. Any sort of vehicle it appears would have had to go around the central four squares in a diamond pattern.

The original Carnegie Library building is still there. While the city hall was demolished when Allegheny was annexed by Pittsburgh, a planetarium was built in its place and now is occupied by the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum. The square that was home to Diamond Park is still a park space, although the current design aesthetics are less than appealing to those with classical sensibilities. Sadly the space formerly occupied by the Market House is now partially occupied by an apartment building, but there is ample green space around the building to preserve some sense of it as a public space. The center of the space is a crossroads for pedestrians visiting the center, from apartment dwellers to visitors to the Children’s Museum, the adjoining New Hazlett Theater and the various office buildings.

Its not so important to "revive" the Allegheny City Center of any specific time period. While the retail portion needs work, it is important to recognize, however that the original Center of Allegheny for a large part is intact. It just needs some refining and reaching for its aesthetic roots.

2007-04-26T04:36:00.000-07:00

Pittsburgh is a triumph of the better than average place. Excelling at all of the nine categories once again put Pittsburgh at the top of the Places Rated Almanac. It's the first time any city has been at the top twice, the first being 1985. Pittsburgh's worst ranking since 1981 has been 14th. The guide is traditionally published every four years. The last edition, however was eight years ago. San Francisco ranked number two and Philadelphia five.
MORE

2007-04-12T08:01:00.000-07:00

I'd like to briefly respond to the Mayor's new efforts aimed at keeping young people in Pittsburgh. In its recent report the census bureau didn't mention young people leaving as a reason for our continued population loss since 2000. The Mayor is not the first person to see the bank robber and shoot the teller, however. For years we've been talking about ways to keep Pittsburghers from leaving when what we're missing compared to other cities is in-migration. Healthy young people move around and healthy cities have a constant flow of in and out migration. If you want to keep young Pittsburgher's here, you need a committee of one: a Fidel Castro-style dictator. If you want a healthy, living city we need to look outside ourselves and find ways to encourage in-migration as well as out-migration.

2007-04-05T05:30:00.000-07:00

Finding Downtown Without Your Car A few years back my friend and I were walking around Pittsburgh’s Northside and I was describing everything that had been demolished. At that time the future of some late 19th Century buildings known as the Garden Theater block was even less certain than it is now. “It’s all that’s left of downtown (the earlier name for the Northside).” I said. It would seem a light went off in my friends mind. “That’s what’s wrong with the Northside,” he exclaimed, “It lost its downtown.”

A small theater once known as Carnegie Hall was the location for a lecture turned April revival about the future of the old center of Allegheny City. The theater, built by Andrew Carnegie, was almost filled—a large crowd for something as mundane as an urban planning lecture. Clearly there is a certain passion out there for the topic, and a yearning for the old days when Allegheny really had a center.

Throughout the presentation dramatic graphics showed original plan maps, the old days, urban renewal in the 1960s and present day Allegheny Center. Allegheny started with a grid centered by a public square and surrounded by a public commons. It would seem a plan that would produce a beautiful city, one with more form and grace than the neighboring city of Pittsburgh.

Not to be outdone, Pittsburgh would eliminate any competition when forcing not only annexation but eventually urban renewal on Allegheny. Today the result is a half-empty, uninspiring office mall, a quiet center, an unattractive and ignored public square and a wall that seems as much an attempt to keep Alleghenians in as to keep Pittsburghers out.

The presentation by architect Doug Suisman aimed to enliven Allegheny and remove the barriers that block the path that leads from Allegheny to Pittsburgh.

An idea that has been floating around for some time, Suisman reinforced the idea and modern popular notion of restoring the street grid and again creating the thirty-six original squares of Allegheny, bringing cars and foot traffic back into the center. Further, Suisman suggested cutting the wall—or in practical terms, removing a section of Allegheny Center Mall to allow Federal Street to connect from North to South. He also proposed adding infill buildings to bring back the density in Allegheny, rebuilding a market house and converting an abandoned library (Carnegie’s first) into “Allegheny Hall,” as well as restoring the name of Allegheny and street names.

Many of these ideas seem to have merit, and undoing urban-renewal projects is certainly the established paradigm these days. It’s also a paradigm I’m much more at home in than one of creating urban suburban atmospheres with plenty of parking.

Still, the ideas seemed to stem from a desire to restore the lost downtown as a separate, proud city in a nineteenth century context than a realization of what Allegheny is today.

First, today the idea of a “downtown” Allegheny is not nearly as important as a “center.” Second, the original “center” was a public square in days before streets were filled with automobiles, trucks and traffic. Restoring the center then need not include bringing automobile traffic into the center. Moreover, the original concept of the streets Suisman noted as being “four streets named Diamond,” are not unlike the traffic circle that surrounds the present-day Allegheny Center. So, instead of bringing traffic into the public square Suisman wants to restore, reinforce the notion of a “public” square where people can interact rather than drive through.

The notion of removing a section from Allegheny Center Mall is a good one. When walking from downtown there is no apparent way into the center of Allegheny and no direct physical way when the mall is closed. Again, the need is to have pedestrian access unrestricted and inviting. I question the need to invite and encourage vehicular traffic into the park-like setting.

Susiman noted that a good city is built block by block, lot by lot and has a diversity of interests. That’s entirely true, but present day Allegheny Center has no more potential for that than it does of again being a separate city. There far fewer owners of Allegheny Center today than there were squares in the original plan. Unless you raze everything and start from scratch as they did in the 1960s, there isn’t a way to restore that effect of having a multitude of stakeholders.

Restoring public transit service to the center of Allegheny was also a proposal. The photos all showed streetcar lines. Bringing streetcars into Allegheny Center would be an ideal. A historic streetcar line running on Federal from downtown or east-west on Ohio Street would indeed enliven the center, and all of the neighborhoods it traverses for that matter, but we don’t need to restore vehicular traffic to accomplish that.

Allegheny is not what it was in 1906 and attempts to restore it to that might not be any more successful at restoring it than renewal projects were at renewing it. In some ways in its present park-like atmosphere is more like Allegheny in the 1830s. Restoring Diamond Park, pedestrian access, some retail including a market house, the name Allegheny and even public transit are all laudable goals. Yet modern adaptations to it should recognize Allegheny for what it is now as much as any other time period. Adaptations need not necessarily include the 20th Century adaptation known as the motor car.

2007-03-26T09:09:00.001-07:00

Green Living and Historic Preservation When thinking of green building old houses aren’t what always first comes to mind. “Green building” may instead conjure up images of solar panels, strange-looking storage tanks and grassy substances growing on the roof.

One of the primary principles of green building, however is recycling. This not only applies to materials, but also applies to whole buildings. Reusing a building is by its nature a “green” process.

Sure, old buildings can have drafty doors and windows, less than adequate insulation and old mechanics that may make it operate at less than maximum efficiency, at least less efficiently than a comparable new home built in a green-friendly manner.

Take the house I live in for example. It was built in 1859 of solid brick construction. The walls are made of two layers of bricks with plaster on the inside walls. That means there is no space in between the walls to insulate. One solution could be to build out the interior walls and insulate there, but to someone who wants to maintain the original or existing look and feel of the house that’s not an attractive option.

That doesn’t mean the house isn’t “green,” however as living green is as much a matter of process as it is about meeting specific criteria.

Brick has exceptional "thermal mass” which means it has the ability to store heat and then slowly release it. An insulated wood frame house is more like a blanket that keeps the heat in. During the summer months a brick home stays cool (until it’s fully heated by the sun) and during the winter, brick walls store your home's heat and radiate it back.

Materials aren’t the only green thinking consideration, however, another is size. Your homes bricks aren’t the only thing that stores energy. Think of your entire home as stored energy. All the energy that went into making the bricks, the stairs, the foundation, the roof of your house is still there. Choosing an existing home means that you are choosing not to expend more energy building another home.

Another consideration is size. A smaller less efficient home may take less energy to operate than a larger more efficient home. Beyond heating, remember to consider the energy it takes to maintain a large lawn or even the energy it takes to travel to and from a home that’s far from amenities and employment.

There’s still more that we miss when thinking only about the insulation properties of external materials. A brick row house may also use less energy than a comparable sized detached home because at least two of the walls are attached to other walls—they never touch the cold on the outside. The fewer walls exposed, the more efficient the home is. From this point of view, a condo in a high-rise is more suited to saving energy.

Returning to the idea of historic preservation and whether it’s compatible with green building, we can use the example of changing windows. I imagine the consensus out there is that double-paned windows are a must for buying a home. Most home inspectors will note if a home contains original or single-paned windows and suggest that they be replaced.

Many people who like old homes enjoy original features including windows. I was familiar with a 1830s farm house in the small town of Poland, Ohio that in the late 1990s still had all its original windows. More, they had been sanded and painted so that they were in perfect operating condition—someone had put a tremendous amount of energy into preserving them down to the original wavy glass that has a slightly distorted quality to it.

Unfortunately the home was sold and a new owner replaced all the windows with new double-paned ones. This may have been recommended by a home inspector and even viewed as a “green” adaptation. While it’s true the replacement windows were more efficient than the original ones, it’s also true that reuse is a green –principle and simply adding storm windows or magnetic interior storms would have arguably been the preferred “green” option.

In short, when thinking green it’s important to think beyond energy efficiency and using new, renewable products made of recycled materials. It’s important to think about reusing existing homes as well as materials. It’s important to think about the amount of space you occupy, both on the inside and outside of the house. It’s important to think about where your home is in relation to the places you frequently travel and important to think about how much of your house is exposed to the weather outside.

Historic preservation and green building do go together and living green is primarily a product of thinking green.

2007-03-20T08:45:00.001-07:00

Unthawing Pittsburgh’s Potential: Two stories about two different parts of the continent caught my eye recently. The first was about an Alaska town that offered free land to anyone willing to submit a $500 deposit and build a 1,000 square foot house within two years. There were no shortage of takers, in fact folks from Oregon, Idaho, Florida, Wisconsin and Washington were camping out in frigid temperatures for a chance to build a warm house on the cold tundra.

The second story was about a place with slightly worse prospects: Detroit. The headline about that city said cars there are now more expensive than houses. That’s not the entire story, however, while a foreclosed Detroit bungalow recently sold at auction for less than $2,000, a new condo in a downtown high-rise fetched seven figures through traditional channels. More, the long vacant and deteriorating Cadillac Hotel in downtown Detroit is being restored with the upper floors being converted into condos.

I recall reading an interview with Robert Toll, the luxury homebuilder as his company moved into the arena of developing downtown. He wasn’t sure the downtown craze would spread that far, from New York and Philadelphia into urban Detroit. Apparently he underestimated America’s new urban condo craze.

In Pittsburgh downtown condos are also coming into their own. Traditional urban neighborhoods like the Southside Flats, Mexican War Streets, Lawrenceville and Deutschtown are also holding their own, but its not hard to find the bargains mentioned in the Detroit article around here. In fact, the article mentioned in the first paragraph that homes in Motown could be had for $26,000 or less. My thoughts: Why is this news? They’ve been available here for quite some time.

Pittsburgh has had more houses than people for many years now and while people tend to cluster in certain areas keeping those values up, they don’t want to be in other places where you tend to find the $25,000 or less houses. From my general observation urban homebuyers now want to be where they can have the benefit of a walk-able neighborhood with a healthy mix of retail and residential. Urban suburbs that require you to drive everywhere are less popular.

In any case, I’d venture that most any affordable house in Pittsburgh has more going for it than a like one in Detroit or some icy Alaska land.

This hasn’t brought us to Alaska yet, but we’re getting warm.

If Pittsburgh is filled with not only vacant lots, but vacant lots with vacant houses on them, many of which are owned by the city and never reach the icy temperatures of that rocky shrubgrass is Alaska, why wouldn’t homesteaders take Pittsburgh up on such an offer? It could be a boon to the population and the tax base, not to mention the public relations value.

Of course these things are always complicated, but if its news that Detroit has affordable housing and people are flocking to Alaska in hopes of obtaining a frozen rock or two, I’ve got to think Pittsburgh has a lot more work to do getting the word out.

2007-03-13T17:20:00.000-07:00

Ask about accessing my password-protected agent notes.

2007-02-19T08:48:00.000-08:00

FINANCING YOUR PURCHASE OR RENOVATION: For those interested in obtaining financing for purchase of a home or remodeling, I have recently come across two interesting funding sources.

The first is http://www.prosper.com which allows you to borrow money from other people rather than banks. When you enter your information into the web site, it gives you a credit rating and a debt-income ratio. You can post the amount you'd like to borrow and the interest rate you'd like to pay and lenders (regular people who want to lend money, not banks) can bid for your loan. these loans cxan be used for purchase or repairs or pretty much anything.

The second is a HUD loan I was not aware of that allows you to borrow small amounts for renovation. You have to live in the home you are remodeling. This is called the Streamlined 203(k) Limited Repair Program. A link is available from the resources page of http://www.dunnrealtor.com

For more links and financial programs, visit http://www.dunnrealtor.com and click on RESOURCES.

(p.s. no warranties are made or implied by Eric Miller or Dunn Real Estate Services)

2007-02-15T13:41:00.000-08:00

Existing-home sales in most states were down from year-ago levels in the fourth quarter. In the fourth-quarter, metro area single-family home prices, examining changes in 149 metropolitan statistical areas, (2) show 71 areas had price gains from a year earlier, including 14 metros with double-digit annual increases, and 73 areas had price declines; five were unchanged.

The national median existing single-family home price was $219,300 in the fourth quarter, down 2.7 percent from a year earlier when the median price was $225,300. The median is a typical market price where half of the homes sold for more and half sold for less. For all of 2006, the median price rose 1.4 percent to $222,000.

A new comparison of annual single-family home prices in metropolitan areas shows that typical sellers experienced healthy gains on the value of their home over the last five years in almost all 131 available areas, even in areas with recent price declines.

The biggest total sales increase was in Indiana, where existing-home sales rose 13.7 percent from the fourth quarter of 2005. In Arkansas the fourth-quarter resale pace rose 11.1 percent from a year earlier, while Texas experienced the third strongest gain, up 6.2 percent.

Over the last five years, metro areas with the largest single-family price gains include the California areas of Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, up 155.3 percent, and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, up 142.3 percent, followed by the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach area of Florida, up 135.4 percent.

In the fourth quarter, the largest single-family home price increase was in the Atlantic City, N.J., area, where the median price of $339,800 was 25.9 percent higher than a year ago. Next was the Salt Lake City area, at $223,600, up 22.7 percent from the fourth quarter of 2005. The Trenton-Ewing area of New Jersey, with a fourth quarter median price of $289,000, increased 18.9 percent in the last year.

Median fourth-quarter metro area single-family prices ranged from a very affordable $78,400 in Elmira, N.Y., to nearly 10 times that amount in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara area of California where the median price was $760,000. The second most expensive area was San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, at $733,400, followed by the Anaheim-Santa Ana-Irvine area (Orange Co., Calif.), at $690,700.

In addition to Elmira, N.Y., other affordable markets include the Youngstown-Warren-Boardman area of Ohio and Pennsylvania, with a fourth-quarter median price of $80,000, and Decatur, Ill., at $89,200.

In the condo sector, metro area condominium and cooperative prices – covering changes in 58 markets – show the national median existing condo price was $220,900 in the fourth quarter, down 2.1 percent from the same period in 2005. Thirty-one metros showed annual increases in the median condo price, including seven areas with double-digit gains; 27 metros had price declines.

The strongest condo price gains were in the Austin-Round Rock area of Texas, where the fourth quarter price of $160,000 rose 16.5 percent from a year ago, followed by the Newark-Union area of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where the median condo price of $352,600 rose 16.4 percent from the fourth quarter of 2005, and Springfield, Mass., at $160,400, an increase of 14.6 percent.

Metro area median existing condo prices in the fourth quarter ranged from $102,600 in Wichita, Kan., to $580,300 in the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont area. The second most expensive reported condo market was Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, at $402,000, followed by the San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos area of California at $358,200.

Other affordable condo markets include Bismarck, N.D., at $103,500, and Greensboro-High Point, N.C., at $119,100.

Regionally, the Northeast saw an existing-home sales pace of 1.04 million units in the fourth quarter, which was 6.6 percent below a year ago. The median Northeastern resale single-family home price was $274,600 in the fourth quarter, which is 2.5 percent below the same period in 2005.

After the Atlantic City and Trenton-Ewing areas, the strongest price increase in the Northeast was in Pittsfield, Mass., with a median price of $220,600, up 4.7 percent from the fourth quarter of last year, followed by the Albany-Schenectady-Troy area of New York with a median price of $198,700, up 4.1 percent.

Total existing-home sales in the South were at an annual rate of 2.49 million units in the fourth quarter, down 8.5 percent from the fourth quarter of 2005. After the gains in Arkansas and Texas, the next strongest increase in the South was in Kentucky, up 5.6 percent from a year ago, while Mississippi rose 2.0 percent.

The median existing single-family home price in the South was $181,700 in the fourth quarter, which is 3.7 percent below a year earlier. The strongest increase in the South was in the Beaumont-Port Arthur area of Texas, where the median price of $120,000 was 15.1 percent above the fourth quarter of 2005. Next was Raleigh-Cary, N.C., at $226,300, up 14.5 percent from a year ago, followed by the Cumberland area of Maryland and West Virginia, with a 14.4 percent gain to $98,000.

In the Midwest, total existing-home sales declined 8.6 percent to a 1.43 million-unit annual level in the fourth quarter compared with a year earlier. The median existing single-family home price in the Midwest was $161,800, down 4.2 percent from the fourth quarter of 2005.

The strongest metro price increase in the Midwest was in the Davenport-Moline-Rock Island area of Iowa and Illinois, where the median price of $116,400 was 6.6 percent higher than a year ago. Next was Dayton, Ohio, at $119,500, up 5.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2005, and Rockford, Ill., at $121,500, up 5.7 percent in the last year.

In the West, the existing-home sales pace of 1.28 million units was 17.8 percent lower than the fourth quarter of 2005. The best performance in the region was in Alaska where existing-home sales rose 0.4 percent from a year earlier.

The median existing single-family home price in the West slipped 0.4 percent to $355,100 during the fourth quarter. After Salt Lake City, the strongest increase in the West was in the Salem, Ore., area, at $223,100, up 14.9 percent from fourth quarter of 2005, followed by Farmington, N.M., at $183,000, up 14.0 percent, and Spokane, Wash., at $189,200, up 12.2 percent from a year ago.

Source: NAR

2007-02-12T10:23:00.000-08:00

An article from Bankrate.com has some advice quite a few folks moving to Pittsburgh have taken. If you live in a high-priced market, especially one with dropping prices, get out! Take your equity and run.

"Extra equity is an added benefit to the American dream. You can manage this equity in one of several ways. You can sit on it and hope that the real estate market in your area doesn't tank. You can tap your equity and use it -- generally not a good strategy since you have to pay it back. Or you can cash it out and move to an area where the housing dollar buys more for the buck."

Many who have cashed out ended up with enough equity to pay cash for their new home. A mortgage-free lifestyle is great for those who wanted to have more travel time, create artwork or even start a business.

"A low or nonexistent mortgage also provides lifestyle benefits such as the ability to pursue a hobby, travel or simply the luxury of working less and playing more. Two-income families with children may consider having one parent stay at home."

Pittsburgh isn't the only place where you can buy a home for less, but when my friend asked me the other day what would be my favorite city to live in the U.S., I hesitated responding with New York. "What if you factor in cost?" Then I'd have to answer that what Pittsburgh offers is pretty close to the top. I suppose factoring in cost, that's why I am here.

2007-02-07T09:44:00.000-08:00

It’s a curious name, the Shrinking Cities Institute. Kent State University near Akron recently founded this initiative which is expected to address the problems of the minority number of big cities which continue to shrink rather than grow.

As you might have heard, Pittsburgh falls into this category.

A commentary by the Rand Institute’s Barry Balmat and Peter A. Morrison that appeared in the Post-Gazette in 2004 observed that Pittsburgh's population declined nearly 10 percent during the 1990s, in sharp contrast to the 13 percent nationwide population increase. Since 2000, the city's population loss has continued unabated.

That’s just the facts, not the commentary, however. The juice of the story is that it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

We’ll get to the why of that in a bit, but first a little on the thought about what to do with shrinking cities.

Pittsburgh has its problems, and those problems are exemplified in our neighbor, Youngstown, Ohio. Like Pittsburgh over the past half-century Youngstown has been presented with dramatic population loss. Unlike Pittsburgh which had somewhat of a diversified economy, when the steel industry left, the economy left with it. When officials released the Youngstown 2010 Plan (the last plan updated a 1951 plan in 1974) it didn’t cover the usual growth management, rather covering “managing decline.”

Finally, someone says it. The emperor has no clothes. It’s time to “begin drawing the map of a smaller city.”

The movement now barely known as “Shrinking Cities,” started in Germany. It wasn’t the slow decline of the steel industry there, rather the removal of a certain long-standing wall that left many East German cities virtually vacant. It gave Youngstown an idea American cities never had on their own. Why not shrink?

What does that mean exactly? A web page on a “Shrinking Cities” conference at Cleveland State University offered some insight. Shrinking a city could include the demolition or dismantling of under-utilized housing and other building stock, the removal of redundant streets, and downsizing of municipal infrastructure to correspond to declining population.” In Detroit, Saint Louis and other shrinking cities that may mean cutting off services to underutilized areas and giving people there incentives to move out then returning them to nature. In Youngstown that means considering relaxing zoning rules to allow small horse farms or apple orchards and offering incentives for people to move out of abandoned areas.

Is Shrinking something for Pittsburgh to think about? I don’t know the complete answer to that, but I could point out many streets where there are houses you can’t give away. I’ve spent several afternoons on the phone looking for someone to take a free house and have not yet been successful at finding a taker. Do we need so much space for so few people? Can we encourage “clusters” of nice urban areas and leave unused space for wildlife or even farms and orchards?

In Pittsburgh the downtown population is increasing even while the city and region continues to shrink (we’re apparently the only shrinking region these days—in other places only the cities shrink). That means people are moving around inside the region and the underutilized areas are continuing to depopulate. It would be an attractive option in my view to start returning some of these areas to nature.

What Shrinking Cities should not mean, however is a “suburbanization” of the city by tearing down every other house. That’s no more sustainable than a suburb or under-populated city. Cleveland had the right idea when it started to concentrate development in nodes like the Euclid Avenue district. Youngstown has gone a step further with a comprehensive plan for the nodes and the spaces in between with the goal of improving the sustainability and quality of life.

Back to the Rand Institute commentary mentioned at the beginning. Pittsburgh shrinking leads optimists to project a shortage of as many as 125,000 workers in metropolitan Pittsburgh as early as 2008. “What's noteworthy is that Pittsburgh's unfolding demographic future does contain opportunities.” Could that mean we will need the empty houses?

If we start eliminating homes there will be fewer and any economist will tell you smaller supply means more demand and higher prices. On the other hand, The Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania estimates there are approximately 18,000 vacant properties and land in the City of Pittsburgh, about 11.5% of the total housing units. If we start now to reclaim some of the land by “shrinking,” it would take quite some time to get to a small portion of the 18,000 houses.

Shrinking isn’t necessarily a solution, but could prove to be a practical and attractive component in preparing Pittsburgh for a new era as a smaller city.

2007-02-07T09:42:00.000-08:00

Changing demographics and preferences may come to favor North City housing in the coming years. Smaller household size, rising gas prices and highway congestion may all add up to an increased popularity of urban housing that’s in close proximity to what the city has to offer. Along with these trends is another emerging factor, more and more workers can go where they want independent of employment.

A recent survey by a group called CEOs for Cities found that two-thirds of highly mobile 25- to 34-year-olds with college degrees say that they will decide where they live first then look for a job.

Two-thirds of them choose place before job, and this preference was true across all life stages and genders (male, female, single, married, with children, without children). Women place greater emphasis on the location decision than do men, although a majority of men also say they choose place before job.

That’s not only important in terms of attracting people, but also in attracting companies who often base location decisions on where employees want to live. More, technology advances allow workers to stay connected from almost anywhere and employees are less loyal to companies, allowing them to move.

It’s critically important now that we build and work to meet these trends. A city’s best chance to attract these workers, the report said, is to focus on the most mobile of the group, those 25 to 34 years old.

Are our neighborhoods prepared to meet this demand? In some ways the answer is clearly yes. In others, there’s work to do.

For one segment of the population, we won’t have to do anything. It’s not hard to find people out there in other cities who want to live in Pittsburgh, if only they had a job. As employment becomes more mobile, it’s logical a portion will gravitate to Pittsburgh. The survey indicated young adults have a strong inclination to live downtown or close to downtown. That in itself would seem to favor our neighborhoods, especially Deutschtown, the Mexican War Streets and Allegheny West.

More, these young, mobile workers want a place that feels welcoming, offers professional opportunities, has reasonable commute times, access to excellent schools, is a great place to raise children, is a place people are proud to say they live in were among attributes young people looked for in a city.

On most of these counts I think we do fairly well. However, I was discussing the topic of “Pittsburgh Pride” with my marketing guru of a sister. She mentioned research that suggests the image of the city fluctuates significantly with the performance of sports teams. This is of course good when the Steelers are winning, however I’m not alone in recounting the times a Pittsburgh visitor has been asked “why?” as the first question from a local. I’ve lived in a number of cities and I’m here to say a large segment of Pittsburgh has no idea what it has: a beautiful, affordable metropolitan city with world-class architecture, art and culture art and as icing, great sports teams. If we don’t know why, we should have left a long time ago!

Self-image not the only area I see as needing improvement, however.
Te study also found that basic quality of life issues safe, clean streets and neighborhoods, can afford to buy a home, lots of parks and green space) ranked highest among attributes that young people looked for in a city. We don’t do bad on crime or green space, but general maintenance and cleaning could probably be improved. I recently created and posted a video on YouTube.com (search for newcolonist) of a walk up some of our city steps and walkways. The weeds were enough to scare off any visitor or potential resident. If we don’t care, why would anyone else? If a neighborhood looks nice, it is nice in a visitors mind.

Lifestyle attributes are also important to this demographic. “They prefer places where they can connect with others and have meaningful social interactions; that are interesting and diverse; and are environmentally responsible,” the survey found.

The most diverse parts of our city are the college areas of Shadyside and Oakland.

We may have an instinctual reaction that tells us college students are not interested in the Northside. We fail to realize the potential of significant transportation links to not only Oakland, but South Side, the Strip and Bloomfield.

The 500 and the 54c buses provide direct links to the Pitt Campus and a short walk
downtown can allow access many more routes.

Finally, and perhaps the most critical factor, “knowledge of city attributes is limited.” Young adults rely most heavily on personal stories from friends and family to form their perceptions about a place. They also use the Internet and personal visits to shape their opinions.

The internet presence of our neighborhoods is limited at best, leaving out perhaps the most important tool we have to attract the attention of this demographic segment. We can build all we want, but unless we tell them what’s here and why it’s great, they’ll never know.

2007-02-06T16:29:00.000-08:00

Who lives in the exurbs? Apparently no one according to researchers at Florida-based Metrostudy. In an article published by Reuters the authors noted the prices of homes in the far-flung suburbs have fallen the fastest. Not only does no one want to live there now, but it turns out few wanted to live there when the market was hot--and primarily fueled by speculators.

READ THE ARTICLE

2007-01-27T06:57:00.000-08:00

New urbanist principles would have it that you can get everything you need within a five-minute walk. Most of Pittsburgh's city neighborhoods would not currently fall into this category. The exceptions of course are the city's most popular neighborhoods including Squirrel Hill and to a lesser extent Shadyside. Downtown seems to be quickly progressing to this level as well, however.

The developments on the North Shore, at least West of Federal Street are not shaping up this way. Many times housing has been mentioned as part of the mix, and all the proposed developments are certainly exciting, but housing hasn't played into the mix since the Heinz Lofts and Lincoln at the North Shore. That's unless you count Hotels as housing, which you really can't because the vacancy rates fluxuate with events limiting the extent to which we can achieve 24-hour neighborhoods.

Post-Gazette article on North Shore developments.

2007-01-17T17:32:00.000-08:00

An engaging conversation can be found in the archives on the East Allegheny Yahoo group about zoning (and libertarianism). I'd like add at this point that that in some cities (San Francisco comes to mind) zoning is used (intently or indirectly) to make landowners rich by controlling and restricting development. This keeps prices high and favors those who got in early. It seriously restricts the market and hinders its functioning. The larger issue I have with zoning however is that it encourages a car-oriented society just as the construction of highways does.

James Howard Kunstler is a good resource on this and I'll summarize his points here (all quoted from article linked below):

For the previous 300-odd years of American history we didn't have zoning laws.

If you want to make your community better, begin at once by throwing out your zoning laws. Don't revise them -- get rid of them.

Replace these things with a traditional town-planning ordinance that prescribes a more desirable everyday environment.

After the Second World War zoning began to overshadow all the historic elements of civic art and civic life.

Shopping was declared an obnoxious industrial activity around which people shouldn't be allowed to live. This tended to destroy age-old physical relationships between shopping and living, as embodied, say, in Main Street.

What zoning produces is suburban sprawl.

The model of the human habitat dictated by zoning is a formless, soul-less, centerless, demoralizing mess.

Here's Kunstler's article

2007-01-16T18:22:00.000-08:00

I recently wrote an article for the Northside Chronicle about pre-industrial Pittsburgh. In it I imagined that if our existing population lived in the physical pre-industrial Pittsburgh we might fit better. This was perhaps the second or third time I had thought about shrinking cities physically when the population shrinks.

Today I was alerted to a USA Today article from another web site. The article, published last December is titled (link) As older cities shrink, some reinvent themselves. Among the cities mentioned are Cleveland, Detroit and Richmond.

I have mixed feelings about the idea, which may be the subconscious reason why I hadn't more fully explored the idea when it sparked before. In the pre-industrial Pittsburgh article the notion was mostly romantic as I was imagining Neo-classical farm houses fronting green fields where decaying Victorian-era houses now stand.

To some degree these decaying, or at least in less than ideal condition homes, are a burden. To some degree they are an opportunity. Pittsburgh's population is older if not still aging. The youthful energy needed to rehabilitate these homes is just not there. The population to fill these homes might not be there anytime soon either. For sure it would seem there is a trend toward urban living, but the new urbanites populating our cities seem to want condos more than single-family homes.

Still, if one thing is certain it is change. When the condos are full, some of the condo owners will certainly yearn for a bit more space and these hillside homes, some with views, may call out. I've recently watched several neighborhoods be flushed of these ultra-cheap homes as they are repaired and lived in.

Higher gas prices and other factors may also serve to create new demand for these homes in the future. Plus, too many houses helps keep prices low, and opportunities such as these, perhaps coupled with incentives, are just what's needed to attract more youth and immigrant energy to our city. Bulldozing houses and replacing them with green space will raise the prices, lower density, decrease efficiency and create a "suburbanization" of urban America. Do we really want that? Is it good for our cities or their populations?

Of course, this may be a dumb way as opposed to a smart way. I'd like to hear details about a smart way that can preserve density, efficiency and affordability, but my guess is that's not easy if at all possible.

It's nice to think of the romantic side of a pre-industrial, smaller, simpler city, but then that wouldn't be as much of a city, would it?

2007-01-07T08:03:00.000-08:00

Pittsburgh transit riders are upset. PAT, the agency that runs the bus and light-rail system, is out of money and proposes to cut almost half the routes. Some of these routes connect two of the three biggest trip generators in the state, downtown Pittsburgh and Oakland.

It was less than two years ago that Mayoral hopeful Bob O’Connor, unveiling his first major economic proposal, suggested building a new streetcar line connecting downtown and Oakland.

Today it’s a different world-view. The cuts proposed by PAT threaten to confuse if not strand riders who have few options to get to their destination, must add considerable time to their trips or face parking in places with limited parking and less than affordable parking rates.

Changing bus routes also impacts development and the viability of neighborhoods. The 500 for example provides direct access from North neighborhoods like Bellevue and Brighton Heights to Oakland and downtown. Those neighborhoods are not as attractive without that route.

This gets back to the basics of transit. Once the spine of American cities, our web of streetcar systems has been replaced over the past fifty years with a system of buses. These buses can easily be rerouted or cut entirely. They don’t require any capital investment other than the bus itself. Streetcar systems on the other hand require significant capital investment, but once in place they provide cost-savings, but more importantly transit that can not only be relied on by riders, but by developers, businesses and homeowners who can with much reassurance know that the transit line is likely to be there and running indefinitely into the future.

Mayor O’Connor was right. It’s time to look downtown again and time to look at streetcars again. It’s time to find dedicated funding for transit and time to make transit systems a permanent part of our cities, so cities can be built around them.
It’s also time for Pittsburghers to begin asking “Who can rely on the bus?”

2007-01-03T10:18:00.000-08:00

The first time I saw a Katrina Cottage I thought "wow, that would look great on Spring Hill." Spring Hill is a neighborhood in Pittsburgh that has many "shotgun shack" type houses on the sides of the hill where mill workers and others once lived. These were built in the Victorian era and often had ornamentation not unlike the painted ladies in San Francisco.

I also can't help but think that the same folks who want small condos and apartments might be persuaded to have an apartment with a little lawn otherwise known as a Katrina Cottage.

An article from a Congress for a New Urbanism explains: "Quality small-scale housing represented by Katrina Cottages is a much-needed alternative in communities determined to address affordability issues without downgrading the architectural character of neighborhoods. Together, these cottages can work as clusters and bungalow courts that can enrich old and new neighborhoods and provide safe, affordable housing for people who might not qualify for quality architecture in larger scale. Yet conventional zoning often precludes this alternative because of setback, lot size, and other restrictions that force only larger homes on larger lots."

I still have images of little Victorians lining Pittsburgh stairways with landscaped edging that would make for a great place to live and walk and really help redefine Pittsburgh as a walking city. Its hard for a city with Pittsburgh's geography to be a walking city, but hey, how many people walk all over Telegraph Hill? Is Fineview or Spring Hill so different? Not at all. A few flowers and some Katrina Cottages and our stairways would be a better, even great place to walk.

2007-01-02T07:35:00.000-08:00

Jerry Brown wanted to liven up the streets of Oakland and had to find a way to measure success. Brown, the former governor of California, was elected to the job of Mayor of Oakland (the city across the bay from San Francisco, not the place where you go on the 500 just in case there's confusion), came up with the "Starbucks Scale." At that point Oakland already had a Starbucks, a milepost in itself. The "Starbucks Scale" would use the number of hours that the coffee shop stayed open as a measure of the city's vitality. The longer Starbucks brewed, the better things would have gotten.

A few years back when Seattle's Best opened in PNC Park, I thought I would start to keep track. There wasn't much to track. If Seattle's Best was to be used as a measure of the North Shore's vitality, it soon added ice cream to become a confusing mix of hot and cold then joined the ranks of what used to be. Since then the North Shore has come along, and there may be a day on the horizon where there's brew available there to measure vitality, but for now, no java.

If coffee is a good measure, the area North of the expressway is actually ahead of the game. There's still no Starbucks (I just heard two locations were opening in Altoona soon and I never thought they'd have one first), but there are several coffee shops. The Vault (Brighton Heights) was first, followed by Charles Street Cafe, Beleza (War Streets) and most recently by Amani (East Allegheny). There are other places here to get coffee including the Priory Pastries, Cool Beans in Allegheny Center, the coffee cart in Allegheny General and in fairness to the North Shore, the Andy Warhol Museum Cafe. If hours are also a measure, Beleza has added more since opening this summer.

But what's so important about a coffee shop that it can be used as a measure of vitality anyway?

Coffee shops are something academics like to call "third places." The number three is attached as they follow the first place of home and the second place of work. Like cities, they are places where people go to interact and where ideas are likely to come together.

Sometimes those ideas focus on art, sometimes politics and sometimes business but in all cases they become a center for these areas. Writer Jack London lived in Oakland, CA and apparently liked coffee shops, but may not be so happy about Brown's use of the corporate green to measure his city's energy.

A socialist at the age of twenty, if London were alive today he might not be hanging out in his square. In fact, London ran unsuccessfully as the high-profile Socialist nominee for mayor of Oakland in 1901 (receiving 245 votes) and 1905 (improving to 981 votes), toured the country lecturing on socialism in 1906, and published collections of essays on socialism ( The War of the Classes, 1905; Revolution, and other Essays, 1910).

The first record of a public place serving coffee dates back to 1475 Constantinople. Apparently at that time it was legal in Turkey for a woman to divorce her husband if he could not supply her with enough coffee. Misbehaving in coffee shops was also punishable by death.

Chalk one up to Starbucks, politics aside, sometimes coffee is all about business. The Turks, filled with ideas, imported theirs to a few European countries including England where a small coffee shop run by Edward Lloyd in 1668 was such a business hub, it eventually became the still-operating Lloyd's of London insurance company.

In the American colonies the coffee house was also a hub for the business (and revolution). While we may have thrown the tea back to England, the coffee was here to stay. Business and coffee are so intertwined that the original location of the New York Stock exchange was the Tonine Coffee House. The earliest coffeehouses, in New Orleans were known as 'exchanges' where bankers and importers would meet to share information and ideas to further economic development. All this before anyone heard of Seattle of Starbucks.

Yet, the original "coffee houses" were similar to those today - a gathering place for conversation, entertainment and the exchange of ideas. Coffee houses may now prove of equal importance and purpose in North City neighborhoods, becoming gathering places for artists, business people and those with political ideas and ambitions. Since the opening of Amani I have met several neighbors I knew of only as names in email groups and met others to talk about business or ideas.

Many trace the start of change on the South Side to the opening of the Beehive Coffee House, which still retains its title as the city's best and most important social center. Once opened 24-hours any vitality meter would have gone off the scale. I can't help but think with the rise of North City coffee culture there's more brewing than beans. Here as elsewhere, coffee is bringing people and ideas together and that more often than not that results in art, politics and business.

To that point, Jerry brown is right, the longer the coffee brews, the better off we'll be.

this article previously appeared in the Northside Chronicle

2007-01-01T10:35:00.000-08:00

The market in Pittsburgh is expected to increase 3.3 percent in 2007. This is assuring and predictible as Pittsburgh has long been known as a stable market more immune to dramatic shifts in price seen in Boston, San Jose and other markets. Fortune Maganize has some details on what cities are expected to gain and lose in 2007.

2006-12-31T06:47:00.000-08:00

I've been keeping an eye on "Cleveland's equivalent of Allegheny City" for some time now. I was in the Ohio City neighborhood just yesterday and on each trip it seems to improve significantly. Ohio City is like Allegheny City in terms of having been a seperate city, in that both areas have a collection of historic homes and both have, or in the case of Ohio City had a struggling commercial district.

Today I found I could buy a Cuban Sandwich, artifacts from Thailand, furniture (at real prices, not the kind you rent) and the widest possible array of meats and vegetables. The meats and vegetables category was available before, as Ohio City is home to Cleveland's market house. (It also appears a Target store is opening as an employment center has set up in a storefront on the main street).

The housing stock in Ohio City has nothing on Allegheny City, however. What they do have has been nicely restored and a variety of infill housing that actually seems to represent a higher-density building model than the existing housing is cropping up. There's even a variety of stores mixed in with the housing on the back streets, including a Sushi restaurant.

Ohio City, like Allegheny City is in close proximity to downtown and residents of both locals can walk there. Unlike Allegheny City, Ohio City has a rapid transit station that allows convenient access when its not nice enough to walk, or if you can't walk. Allegheny City will have this in a few years as well, but it won't come close to residential parts of the area, unfortunately.

Ohio City also has a large, modern grocery store called Dave's if one was needed in addition to the wonderful market house.

If you've never been to Ohio City, make a point to visit. Here's a short slide show of some Ohio City and Cleveland photos...

2006-12-16T14:12:00.000-08:00

In response to reader comments on the Pittsburgh art scene, the scene here is alive and well. The affordability factor of Pittsburgh enables creative types to be able to live as working artists here, sometimes starving, but just as often thriving. Pittsburgh is home to many well-respected and internationally-known working artists. Pittsburgh is home to the Warhol Museum, but perhaps more importantly the Mattress Factory, a world famous destination for installation art. Andy Warhol left Pittsburgh for New York, but if he were alive today he may not be so quick to split. Pittsburgh is also a city of asylum for artists unable to work in their home countries. There's no shortage of things happening for artists and art afficianados either. From the Garfield Glass Works to galleries on the South Side and on Penn Avenue--its just amazing what you can find and the calibur of art you find. On many Fridays I walk downtown to the symphony and take in the art walk activities in the Cultural District. I also understand space for shows and work space are both very affordable, especially the former. Need I mention Pittsburgh is also home to the Carnegie Museum of Art and a short drive from most of the great Art Museums in the U.S. including the National Gallery, Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Met and more. The Cleveland Museum of Art is very close and comes close to surpassing anything available on the West Coast.

2006-12-16T13:32:00.000-08:00

It looks like condo sales to boomers in New Jersey have been slower than expected? Why? Because they can't sell their single-family homes. In what looks more and more like the reverse of the suburban movement in the 1950s, the urban lifestyle continues to increase in its popularity. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal even has McMansion builder Toll Brothers following the affluent from suburbia to city. You might also recall the recent Brookings Institution report that finds just as many poor live in the suburbs as in the city at this point in time.

That's great for cities of course, but what's to become of all the suburban houses? Robert Toll is quoted in the WSJ article as saying he doesn't foresee the shift amounting to more than ten or fifteen percent. That's predictably less than the urban to suburban movement of earlier years, enough to lessen or eliminate the onslaught of articles about suburban sprawl.

More Toll didn't think the trend would spread from Manhattan to downtown Detroit anytime soon and he didn't think it was happening because folks were tiring of long commutes. Perhaps a busier lifestyle, an increase in single or two person households and a sense of being disconnected are driving the trend. City life is more attainable where there is the vibrant city to be in. Building vibrancy from scratch is much more difficult than adding some condos to the mix.

More, increasing numbers of immigrants who don't fancy suburban life is helping. Here in Pittsburgh sales of downtown condos have been robust and more developments including a number of rental units are planned or underway.

So, I still didn't answer the question, what's to become of the suburban houses even if we're only talking about ten or fifteen percent? The answer is unclear. One possible answer is "the same thing that happened to the urban houses when the more affluent moved to the suburbs--the price will drop and they will become more affordable to those displaced by the move of the more affluent to the city." This of course reverses the transportation problem for lower-wage workers who might now live in the city and travel to a mall or airport for employment. Still at the same time it could increase the quality of housing available to lower-wage workers.

That's not likely to be the entire picture we see however. The population today is rising at a faster rate than in the 1950s, creating more demand for housing in general. Theoretically, a fifteen percent increase in population could offset a fifteen percent population loss in the suburbs (unless the increase in urban residents exceed that). Also working against the suburbs, the city is a mixed-use environment by its nature. Unlike the suburbs, its easy to build rental units near for-sale condos in the city, rental units that are more affordable and attractive to lower-wage workers. If the city boom continues, there will be more of a push to develop a wider circle around downtowns, creating and improving other urban housing. It may also bring about the conversion of other city housing from multi-units to single-family units as those who enjoy the single-family home lifestyle look for it closer to the city.

This may to some degree bring about the conversion of suburban homes into multi-family units, but that is likely restricted by municipal ordinances. Failure of suburban homes to sell could result in pressure to change these ordinances to allow owners to receive rental income if they can't sell their homes. This could result in a more dramatic suburban value loss. Trends are in no way clear enough to make any such prediction, however. Today even while we see an urban boom, suburbs remain extremely popular with certain population segments. How far the branch grows from the tree remains to be seen.

2006-12-03T05:09:00.000-08:00

A lively discussion emerged on a local email group this week on whether the Northside, particularly the Central Northside, was becoming gentrified. After-all, we do have a handful of coffee houses now and in some places houses are selling for a pretty good clip. Still, as I follow my flash light through yet another $5,000 house, I remained with my doubts. Besides, there's still no Starbucks.

There are a good many that live around here who don’t want what they think of as “gentrification.” It may result in lessened diversity certainly in economic if not racial terms. People who like cities in general often like them because there are lots of different people around and when you walk around, which a city is generally well suited for, you can meet them. To accomplish this you need a variety of housing stock.

I went onto dictionary.com to try and find out just what gentrification might mean, although I suspect its connotations carry much more weight than any definition. “Gentrification,” in a literal sense means “Very or excessively refined or elegant,” or “improved.” Well, you can call the Northside a lot of things, but Allegheny West house tours not withstanding, as a whole excessively elegant may not always be one of them. From the discussion I imagine depending on the listener, “improved” could just as easily be termed “destroyed.”

The discussion started when I posted a response to a recent City Paper article on the pending Federal Street Townhomes project scheduled for groundbreaking just before the publication of December’s Chronicle.

The article had a nice graphic showing a home on Jacksonia Street labeled the “Jacksonia” for $60,000 and a rendering of a new home labeled the “Jacksonian” for $120,000. I responded to the writer with several additional points and a correction.

First, I pointed out that houses that sell for $60K or less in the War Streets are not always in livable condition (at least there’s some work to be done). I also pointed out that these low-priced homes to represent great opportunities for those willing to put sweat equity into them to benefit. Not a fair comparison really.

The article contended that many of the neighborhoods residents may not be able to afford the new homes. I pointed out that there aren’t many new houses out there to be had for $130,000 especially ones being that close to downtown. Rebecca Davidson-Wagner, Community Development Specialist for the Central Northside Neighborhood Council wrote in saying she had spoken to the author about the article. Davidson-Wagner said the article failed to mention the project also has 39-42 low income rental units, along with single story "affordable flats" that will be priced lower than the most affordable unit. More, with the URA deferred mortgage of up to $50,000 the new houses will be around $80,000 for a 3 bedroom 1 and 1/2 bath with off street parking. That’s a new house for a few thousand more than one that could need lots of work.

In fact there are a wide range of prices in the Central Northside with or without the planned construction. Looking at sales between January 1, 2005 and October 31, 2006, sales ranged from $7,000 to $301,000. By my calculation the average home price in the year from Jan 1, 2005 to Oct 31, 2006 was about $127,000 making the lowest price new homes more affordable than the average. The median is actually higher, around $170,000.

That may sound like big money to some long-term Northsiders, but remember that is the area popularly known as the Mexican War Streets, which while being “discovered” now, has been in the eye of preservationists since the 1970s. Many of the comments to the board seemed to lament that after all these years of waiting (the Federal Street project has been on the board for more than a decade) to make progress an article comes along and takes a big swipe with the nasty word “gentrification.” One resident replied with “we should be so lucky.”

To those who do worry about the affordability of houses, feel fortunate you live in Pittsburgh where a population decline has left far more houses than people to fill them. More, a recent ranking in Smart Money magazine said Pittsburgh remained “undervalued.” Housing here, the magazine figures, is almost twenty percent less than it should be. While getting a house exactly where you want it for the price we want to pay (hey, we’d all buy that $20,000 house in Shadyside if it existed), there is no shortage of affordable houses in nearby neighborhoods and our houses have a lower median price than other comparably sized cities including Cleveland, Cincinnati and Chattanooga.

Plus, for those with lots of energy and time, yes there is even an occasional $5,000 house.

If you’d like to participate in these online email group discussions, I’d recommend the East Allegheny Group where recently the topic has been does Pittsburgh have enough culture (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eastallegheny ) and also the Chat Northside group where the discussion on gentrification took place at ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chatnorthside ). It’s a great way to meet neighbors and know more about what’s going on.

2006-11-20T09:08:00.001-08:00

Before I moved back to Pittsburgh from San Fran, I traveled back and forth. There were two solid houses with panoramic views on Dunloe Street that were somehwhat deteriorated. The council was looking for someone to rehab them. I told some friends in CA about them and one or more came in to see them. No one bought them in the end and they were demolished. One friend tried to buy a house from the city but was told he was not eligible because he never paid taxes to the city. Go figure. I am telling this because more houses are demolished from neglect than are saved by young people with energy. A $120,000 house that one can move into will spend less time on the market than a $5K house that needs everything. I'd venture the same is true for a $50,000 house that needs some things.

Luckily we have a market and many people have spent a good portion of their lives fixing up houses in the War Streets and elsewhere. It has been a labor of love--love of old houses, love of community, and well many just can't stand to see the city they grew up in (or moved to) deteriorating. Today we're pretty far along and what some would call "gentrification" is part of a national trend in American cities to see the core come alive again. Gentrification or not this is a good trend in the sense that every urban house represents one less being built on a former Cranberry farm. City living is good for the environment and good for humanity because people of diverse backgrounds --and incomes--actually meet each other on the street. Many are out there working hard to imporve access to quality affordable housing as this trend progresses.

Of course the more people who want to live in great city neighborhoods like Central Northside, the more expensive houses there will become. The $5K house market is especially limited--there is absolutely no way to increase the supply!!! As I mentioned before, few people with jobs want to rehab a house. Some do it for a living and they make money from it--good. Otherwise some of these homes would end up being razed--and guess what, every house that's razed reduces the supply and pushes prices further upward.

Luckily we live in Pittsburgh where people have been leaving for 50 years. While the supply of homes for rehab, or just inexpensive homes may be dwindling on the flats, there are plenty on the Hills, as well as Sharpsburg, Wilkinsburg, Millvale, etc (and even Marshall-Shadeland which is still relatively flat and close).

2006-11-05T14:07:00.000-08:00

There's an old house, actually a pair of them, that sit along Rt 28 near the Heinz Factory. They are likely some of the oldest homes in Pittsburgh. I currently have some friends and community stakeholders engaged in discussions about saving them. If you'd like to be kept up to date or know anything about these homes, please join the discussion group on yahoo groups. Just go to this link and click on JOIN.

I also recently wrote an article about pre-industrial buildings in Pittsburgh. It's posted at legnth at The New Colonist. Check it out.

2006-10-02T06:53:00.000-07:00

The topic of this post is gentrification. A reader had sent an email to the TNC (The New Colonist) Pittsburgh email group asserting that I was a proponent of gentrification. That's been a hot button topic in urban situations for some time. It's also a hard one to get a handle on.

First, you can't stop a neighborhood from changing. It either gets better or falls apart.

We'd all like neighborhoods to be cheap and cool forever, but that's not reality anywhere. (Name one that has been cheap and cool for more than a decade or so!) Urban neighborhoods stay cheap and cool for a while until the houses start falling down or the crime rises beyond the tolerable level for most people. Or in the other direction, it becomes unaffordable, or at least living in a big space becomes unaffordable so we'd have to change our lifestyle to live there. Sometimes people move into an urban area in the second half of a "gentrification" process and then scream that they don't want gentrification, which really means "more gentrification," ie "post me" gentrification.

Originally the focus of preservation, the Mexican War Streets neighborhood for instance has been in a slow general upswing since the 1970s. Like other North City neighborhoods it would seem now (and now is not the first time) the neighborhood could become really popular really fast.

This is not only the result of people coming in and gentrifying the place. It's a result of changing demographics, high gas prices, longer working hours and other factors that are making urban neighborhoods more attractive. Since the movement started with preservation, preservation is also to "blame" for gentrification. Preservation costs money and so naturally, barring subsidies, leads to some degree of gentrification. If that process had not begun in the 1970s, it's likely much of the War Streets would have been demolished as the buildings would have deteriorated to a point of being unsafe.

This process is not exclusive to urban neighborhoods either. Many suburbs today are faced with "monster houses" being built where small post-war homes used to stand.

Urban areas are unique in their potential to preserve diversity and bring together people from a variety of backgrounds, economic levels and interests. In fact, many urban neighborhoods consist of primarily wealthy minorities and working class whites. Even if an area reaches the highest level of "gentrification" (think Shadyside), there are still a mix of races and incomes because there are apartments of all sizes, condos and small houses (sometimes alley houses) mixed in with the larger townhomes. (so if you've recently moved into an urban area and want gentrification to stop, make sure you work to save the small alley houses rather than make parking places. Developing apartments and condos in addition to single-family homes can also help.

This issue came up back in the late '90s when I started "the New Colonist" with Rick Risemberg. "New Colonist" represents a return to urbanism from suburban-style
living. City living is good because:

1. It's healthier (walking)
2. Economic integration is good
3. It's easier on the planet
4. It has a unique ability to foster diverse, virbrant neighborhoods.

2006-09-01T20:22:00.000-07:00

Bob O'Connor did a lot for Pittsburgh during his short service as mayor. We saw in him a man who believed in Pittsburgh. He gave us the confidence to believe in it again too. He loved Pittsburgh. We saw that and so remembered Pittsburgh as a city worthy of love. To those who would dare ask "why Pittsburgh?" O'Connor might ask "why not sooner?"

It might seem today that Mayor O'Connor was an unucky man. To borrow from "Meet me in Saint Louis," it would seem to be an early stroke of luck to be born in his favorite city. More than that, Bob O'Connor wanted to be mayor of his favorite city and became mayor of that city. During those few short months it was a city at its best. The Steelers won and Pittsburgh cheered. Bob O'Connor cheered with us.

It was just before the world came to watch the All-Star game when the city looked its best that the dark cloud started to form. It's hard to believe such a bright star could fade so fast. But here we are. It's hard to see much light today, but in coming days I hope we can go forward with the energy and optimism of our great mayor who didn't so much energize us as show us the good in our selves.

2006-08-20T07:33:00.000-07:00

When homebuyers come to Pittsburgh and search for a city home, they more often than not look to the areas with strong retail districts, primarily Squirrel Hill and Shadyside, and to a lesser degree South Side, then come to North City neighborhoods because of price. To get over our next hurdle to become a primary destination for homeowners, we have to have that strong retail in place.

If all of the businesses I have heard are coming actually open, we may be well on our way there. A new and rather large coffee shop is planned for the West Deutschtown section of East Allegheny. Nearby the former James Street may reopen as a Bistro. In the Mexican War Streets, home of the new and successful Beleza Coffee House, a cafe and book store are planned for Monterey Street. True, an upscale bar on Western Avenue recently re-opened as Nuance.

Even more out of the way neighborhoods like Charles Street Valley and Brighton Heights have seen the addition of coffee shops in recent years. On the shores, the Heinz Lofts Cafe and the Andy Warhol Cafe add lunch stops and a plethra of new restaurants are planned for the North Shore (it pains see to see that Soho bar in the new Marriot hotel, however. I expect a Caribou or Starbucks could open somewhere on the North Shore or in the new condo building on Fort Duquesne Boulevard).

Talk is also filling message boards about a potential food co-op coming to one of the flats neighborhoods. The prime choice may be the War Streets, but potential commercial locations may send them to East Allegheny or Brighton Road.

Interestingly, most of the new retail developments are not coming to the three main retail districts in the North City, East Ohio Street, Federal/North and Western Avenue (If you count North Shore, that has quickly become the main business district in North City.

The North Avenue business district of course has been boarded up and locked up in court for more than a decade. The remaining part of the Federal Street district continues to survive and should be helped by new housing (planned but eternally delayed) for the area and a potential new library. Western Avenue struggles along (quite a few retail buildings are now for sale, so change could come fast) and East Ohio Street continues to change at a snails pace.

Perhaps the prime retail district, East Ohio Street has become the target of efforts by the Northside Leadership Conference. Some new businesses and renovations have come in recently, including Priory Pasteries, a Cricket store and a dollar store. The street also has a colection of long-time businesses to build on. Some buldings are for sale and others are held by speculators or remain in poor condition.

The new retail additions are a welcome event that could make great strides in terms of changing the attractiveness of North City as a great place to live. The real task will come later-- to continue construction of North City retail and bring it to the three main retail districts.

2006-08-15T10:31:00.000-07:00

New Census data had some colorful light to shed on our demographic situation.

Pittsburgh is still losing people, that's the bad news, but...

"The city of Pittsburgh's share of new residents, about 4 percent, was in the middle of the pack of 198 U.S. cities, higher than New York, Los Angeles, Chicago -- and Cleveland, where new residents make up a paltry 1 percent of the city's population," reports the Trib.

Hello? We have more new residents as a percentage than New York and LA???? If it's accurate, it's big big news.

Also, the data shows Pittsburgh's small Hispanic population is growing--about 12 percent of Hispanics in the city last year lived outside of Pennsylvania the year before.

In other good news, the Post-Gazette says "Pittsburgh has cracked a national business publication's top 10 U.S. metropolitan areas as a potential site for companies looking to expand or relocate.

The bimonthly magazine Expansion Management ranked the region ninth among 362 metro areas in its fourth annual list of the best places to locate a company."

We now rank with such hot spots as Austin and Seattle!

2006-07-30T09:57:00.000-07:00

If you read any national newspaper you undoubtedly know the housing market is cooling off. If you live in Cranberry, your story is no different. However Western Pennsylvania in general and Allegheny County in particular are faring much better.

According to a recent Tribune-Review article, there has been a surge of about 40 percent in housing permits issued in Allegheny County, and a 27 percent decline in permits in Butler County, where Cranberry has seen its total slip to about 31 single-family units, from about 76 single-family units a year ago.

It wouldn't suprise me if a micro-look at other housing markets revealed similar trends. Gas prices are up, households are smaller and more and more of us are tired of the traffic and commuting. A video on ABCNews.com web site reveals the monster houses are falling hardest.

If you're afraid of the big bad bubble, look for reasonably sized urban homes.

2006-07-22T16:36:00.000-07:00

Pre-industrial Pittsburgh is hard to imagine. In fact, it's almost as hard as getting the world to realize we're in post-indutsrial Pittsburgh. We still celebrate our industrial heritage. Smokestack's line the parking lot by the Homestead Waterfront. The U.S. Steel Building still dominates our skyline. Our Steelers, by winning the Superbowl, reminded the world "Pittsburgh" and "Steel" are forever linked.

There is a certain beauty to industry. The smoke, the fire, the molten liquid and the I-beams that now hold up the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge. Those are pieces of Pittsburgh and they can never be forgotten or removed from our memory.

Yet there is a pre-industrial Pittsburgh that remains to be rediscovered. Before railroads, there were canals, before canals there were trails. Before smoke filled the skies there was clean air and a natural beauty that brought artists here to capture.

We may not notice them, but there are remains and reminders of a pre-industrial era around us. One is a street on Spring Hill named "Hetzel." It's named for the family of "Scalp Level" landscape painter George Hetzel. Today Hetzel's work is well represented by the Westmoreland Museum of Art in Greensburg.

George Hetzel was born in France, but would leave his mark by painting Western Pennsylvania. He lived in Allegheny City and traveled to Johnstown to paint the landscape, long before Steel came to likewise define that city.

If you look closely you may find some buildings that existed in the pre-industrial days of Pittsburgh. Many are found in East Deutschtown, then a German community in the City of Allegheny. Although Hetzel claimed to be French, German was the family's native language (Another claim to Germany, he studied at the Dusseldorf Art Academy).

One such pre-industrial Pittsburgh building is the Block House at the Point. It's unlikely many noticed it in those days, however, and a miracle it survived. Many buildings built during Hetzel's life he may have actually visited also remain standing. Many of these are threatened by years of neglect.

This has been owned for years by PennDot with long-ago dismissed plans of building a 28-279 connector.

Today we're continually faced with the option of embracing our industrial past or rejecting it. Pittsburgh is emerging as a very different post-indutsrial city, yet the Pittsburgh of tomorrow may be able to embrace the natural beauty of our landscape as much as the steel might of our more recent past. So little of pre-industrial Pittsburgh remains to be preserved, however, and what is left isn't well prepared for the future. Even in the City of Allegheny, outside of a few homes on Spring Hill (which don't need preserving), there's little beyond East Deutschtown George Hetzel would recognize. We need to save East Deutschtown before only structures from the age of steel are left to define the history of our city.

2006-07-17T09:09:00.000-07:00

My sister told me about an article over the weekend. It's one of the most exciting statements about Pittsburgh I've heard in a long time. The Clark Building (downtown) was recently sold for $22 million. The buyer isn't looking at conversions to housing as many have been looking at in downtown recently. No, the Clark building was bought with a look forward to new industry that could rival the age of steel and put Pittsburgh in a new category. Here's a quote from the Pittsburgh Business Times article:

"Gorman said he's bullish on Pittsburgh because of the high-tech companies coming out of Carnegie Mellon University.

'I believe that Pittsburgh is going to be the center for artificial intelligence and robotics. Within 10 years, that will be one of the biggest businesses in the world," Gorman said. "Pittsburgh will be to artificial intelligence what Silicon Valley is to chips.'" Link to article

In the past few months we seem to have really increased our momentum here in Pittsburgh.

2006-07-07T11:57:00.000-07:00

I think this is the first day of "All-Star" week and I'm not sure how good of a start we're having. This is a big day for Bob the Mayor and I'm sure it could've beenone of the highlights of his life to cut the ribbon opening the ceremonies, but instead, he's in the hospital. I also remember reading several new restaurants would be open on the North Shore in time for the week, but I suspect they're not going to make it.

Oh well, on July 4th I noticed the banners on the Roberto Clemente Bridge. They look great, and Pittsburgh has been looking better all the time. I don't imagine the mayor's cough or the fact that visitors can't go to a restaurant they didn't know existed will matter much.

I also had my first real visit to the new Schenley Plaza. I remember this was kind of pushed through by former Mayor Tom--with great results whatever your view on the politics. It's amazing how this wonderful plaza could have been a parking lot for so long.

Finally, I'd like to comment on my favorite topic, the Garden Theater block. For years I have been advocating selling off the buildings individually to private developers. For more than a decade the URA has been holding the buildings for development at the time the last is acquired. The last of course is the Garden Theater and it's still a hold-out. Well, at this time the largest of the buildings, the Masonic temple is advertised on the URA web site as available. This could be the beginning of something really good.

2006-07-05T06:48:00.000-07:00

North City fared well in a recent magazine article about neighborhoods. Pittsburgh Magazine recently re-emphasized the affordability factor and noted that Pittsburghers want a bargain. Northside is one place homeseekers can find such a bargain. (The magazine defines that bargain as a home for less than $75,000).

What else to homebuyers want? An easy commute, a coffee shop and good shopping. No suprise here. My customers ask for the same things.

Brighton Heights won the most prominent spot among North City neighborhoods in the article with the median home price hitting that bargain barometer at $75,000. I also suspect it may not have made the magazines list if it wasn't for The Vault, a coffee shop on California Avenue.

I don't think it's the coffee shop itself that many homebuyers want, as the article infers, it's the "third-places" where people can connect with neighbors.

Brighton Heights also offers some shopping opportunities with a modern, full-scale pharmacy, butcher shop and other stores. North City neighborhoods may benefit in the future as both downtown shopping improves, and perhaps more importantly (and perhaps at the expense of downtown) Ross Park Mall solidifies its position as the regions premeir shopping mall.

Observatory Hill was mentioned in a sidebar labled "Seven Neighborhoods On The Rise." A lack of immediate shopping options or a coffee shop, I suspect kept it from making the main article. East Allegheny was also mentioned in the seven, although the median price listed of $33,000 is first unrealistic and second could actually scare away lookers. Those familiar with East Allegheny know the bargains are on the East side of the highway. Neighborhood group feuds (along with the highway) have in some minds created two neighborhoods (although with only 800 or so residents I can't imagine the benefits of an even smaller city neighborhood(s).)

What do we draw from this? Things are getting better and people are noticing. More, we know where we need to build, coffee and shopping. Read The Article

2006-06-13T12:23:00.000-07:00

I've been hearing a lot on the new book "The Bridges of Pittsburgh." Apparently we do have more bridges than any other city in the world. The author, Bob Regan, previously published a book on the stairways of Pittsburgh. Yes, these are great assets and likely fine books. But the state of our bridges and stairways are not such that we can take full advantage of those assets.

While wondering around Brighton Heights one day, I discovered a walking bridge off Termon Avenue. Today I had a few minutes to kill so I walked the bridge. I had thought it was closed to pedestrian traffic since it was blocked by a baricade, but on closer inspection I noticed you could go around the baricade which was likely placed to keep bicycles or other small vehicles from traveling on the bridge.

Like San Francisco and other great cities, Pittsburgh is connected by an intricate system of pedestrian walkways. In fact, many homes are not accessible by automobile, and as this bridge in Brighton Heights illustrates, many connections are not possible by auto.

My walk today revealed that this pedestrian system is in danger of not surviving but a few more years. Yet, like the Street Cars in San Francisco, Grand Central Terminal, once obsolete these bridges can be a major component in an exciting future.

2006-05-27T18:27:00.000-07:00

I've heard more rumors that a coffee shop could soon ad to the retail scene on East Ohio Street. A coffee shop is a step towards enhancing the viability of the housing in Deutschtown and other residential neighborhoods.

It may seem like "just a coffee shop," but such steps may be as important or more important than larger developments.

Take in point the new entertainment complex planned for the North Shore. Entertainment is not exactly what we need to boost the viability of housing. More than entertainment, urban housing needs grocery stores and drug stores and coffee shops.

Recently Trader Joe’s announced it's moving into East Liberty. It doesn’t immediately benefit North neighborhoods, but the success of these stores could send companies like these looking for other city locations. I expect our best hope is that with continued downtown residential development, we’ll see retailers like Trader Joe’s and Walgreens looking at spaces—many which already exist on the North Shore and maybe even North Side.

Still, we (North Side) really need to resell parts (Deutschtown, Mexican War Streets and North Shore) of the North Side as "DOWNTOWN" living. These neighborhoods are the remainder of downtown Allegheny, which ajoined downtown Pittsburgh until it was annexed. They should, more than a century later, be officially united with the rest of downtown Pittsburgh.

2006-05-15T09:54:00.000-07:00

Fortune magazine and CNN recently published a list of seven real estate dead zones, five danger zones and several safe zones. The seven dead zones are some of the biggest markets that have seen the most market heat in recent times. They include Boston, Las Vegas, Miami, Washington, DC, Phoenix, Sacramento and San Diego.

The danger zones include Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Seattle.

What’s safe? Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Omaha and Pittsburgh.

What makes a market safe, dangerous or dead? Compare Pittsburgh with San Francisco and Boston. In Pittsburgh the average home price is listed at $155.3K and the fair market value is listed as $182.1K, fifteen percent undervalued. CNN gives San Francisco and Boston an overpriced rating with the average price exceeding the fair market value as much as 53 percent.

Fortune says right now the ratio of home values to incomes in the bubble zones is about 40 percent above its historical average.

The analysis says homeowners who can stay put have little to worry about. Those who bought high and have to move may have difficulty. In a separate article, the magazine tells real estate investors who have hoped to hold and flip to get out.

Of course things are different in the safe cities like Dallas, Cleveland, Omaha and Pittsburgh. The bubble never took prices into the stratosphere and homes are affordable to a far larger percentage of the population.

Will that send investors and homeowners to Pittsburgh? As far as investors are concerned, that might depend how well alternate investments like cds and stocks are performing. Where home values increase at five percent or so, a cd paying five percent is easier money. Rentals can have much higher return, but not without effort.

As for potential homeowners, I suspect the outflow from major cities may subside as prices fall, but it’s unlikely prices can fall enough to make high-priced cities much more affordable. Cities with affordable housing should continue to have some lure. Those who already own homes in high-priced markets can’t easily move without incurring losses, instead they are dependent on looking for salary increases to make up the difference.

2006-05-09T11:26:00.000-07:00

You've probably heard by now that Pittsburgh was ranked among the top ten "smart" cities--meaning you can afford a pretty good life here without breaking the bank. I guess that's kind of like buying a loaded Buick instead of a Lexxus. Anyway, I was never one for fancy cars.

If you've ever thought life was too expensive where you live, you might have looked to other cities. Many people have considered quitting their jobs, retiring early, selling their condos and just high-tailing it out of San Francisco, LA or New York.

Pittsburgh, Nashville, Minneapolis and the other seven cities would seem to be smart choices; the folks who move here undoubtedly will find a good quality of life at an affordable price.

These affordable cities aren't the only place people are moving to, however. While on one hand condos are filling America's downtowns, the far exurbs are filling with new housing. Unlike the affordable cities, moving to the exurbs is not a smart choice.

Despite the lure of affordablility, most cities are losing people. In fact, the census says nearly every large metropolitan area had more people move out than move in from 2000 to 2004.

Likewise the New York Times recently anylized IRS data and found that with the single exception of Las Vegas, no city proper makes the list of substantial population gainers; "American taxpayers by and large are outward bound. But this isn't uniformly a migration to exurbs, or to traditional Sunbelt or Western destinations like Florida or Arizona.

The trails often lead north, to the lakes of Minnesota and Wisconsin; to the foothills of northern Georgia; to the forests of northern California; to the fields of northern Michigan. Cass County, Minn., 120 miles from Minneapolis, is on the list, as is Shasta County, Calif., 180 miles from San Francisco," the paper revealed.

The cost of gas not withstanding, none of these places folks are moving to made the list of "smart" choices. Live in an expensive city? Thinking about relocating? Pick up a copy of Kiplinger's Personal Finance and choose a smart city before you go.

2006-05-02T05:26:00.000-07:00

Millcraft industries suggested recently that bus traffic be routed off of Fifth Avenue downtown. According to a Post-Gazette article, the company believes smog from the buses, loitering in front of buildings, and traffic congestion could hinder its plans for residential and retail development on Fifth.

As someone who wakes to the sound of "12A-Downtown" I can relate to the concerns. Diesel buses in Pittsburgh are also far less tolerable than the electric buses and streetcars in San Francisco. Replacing buses with more living-friendly forms of public transportation would be a great goal. However, the desire to eliminate the "clutter" of the street is as old and damaging as ever.

The desire to bring residents to enjoy urban downtown is welcomed, but the desire to make downtown into a suburb is misguided and harmful. Also mentioned in the article is a desire to eliminate "loitering." I guess that means waiting for buses.

Let's refer here to Jane Jacobs. Just when I thought she'd won, we need her more than ever.

"Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is the intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to a dance -- not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole."

2006-04-22T12:25:00.000-07:00

A recent headline caught more than a few urban advocates off guard. “American’s Fleeing Big Cities.” According to a new census report nearly every large metropolitan area had more people move out than move in from 2000 to 2004.

Working in real estate leads to a natural interest in trends such as these. It’s hard to tell whether Pittsburgh can be included in this category. The first question is whether Pittsburgh is a big city to be fleeing from or a small town to be fleeing to.

Folks have been leaving Pittsburgh (along with Cleveland, Buffalo, Youngstown) for decades now, and while there is incidental evidence that people are now coming in, census data hasn’t yet showed that (while the losses continue to lessen).

The reason given for fleeing the biggest cities, high cost, certainly aren’t present here. That at least leaves the door open for Pittsburgh to be a place to flee to, if she plays her cards right.

The conundrum is that traditionally it has been places that people are fleeing to that experience the high real estate prices. Today it’s the places being emptied. About 60,000 people left San Francisco between 2000 and 2004, Chicago experienced similar numbers. New York City lost some 210,000. Los Angeles had losses topping 110,000.

Richard Florida, (fomer Pittsburgher and) a professor of public policy at George Mason University told USA Today that smaller, wealthier households are replacing larger families in many big metropolitan areas.

“That drives up housing prices even as the population shrinks, chasing away even more members of the middle class.”

That may be, but the question of how long can prices continue to rise when people are leaving needs to be asked. In most cities, smaller, wealthier households moving in marks a paradigm shift and poses new questions for economists. It also poses questions for the direction of the markets in places where former urbanites are moving to. It isn’t the working poor as much as the young and upwardly mobile who are choosing to relocate outside major metropolitan areas.

On the subject of trends, there are two other issues that are sure to come into play. The first is the high cost of fuel. What is that expected to do to housing markets? My inclination is it will favor cities or transit communities. Yet the fuel costs probably aren’t going to increase enough to warrant the price of urban Boston. The combination may just make life harder without having a net impact favoring suburban or urban geography.

The second is global warming. We know it’s happening whether or not it’s caused by humans. This may not in itself favor urban or suburban locations, but is sure to favor regions. Where? Thoughts?

2006-04-12T14:04:00.000-07:00

DiBruno, DeLallo, whatever. It's a great choice for a market in downtown Pittsburgh. DeLallo Bros. has been chosen as the market that will be located in the former Lazarus department store in downtown Pittsburgh. Initially the possible outlets mentioned were Giant Eagle and Whole Foods, but in the end it was the local chain that won out. DeLallo is based in Jeanette. I had previously visited one of their stores near Greensburg. It reminded me of DiBruno Bros., a store that started in the Italian Market District in Philadelphia. I previously suggested something similar would be a good match for downtown Pittsburgh (DiBruno has a location on Chestnut Street in Philly--an area with many hotels and retail stores). From my small sample, DeLallo has great products and I feel the store is the perfect match for downtown Pittsburgh. It's sure to please downtown residents, office workers and vistors.

Visit DiBruno
Visit DeLallo

2006-04-08T06:37:00.000-07:00

With a lot of out-of-towners looking for homes in Pittsburgh, I get a lot of questions asking just what a particular neighborhood is like. You can only tell so much from a map and a photo of a house.

There's really no substitute for going there, however, but a picture is still worth more than a map and photo. I've begun a site at pbase that will allow me to upload photos of our neighborhoods on an ongoing basis.

In anticipation of my persistence, the site contains a small fraction of what will eventually be there, but it's enough to help begin to provide some snapshots of Pittsburgh's great neighborhoods Link

2006-04-05T12:51:00.000-07:00

PMI Mortgage recently listed Pittsburgh as one of the nation's least risky housing markets along with San Antonio, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Memphis. This echoes earlier reports inluding Smart Money magazine which called out city "undervalued."

These are the exceptions. PMI says forty-eight of the nation's 50 largest metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) face a greater risk of declining home prices this quarter, adding the continued strength of the national and local economies suggests that in the absence of an economic shock, the once red-hot housing market will cool gradually. Appreciation has slowed in nearly half of the MSAs as compared to last quarter. Affordability remains a problem with eight MSAs registering affordability levels considered low by historical standards, due to appreciation and higher interest rates.

U.S. Market Risk Index scores increased for all of the top 50 MSAs except Chicago, IL, whose score decreased one point (New Orleans was not scored this quarter due to the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Katrina). Fourteen of the top 50 MSAs now have risk scores above 500, meaning they face a 50 percent or greater risk of home price declines in the next two years, up from 11 MSAs last quarter. The average score has increased from 261 last quarter to 287. The biggest change was in Minneapolis, MN, which gained 90 points, taking it to a score of 350 and up two spots in the ranking to No. 19.

Other U.S. Market Risk Index trends include:

-- In addition to Minneapolis, MN, MSAs that saw significant increases in risk were Virginia Beach, VA (+65 points to 274), Baltimore, MD (+62 to 279), Newark, NJ, (+61 to 427), New York, NY (+58 to 506), and Washington, D.C., (+56 to 401).

-- Riverside and Oakland, CA traded places, making Riverside No. 5 and Oakland No. 7. San Francisco and San Jose, CA also traded places, making San Francisco No. 10 and San Jose No. 11. Other than that, the top 15 are the same as last quarter with risk still clearly focused on the coasts.

-- There are now eight areas with Affordability Index scores below the vulnerability threshold of 70: San Diego, Santa Ana, Riverside, Sacramento, Oakland, and Los Angeles, CA, and Fort Lauderdale and Miami, FL. Long Island (Nassau-Suffolk), NY, San Jose, CA, and Tampa, FL are also considered potentially vulnerable with scores between 70 and 75.

-- While slowing, appreciation remains high by historical standards. Phoenix, AZ, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and Tampa, FL, Washington, D.C., Virginia Beach, VA, and Los Angeles, CA saw year-over-year appreciation of more than 20 percent.

The PMI report coincided with numbers from the National Association of Realtors showing second-home buyers now made up 40 percent of the market. The bulk (27.7 percent) of these are purchased for investment purposes.

The San Francisco Chronicle noted however that while risk for that city's homebuyers may be increasing, in the past 20 years the return for any five-year period ranged from a gain of nearly 50 percent to a loss of about 10 percent, with a median gain of 33 percent. Those who owned their homes for 15 years or more almost never incurred losses.

2006-04-01T10:35:00.000-08:00

Eric,

Don't you think that building all these "luxury" condos is a bit of a mistake, though? I was talking to the guys at Burt Hill, an arch firm that is in Pittsburgh (they were at some career fair thing here), and they were talking about how they're rallying to meet with the mayor and the planning dept etc to try to make a move to get these units to be more affordable. I mean, as a native I know where the cheap and cool neighborhoods in the city are, and would know exactly where to move to if I were to move back, but most of my fellow friends wouldn't, and the first thing they would ask is about downtown because it's in the center and close to everything. So shouldn't there be some kind of housing that those of us who are low on the totem pole salary wise should be able to afford? This is a problem Philadelphia is experiencing, too, and if I come back to Pittsburgh and find it's been condo-fied the way Philly has I'm going to be angry. One of the great things about Pittsburgh is that it hasn't jumped on that bandwagon, until now. But at least they're building housing downtown finally. Ack, prisoner's dilemma.

Amanda

Amanda-

The way I see it there wasn't any housing downtown before the luxury condo's came. Housing in general downtown will bring retail and make downtown better. That will make living in the areas around downtown without a car more practical and attractive. So, while a mix may be better, the condos themselves are good in my opinion.

In the short-term, however, a lot of people think all these new rental units are hurting the small landlords. That's likely temporary too. It could play out that the rental units are sold to homeowners who want to live near downtown. That would be good for the neighborhoods.

The downside? Well, in the last 50 years lower income people had to travel to the suburbs for jobs. In the future they may have to travel to the city. However, because the entire thing can't be developed at once, there will always be more of an economic mix and wide price range in the city.

An energetic, expensive city is better than an empty, cheap one. Is there a balance? I hope.

Eric

This exchange took place at the East Allegheny Yahoo Group

2006-03-31T05:47:00.000-08:00

There's a lot of debate in the neighborhood recently about whether or not the market in West Deutschtown will support $200K and above houses. I have also had my doubts, but again and again those doubts are erased by new sales. Five eleven Tripoli Street is a new example. I recently noticed that a sale is in progress. I don't know the details, but the home was listed at $199,900. Likewise 1010 Cedar, a large home that needs renovated, is graced with a sold sign. The listing price was $149,900.

Market examples of homes that sold for more than $200,000 include five sixteen Lockhart which sold for $210,000. Four seventeen Lockhart sold for $254,500 this year as well.

But those are renovations of Victorian homes South of East Ohio Street, an area that is perceived as having fewer rough edges.

The two contingencies I first mentioned are North of East Ohio, and one isn't even renovated. And we still ahve the example of new construction sales north of East Ohio. One thousand two Middle Street sold for $188,000 in 2003. Add five percent a year for inflation and that's more than $205,000 in today's dollars.

There remain the matter of three unsold homes renovated by the East Allegheny Community Council that are also North of East Ohio. A look back shows this neighborhood has frequently been ahead of the market, and while some homes stay on the market for long periods of time, they do eventually sell.

Perhaps I am just in an optimistic mood today, but looking back, I'd guess new homes developed today and listed at $200,000 or more are closer to market reality than $150,000 homes listed in 2002.

2006-03-24T09:49:00.000-08:00

Existing home sales are up, new home sales are down, condo sales are back up... it's credited to the weather, but wouldn't a warm January put all sales up? Perhaps it's showing the market favorability of existing homes in more central locations where there isn't much new construction. That would help explain why condo sales are also up.

The Commerce Department reported that sales of new single-family homes dropped by 10.5 percent in February. Previously on the downslide, sales of condominiums and co-ops were up again, this time by 8.8 percent in February and sales of existing single-family homes were up 4.7 percent.

I have an inclination that what we could be seeing here is a failure of development to keep up with an increasing demand for housing that's smaller, more efficient, low maintenance and centrally located near transportation and amenities.

I'll be on the lookout for supporting evidence.

2006-03-22T13:52:00.000-08:00

I read in Pop City this morning that Brighton Heights is planning to construct a grand entrance to the neighborhood, which includes a traffic circle. Brighton Heights went up on my scale of a livable neighborhoods earlier this year when I discovered The Vault, a coffee shop, had opened on California Avenue.

When I read the article this morning, I had the idea that a traffic circle which once existed next to the McKees Rocks Bridge was being recreated. It turns out that's not the case (the new circle will be a block or so away,) but still recalls an earlier desire to make things look good. Yes, there was a time when function followed form!

I don't mean to bring into question the function of traffic circles. They are of course aethstetically pleasing. They're also functional once the locals learn how to use them.

In any case, creating an entry way for Brighton Heights is a welcome idea.

If you haven't discovered it, it's worth a look. I was there on Monday visiting a client who was busy restoring a very large home. What a task! I would think the results will be quite satisfying.

There are also some condo's available in buildings designed by a noted architect (Osterling) just steps from the coffee shop.

If you don't know where Brighton Heights is, soon it will be easier to find. If you'd like to check out some properties there, give me a call at 412-322-2000.

2006-03-12T08:13:00.000-08:00

I just heard about another artist who had moved to Pittsburgh. This one is a costume designer from Germany. Earlier this month I had taken picture-frame restoration classes from a French guilder, also now a Pittsburgher (he says his wife liked it here). Later today I'll meet up again with a San Franciscan who works in the opera there. She hasn't taken the plunge of becoming a full-time Pittsburgher, but she has purchased a home here.

I often hear Pittsburghers downplay the qualities of the city they both love and love to make fun of. I used to hear the question "why?" from Pittsburghers who had found out I had moved here after six years in San Francisco (I had lived in Pittsburgh previously). Today fewer are asking that questions, and even less are laughing.

The Pittsburgh landscape has inspired artists for generations. Andy Warhol might have left, but before him there was George Hetzel, Mary Cassatt and others. Today Pittsburgh's art scene is thriiving from Penn Avenue in Garfield to Penn Avenue downtown, Sampsonia Way, Regent Square and throughout the city. I know there's a significant cluster of artists on Spring Hill.

There perhaps two are two reasons they are coming. The first is the obvious beauty of the city and landscape (obvious to everyone but natives!) The second is the affordability and attractiveness of the city's building stock. There's a lot of great space in this place.

2006-02-26T08:59:00.000-08:00

Something very simple happened today. In any other urban neighborhood, coffee shops come and go. Here in Pittsburgh's North City Flats, a coffee shop was a long time coming.

Over the years I've heard stories about neighbors coming out to oppose coffee shops because they would attract people and bring about "loitering." These city suburbanites lost out. From today on there will be more to our neighborhoods than just decorative doors with homeowners hiding beside alarm systems.

Yesterday was the first day of operation for Beleza. This coffee shop is opening at a time when many "coasters" are looking for new cities to live in. Pittsburgh is high on the list (New York magazine recently named Pittsburgh as one of the top places New Yorkers are moving to. Many city neighborhoods are overlooked and one primary reason is because we can't always answer positively questions about whether there are grocery stores and coffee shops nearby.

From today foreward I can say "there's a great coffee shop over on Buenta Vista!"

Beleza opened at 8 yesterday morning. I arrived at 11:30. A young women was sitting out front with her dog. Three people stood on the opposite corner taking photos. Inside I was greeted with warm colors and aromas. A few sat in their solitary corners, but for many others it was like walking into a friendly living room. I had the sense that all these coffee-starved folk knew of each other, had exchanged friendly glances, but had few opportunities to interact.

"Where do you live?" the person at the counter asked. Hell, I thought, that may be a rather rude question in Starbuck's, but here it seemed normal, even welcomed. "Over by the Schoolhouse," I said. She lived up the block on Buena Vista.

Sometimes it seems day by day each of our little pockets we call "neighborhoods" are entrenched in their own provincial corners. We're stuck on Deutschtown being somehow distinct, if not better than the Mexican War Streets or Allegheny West. Today those lines were not the only ones to blur. Today those lines that kept us seperated by the sense of personal space on a city street were blurred by this third-place where we can meet and interact from today on as neighbors.

A side note, Beleza serves Peace Coffee.

2006-02-25T12:17:00.000-08:00

With or without gambling, it may be possible for much good to come from Casino dreaming. It would seem a shame for all the plans to go to waste for lack of a casino license. Faced with the prospect of not getting a license, the dreamers seem to be asking: "do we really need a casino to make this work?"

It's a good question to ask, and more often the answer seems to be "no."

Word is Forest City may develop South Shore condos with or without the Casino license. Likewise, after pulling his bid for a North Shore Casino near PNC Park, Merrill Stabile wants to develop anyway.

According to the Post-Gazette (which undoubtably must find some joy in the new parking garage rising in front of the Tribune-Review sign), Stabile and Kratsa Properties are putting together plans for a proposed residential, retail, entertainment and hotel development at the site.

In other recent developments, the developer of the DelMonte and Equitable office buildings, Continental recently announced the addition of three restaurants in time for the All-Star game in July.

More often than not, what developers and planners are coming up with are dense mixed-use developments with casino's in them. These kinds of developments, sometimes known as cities have existed for centuries. We are perhaps now realizing they will work with or without casinos.

2006-02-22T14:19:00.000-08:00

Just before heading out to spend an afternoon showing a New Yorker houses in Pittsburgh, I received a note from Virginia, a frequent poster to a yahoo group and a potential Pittsburgher currently living in New Jersey.

Virginia described the current New York Magazine and an article called "A Moveable Fiesta", about Buenos Aires becoming an "expat Haven", and she quotes: "New Yorkers are also Fleeing to:", the places listed were: "Shanghai, Budapest, and Pittsburgh"

Virginia just happened on the article and hey, I'm a subscriber and I didn't notice that. "I thought, (oh, God, no, not before I take a look around) Dammit, why do New Yorkers have to "discover" everything, everywhere. That's exactly what happened in Philly?" Virginia asked aloud in the email.

The magazine notes that $300,000 gets you a three-bedroom home in Pittsburgh. Hell, I think $30,000 would.

2006-02-07T16:38:00.000-08:00

I can see the change in myself since I moved back to Pittsburgh from San Francisco. Where once I would run out the door any time of day to make a dash for Walgreen's or the organic food store around the corner, now I hop in the Beetle and head for the suburbs. In my case the reason may not be so much the built environment as a lack of retail options around me.

In any case, even life in East Allegheny is far removed from that in many a suburb. There are many occasions now where I do walk that would be lost should I move to say Cranberry. As it turns out, such a move would be bad for my health.

Researchers have shown for the first time that the same pattern of unwise land use can adversely affect a wide range of health indicators, including obesity and air pollution. This comprehensive study is the first to be commissioned by a local government to assess multiple health impacts of the built environment. The study's findings were reported in the winter edition of the Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA), the scholarly journal of the American Planning Association.

The study examined the impacts the built environment could have on residents' health if it reduces opportunities for active transportation (walking or biking) and encourages more time spent in vehicles that can lead to an increase in vehicle emissions and air pollution. The authors explained that such a built environment could lead to an increased risk for several major chronic diseases, obesity, exposure to pollutants and risk of respiratory ailments.

"Our findings are consistent with literature suggesting that current laws and regulations are producing negative health outcomes," said Lawrence Frank, J. Armand Bombardier Chair in Sustainable Transportation in the school of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia.

The findings were generated from two studies conducted in King County, Washington. Use of the same walkability index in each study in the same region allowed for a strong comparison of association across multiple outcomes.

The first study conducted was the Neighborhood Quality of Life Study. It concentrated on the relationship of urban form to physical activity and obesity. The results from this study were consistent with findings of previous studies.

"Walkability of neighborhoods around each participant's home was significantly related to overall physical activity levels, minutes per week devoted to active transportation, and BMI," said Frank. "People living in high-walkable neighborhoods were more physically active, walked more and had lower BMI."

The second study was the King County Land Use, Transportation, Air Quality, and Health Study that assessed the effects of land use and transportation network design on travel patterns and per capita vehicle emissions, which influences air quality.

The authors found that a modest 5 percent increase in neighborhood walkability was associated with 32.1 percent more minutes per week of physically active travel, approximately a one-quarter point lower BMI (about 1.5 pounds), 6.5 percent fewer vehicle miles traveled per capita and lower vehicle emissions (5.6 fewer grams of oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and 5.5 percent fewer grams of volatile organic compounds (VOC) per capita). These compounds react in sunlight to form harmful ozone.

"These findings have begun to untangle highly complex relationships and produce some astonishing and yet practical answers for promoting healthier people," said King County Executive Ron Sims. "The studies bring clarity to the gains that can be realized by bringing all the different disciplines together, working toward a common goal. King County and its partners are already putting these findings to work in land use management and transportation policy that will have lasting rewards for our communities and the people who live in them."

2006-02-07T09:43:00.000-08:00

Bob O’Connor has been pretty lucky. Downtown development has gained serious momentum, and now the Steeler’s victory threw the city into the national spotlight. Today’s victory rally, however has brought to light the mistakes of the past and, through poor planning has thrust the troubles of our downtown (namely the Fifth-Forbes corridor) into the national spotlight.

Instead of choosing a route that would lead the Steelers through a revitalized areas that could really show off the city, the organizers lead the thousand of fans and countless tv cameras along Fifth Avenue, past real estate signs and vacant, boarded storefronts. Today we saw the best of the city and the worst of downtown.

Why couldn’t the route have gone from the Civic Area past Mellon Park, to Fort Duquesne Boulevard or perhaps Penn Avenue? Unfortunately today’s parade likely served to reinforce an incomplete and negative image of downtown Pittsburgh to television viewers. If I were watching from another city the downtown I saw today probably couldn’t be distinguished from one in the late 70s. In fact, there are even seeminly fewer stores today.

On the good side, the thousands (I’ve heard numbers as high as 200,000) folks who went downtown for the day undoubtedly saw real changes in downtown Pittsburgh for the first time. Unfortunately television viewers couldn’t get that sense. To them it’s the same old steel town, and when the crowd goes home to Cranberry, the same old forlorn downtown Pittsburgh.

MORE

2006-02-01T13:53:00.000-08:00

The East Allegheny Community Council is looking for people interested in restoring an old house. There are currently four houses in the Deutschtown National Historic District (one is on the local) available for restoration. It would also be great if those wanting to restore the homes planned to live in them. More information on the homes is available at historicproperties.com or at the Deutschtown web site

2006-01-31T17:05:00.000-08:00

I received a call the other day from a man who wanted to buy an fixer-upper for an investment. His main requirement was that it be close to town. "I listen to a lot of talk shows and talk to a lot of people," he said. "A lot of the older folks are saying they're thinking about moving back to the city."

A lot of us can see these trends in our own neighborhoods. While once urban neighborhoods were populated with youth, in a few years they may be taken over by those approaching the golden years.

At any rate, a new book begins to confirm that repopulating the core as a trend is indeed more than talk. Tomorrow's Cities, Tomorrow's Suburbs, published by the American Planning Association (APA), analyzed metro areas and found that by 2000, old city neighborhoods were thriving while middle-aged suburbs were in decline.

Of the 2,586 suburbs and 35 large metropolitan areas analyzed, the authors found that 155 suburbs were worse off than Detroit, with per capita incomes of less than 60 percent of their metropolitan area's income. Detroit was used as a benchmark for cities with problems because it had the lowest ratio of city residents' per capita income to metropolitan income in 2000.

Additionally, the authors report that more than 50 percent of suburbs in the study had declined faster, or increased slower than their central cities in relative per capita income.

Suburban malaise measured by suburban income decline was especially severe in the Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Miami, Orlando, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa, and Washington, D.C., metropolitan areas, where 50 percent or more of the suburbs lagged behind their central cities relative income performance between 1990 and 2000.

Neighborhoods built between 1940 and 1990 were much more likely to decline in relative family income than were pre-1940 neighborhoods. Approximately half of pre-1940 neighborhoods were going up in relative family income during the 1990s in the six metropolitan areas (Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Richmond, and Washington, D.C.) where the authors analyzed income changes in census tracts. In contrast, more than 75 percent of neighborhoods built substantially during the 1960s were going down in relative family income during the 1990s.

The authors partially attribute city revival to the ability to attract more middle- and upper-income households. Faster revival of old neighborhoods is likely within the next decade because cities have been good at attracting empty nesters, middle-aged neighborhoods dominated by small houses are now considered obsolete, and fewer people believe the best neighborhoods are formed from isolated detached houses in an auto-dependent suburban development.

In the book, the authors attribute suburban decline partially to the size of available housing, citing the increase in the median size of a new house from 1,100 square feet in 1950 to 2,000 square feet in 2000. The authors theorize that suburbs dominated by housing built between 1945 and 1970 will likely have trouble attracting and retaining middle-income households since larger housing stock became more readily available in the 1990s.

Another reason for future suburban decline may be increasing awareness that the exurbs are proving to be more dangerous than the central cities. "Our research in 10 large metropolitan areas shows that in each area, one or more exurban counties had more deaths associated with leaving home, mainly traffic deaths, than occur in central cities from the combination of traffic deaths and homicides by strangers."

Additionally, the authors caution that when parents realize the perceived safety of cul-de-sac neighborhoods is in fact "bogus," support for families preferring suburbs may erode further.

While the authors' book focuses on analysis of the 2000 census data, Lucy and Phillips did analyze data from the new American Community Survey of the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Early data analysis for 20 large cities indicates cities continued to experience revivals between 2000 and 2003.

The authors argue that opportunities for condominium ownership have influenced middle-income residents' location decisions. Increased availability of condo ownership is partially a result of changing consumer preferences, but also partly a belated adaptation by developers to provide a housing ownership opportunity that has been underserved in many metropolitan housing markets. According to Lucy and Phillips, where developers respond to this condo market demand, as many more have done since the 2000 census, central cities are more likely to make comebacks that can be measured by increases in relative income.

The book is by William H. Lucy and David L. Phillips, professors of urban planning at the University of Virginia. The two have spent more than 20 years studying city and suburban trends.

2006-01-22T08:43:00.000-08:00

I met some neighbors for a pre-dinner drink Friday. They were hosting someone visiting from Japan here to learn about affordable housing programs in the U.S. Pittsburgh is of course filled with affordable housing (to get an idea, visit link. So with so much housing available, why are condos, priced significantly higher, selling so well. My neighbor wondered at what point the market would be saturated with condos. With three thousand scheduled to come online in the near term, how many would remain unsold? "All those and more will sell and be occupied," I responded.

This morning's paper had some information that helps explain why. "Allegheny County has 12,000 people turning 60 this year, according to the 2000 census, with another 354,000 boomers to follow in their wake over the next 18 years."

Some might want to spend the golden years mowing lawns in distant suburbs, but countless others want a more convenient life in a place where someone else takes care of the building. And hey, you can walk outside and get a bite to eat or see a show.

At least in Pittsburgh, the condo boom is in its infancy.

2006-01-21T16:00:00.000-08:00

Great cities to live in are supported by great transit systems. These transit systems are centered on extensive netwoks of light-rail and subway lines rather than buses. These notions are supported by a recent Post-Gazette article that outlines increases gained in Port Authority ridership following sustained higher gasoline prices.

The gasoline prices, the article concludes, have lead to increased transit ridership. More, rail ridership in Pittsburgh and elsewhere had an increase more than twice that of transit ridership over-all (which means buses had an even smaller percentage increase).

This reaffirms two of my already held notions.

1. Imposing gasoline tax's (as roadway user fees rather than subsidies) will serve to boost transit ridership (and thus help clean the air and slow co2 emmissions that cause global warming).

2. Those who would otherwise drive much prefer rail over buses.

2006-01-16T06:34:00.000-08:00

Statistics from Saturday's paper reveal the amazing opportunity that exits for the center City of Pittsburgh. According to the article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,more than 180,000 suburbanites flow into Downtown, Oakland and other city neighborhoods each day to work, boosting Pittsburgh's population by 41 percent, the fourth-highest proportional "day surge" among large cities in the nation.

This is amazing in itself. Center-city employment is actually higher now than in the past when many jobs were at steel mills along the rivers. A large number of these come by public transit, but a majority come by car. The number has also increase over the past decade from about 300,000 in 1992 to 320,000 in 2001.

These trends run counter to much of what has happened in cities in general over the past half-century. They also spotlight two areas of opportunity.

The first is to get some of these commuters to move into the city. This is already happening to some degree. Empty-nesters, boomer retirees, childless couples and singles are already moving into downtown and other areas, attracted by new housing opportunities. This is great news, but the numbers we saw Saturday reveal much greater opportunity.

The second area of opportunity, which should serve to booster the first, is to improve transportation within the city. This should be done using surface light-rail and streetcar lines that can be built in short amounts of time. The lack of such systems will keep the downtown housing boom from moving into other neighborhoods. New housing thus far has been concentrated in areas in very close proximity to downtown and Oakland, including South Side, North Shore, Squirrel Hill and the lower Hill District. Improving the time it takes (and ease of use) of transit systems will allow, in essence, other neighborhoods to become closer and "transit villages" to emerge.

In the more immediate term, city housing advocates should focus attention on selling city living to these commuters. More increasing the variety and quantity of in-city housing will serve to insure something more than a day-time population boost, a real reversal of suburban flight.

2005-12-19T13:13:00.000-08:00

The Associated Press story appeared in newspapers from Philadelphia to Phoenix: "Google to open new research facility in Pittsburgh."

The headline has enough weight to make some heads turn. The name of the high-tech giant might even mean more than all the stories about undervalued real estate, quality of life, breathtaking views from Mount Washington, low crime and easy commutes. It all doesn't mean much if the economy isn't there to back it up.

What's even more impressive about the news is the reported reason why Google chose Pittsburgh. The low cost of living? The great architecture? The cultural and sports attractions? The location? The weather? Well, the answer to all of these is both yes and no. That's because the reason Google chose Pittsburgh is because the talent they wanted to hire didn't want to leave. Can you say "No way San Jose?"

I was working on my masters in Urban Studies at the University of Akron as "Silicon Valley" was blossoming into what is to this point it's full manifestation. The generally accepted impetus for the economic boom was the great talent and technology that was fed into the economy and market by Stanford University.

Of course Stanford isn't the only great University. What about Carnegie Mellon? Why didn't that happen in Pittsburgh (or Rochester, or Boston...). It did in Boston to a degree, but the other factor may be having the entrepreneurial talent which takes the technology and brings it to market.

Which brought me to another recent headline "Pitt Sixth Nationally In University Start-up Company Creation."

According to the Association of University Technology Managers, Pitt was tied with Duke University and trailed only the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Chicago, Georgia Institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology, and University of Michigan in this measure of technology commercialization productivity in 2004.

No one can say for sure what this will add up to. It does convey something I've known for a long time. Comparatively, Pittsburgh is a pretty darn good city, especially for the price. It's also shown the outside world has started to take notice of my first conclusion. Things are starting to happen here.

2005-12-12T10:12:00.000-08:00

What do Honolulu, Boston, New York and San Francisco have in common? They are all places U.S. residents are moving from. Why? The high cost of living.

Where are they moving to? Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Charlotte. The trend has been chronicled recently by CNN, The New York Times and more. What city is missing the boat? Pittsburgh.

If the cost of living is the reason people are leaving Boston and San Francisco, it would seem Pittsburgh would be an obvious alternative. Pittsburgh has the culture, the housing stock, the lively downtown, the colleges, the infrastructure, the simple unmatched physical beauty and the low cost of living needed to grab the attention of those fleeing higher-priced markets.

If Boston’s loss isn’t Pittsburgh’s gain, we’ll have only ourselves to blame. Now is the time to pull our resources and get the word out. Now is the time to push ourselves up a notch or two.

No more ten year plans, please. It’s time to just do it before this window is closed.

2005-12-03T13:58:00.000-08:00

Downtown living is on the rise in Pittsburgh. That was one of the conclusions presented Friday by a group of students from the Heinz School for Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). The analysis was done for the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership.

The students did a cost/benefits analysis for living downtown compared with other neighborhoods.The report found that rents in downtown cost considerably more than in Mount Lebanon or Shadyside (presumably they chose these neighborhoods because of the demographic being targeted for downtown living).

Likewise the cost of buying a condo downtown was more than those two neighborhoods, plus Sewickley. Compared with single-family homes in those three neighborhoods, those willing to downsize might find downtown living attractive. (It seems some comparison of perception between downtown and these other neighborhoods should also be made. Actual comparisons in quantitative data on crime statistics, existing amenities etc. would be useful).

The numbers of folks looking to live downtown are apparently on the rise. The students concluded there would be 1006 more prospective tenants than units by Fall of 2006. It was also estimated downtown will measure a 16.5 percent growth rate in 2006 from 2000.

Held at the Gulf Tower, the forum also allowed downtown residents to listen to the conclusions and respond. One resident complained about the noise and odor from buses. Extending hours of stores and coffee shops seemed to be on everyone's mind and adding a grocery far out ranked other amenities young professionals found important to have downtown. (young professionals were one of two groups likely to see downtown as an attractive option, empty nesters the other).

One audience member felt the coffee shops would only be convinced to open later when the demand was there. As when people moved to the suburbs, it took some time for the stores to follow.

It is clear that downtown living desireability is on the increase, and the products being created, at least in terms of for sale downtown condos, is products that are in demand. Some of the presumptions about downtown living will sure to be challenged in the coming years, however. It is my contention that while more people are seeking out an urban lifestyle today, perhaps being close to work, a prime downtown attraction cited, will not hold true. I think that downtown living is becoming attractive for other reasons.

First, the condo lifestyle in general is again attractive. Small households, one or two people, want an investment with a standardized value. They want minimal upkeep and a customizable space. An increasingly mobile population wants a product that will not take time out of their busy lives and yet provide enough latitutude to make the space their own. Second, downtown office buildings are being converted into condominiums for economic reasons rather than social ones.

This is not only true of Pittsburgh, but of other downtowns. New condo buildings (of considerable height) are also being built in downtown areas. Economically this is likely because the price per square foot of living space has surpassed the price per square foot of office space (at least in these tall, slender buildings). It's also because of changes in the type of office space in demand. New offices are being built in outlying areas (including on the North and South shores and in like places in other cities). The new office buildings have much larger floorplans than the old downtown buildings.

Time will tell, but what we are probably seeing now is a change in downtown from an office center to a mixed-use center and eventually weighed heavily toward a residential center. It's too early to see how far into the future, and thus how far to the a complete residential center this trend will take us.

It may not seem realtistic today to think that downtown could be primarily a residential neighborhood. There will always be some offices of course, just the way there are a few apartments near Ross Park Mall. Today we may make the mistake of assuming that the residential trend will stop at some point, what point is unspecified, perhaps 25 percent. It may not stop, however, or may stop at 75 or 80 percent.

When I say "primarily residential," I mean homes and supportive retail services and cultural attractions. Cultural attractions will not be replaced because they are not a market-driven entity the way homes and offices are.

Today we know the concept of "edge cities," and the diminishing importance of a downtown as an office and retail center. I suspect there will always be an importance to having a "center," and downtown will always be that center.

The infrastructure needed for a residential center is much different than the infrastructure needed for an office center. As an office center, the workers commute, primarily by driving, from the suburbs. As a residential center, a larger portion of those living downtown won't have cars. They must be in walking-distance of amenities and have an efficient transportation system in order to get to work.

In regards to amenities, while it is important, as suggested, for existing amenities to have extended hours, the existing amenities aren’t built to cater to residents. As an example, compare the Starbucks on McKnight and Siebert with the one on Penn and Sixth. The suburban location is large enough to accommodate small meetings and allow residents who may spend the day alone at home, to linger. The downtown location is more of a “get your coffee and go” spot than a “third-place.”

The retail stores face similar barriers. I’m more likely to shop at Target and Walgreens for the things I need for everyday life than Kauman’s/Macy’s or Brooks Brothers. The types of stores downtown today are built to accommodate suburban destination shoppers or office workers.

I would also like to briefly compare “downtown” Pittsburgh with Center-City Philadelphia or Baltimore. While the primary type of housing in Downtown Pittsburgh is the condo or apartment, other successful downtowns include many different types of housing, including the row house. By expanding the definition of “downtown” to include places like East Allegheny, we can provide this type of housing in an area that is walkable and convenient—the hallmarks of downtown living.

To the students who undertook this project, good work. It was an engaging presentation that’s sure to help continued growth of Pittsburgh’s downtown as a place for living.

2005-12-01T12:47:00.000-08:00

If the news I heard today is true, a record has been set for the sold price of a home in Central Northside. I'll report more as soon as I can confirm these details.

These last few days I have spent some time analyzing data for some other Northside neighborhoods so far this year. These numbers would seem to be easy to come by, but that's not always the case. Many homes are put in the multi-list under the wrong neighborhoods, either for marketing purposes or by mistake. I recently toured a home in Squirrel Hill that I pulled up on a Northside search. Anyway, here are my estimates on how these neighborhoods are doing.

These numbers include Jan 1 to mid-November. They do not count the sale of multi-unit or commercial buildings. Accuracy is not guaranteed.

Spring Hill Spring Hill is pretty definable, only some of the hillsides are actually in East Allegheny.

Total Sold 27
Average Price $44,291
Median Price $45,500
Highest Price: $124,900
Lowest Price: $1,000

TROY HILL

Total Sold 27
Average Price $36,565
Median Price $30,000
Highest Price $80,000
Lowest price $10,500

EAST ALLEGHENY There are a number of complications with East Allegheny. Increasingly it's divided, psychologically at least, into East Deutschtown and West Deutschtown. More, commonly East Allegheny homes are incorrectly listed in Central Northside.

Total Sold 22
Average Price $48,656
Median Price $45,000
Highest Price $210,000
Lowest price $4,000

CENTRAL NORTHSIDE Some homes listed in Central Northside are actually located in adjacent neighborhoods.

Total Sold 45
Average Price $115,585
Median Price $126,000
Highest Price $301,000
Lowest Price $2,000

I thought I would compare these neighborhoods to another neighborhood that seemed to have a lot of buzz this year, Lawrenceville. Some eighty homes sold in Lawrenceville so far this year. The most expensive was $275,000 for a Butler Street loft/condo. The least a single-family foreclosure on Woolsayer way. The average was $73,766.66, more than East Allegheny, Troy Hill or Spring Hill. The median is $65,500. I should note that Lawrenceville is one of the city's largest neighborhoods.

A few other quick numbers.

About 43 homes were sold in Bloomfield so far this year. The highest price was $149,500, the lowest $15,500.

About 144 homes were sold on Southside this year, the highest $375,000 (A South Shore Court condo), the lowest $3,500.

About 31 units were sold in Downtown Pittsburgh so far this year. Downtown includes the Strip District. The highest was a Strip District loft for $635,000. The lowest a studio condo in Washington Place for $35,000.