Residential Real Estate

Source: Changing Gears Presents Reinventing Pittsburgh: Part 1

As December welcomes us with a crisp snowfall that blankets our city streets and rivers, we look forward to a promising new economy for Pittsburgh, where the manufacturing plants and industrial buildings have been reinvented to accommodate emerging healthcare, education and technology corporations.

Our smoky, dust filled skyline of yesteryear, now greets us with the fresh air of change. Changing Gears, a public media project about the future of the industrial Midwest, is spending the next few years looking at ways to reinvent the Midwest economy. Reinventing Pittsburgh is the start of their first week-long series.

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The manufacturing hardships experienced in the early 1980’s left the future of the Steel City economy uncertain. Virtually overnight, 150,000 jobs were wiped out, the deindustrialization of the Pittsburgh region began, and the future was unclear.

But today, the economic horizon has made a shift, for the better. The steel industry, which was the muscle of our region in decades past, is a fraction of its former self today, and has evolved from basic industry to service industries in the region. Warehouses and industrial sites are being renovated for new uses, as the homes for corporations in biomedical research, multimedia production, computer gaming development, and even for use as condos, upscale retail, and more.

According to a recent Post-Gazette article article on Pittsburgh neighborhoods, a state tax-incentive for technology start-ups looped Pittsburgh’s Uptown into an innovation zone that includes part of Downtown and the North Side. Development proposals are piling up -- new restaurants in the Consol Energy Center, a residential "portal" project near the Birmingham Bridge, condos in the Fifth Avenue High School, renovation of a Fifth Avenue warehouse into apartments, and more.

“Pittsburgh has changed,” said Raymond Orowetz, P.E., LEED Green Associate of NAI Pittsburgh Commercial. “Whether it’s for the better or not depends on how one has been affected. Regarding the Uptown section of the City in particular, I can’t understand why it’s taken so long. There’s a major university (Duquesne), a major sports venue (the Mellon Arena, most recently replaced by the Consol Energy Center) and a major hospital (Mercy). They’ve been there “forever” and they’re located along the most highly travelled corridor in the city which joins our CBD with our educational/cultural hub coupled with excellent access to public transportation along the entire route. It should be rockin’ just like East Carson Street.”

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