Home >  Local News >  Neighborhoods

Stores, offices, housing in a $363 million mix

Friday, March 08, 2002

By Tom Barnes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

After 15 months of work, a mayoral task force has come up with a $363 million plan to breathe life into the moribund Downtown retail corridor bounded by Fifth and Forbes avenues and Market Square.

	One of the major elements of a just-released plan to revitalize Downtown's Fifth-Forbes area is construction of a 600-room luxury hotel, shown at center, facing along Liberty Avenue and Stanwix Street, where a McDonald's restaurant and some smaller stores are now located. (Donald Hunter)

The report recommends a mix of retail stores, office buildings, new apartments, a public market place and better use of Market Square.

But it does not directly address two other difficult questions: how the project would be funded and whether the city should use eminent domain -- the issue that helped defeat an earlier renewal plan -- to acquire some buildings for redevelopment.

City Planning Director Susan Golomb, a task force member, called the task force effort an "exciting renewal strategy." It was submitted yesterday to Mayor Tom Murphy, who said he'll comment in detail on the recommendations next week.

Highlights include:

A 600-room hotel to be built between Market Square and what now is a McDonald's restaurant at Forbes and Stanwix Street. The $129 million "full-service, high-quality" hotel could also have 100 luxury apartments and a three-level, 384-space underground parking garage.

	Online Map: A new plan for Fifth/Forbes

A $90 million office building on PNC Bank-owned property along Fifth between Liberty Avenue and Wood Street. It would be six to seven stories, with retail at ground level.

A $35 million, two-story-plus-mezzanine retail building that can hold stores with large floor plans -- such as Banana Republic, Borders Books & Music, Abercrombie & Fitch, Brookstone, Virgin Records and Eddie Bauer -- located on a site bounded by Wood, Fifth, Forbes and Warner Centre. It would have a food court on a mezzanine level.

Two residential buildings -- one costing $46 million and the other $56 million, each with 240 apartments -- on two blocks along Forbes. One block is between Smithfield and Wood and the other between Wood and Market Square.

The "Pittsburgh Public Market," in the old G.C. Murphy/McCrory's building, which would contain "a variety of food and specialty item vendors." Artists' studios and residential lofts could be located on the upper floors.

The report also recommends a 50 percent increase in size of the existing Saks Fifth Avenue store by expanding into three vacant or underused retail buildings on Fifth Avenue.

The plan for Market Square is to turn it into a "world-class, urban space," containing farmers markets, street vendors, entertainment, art shows, concerts and festivals.

The 13-member task force was named by Murphy in December 2000. That was a month after he'd scrapped his previous redevelopment plan for the Fifth-Forbes area, the controversial $522 million Market Place at Fifth and Forbes.

Over the past 15 months the Fifth-Forbes area, which was already rundown, has been hit by additional store closings.

In a brief comment yesterday, Murphy thanked the task force and said he'll have more to say after he studies the detailed, 161-page report.

"Developing a blueprint for the revitalization of our urban core is no simple task, but I think there's general agreement on the part of everybody that something needs to happen in the Fifth and Forbes corridor," Murphy said.

The task force included two members of Murphy's administration, Planning Director Golomb and Executive Secretary Tom Cox, plus Downtown merchants and business owners, Downtown residents, City Councilman Sala Udin, and officials of Oxford Development Co., PNC Bank and the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.

The report submitted to Murphy was written by an outside consultant, Donald Hunter of Annapolis, Md.

The lone dissenter to the task force report was Bernie Lynch, former director of the Market Square Association.

Although the report did not go into the touchy issue of eminent domain, the task force included both "majority" and "minority" reports on that subject in a separate letter to Murphy.

Ten of the 13 members said eminent domain should be used only as a last resort, such as a holdout property owner whose refusal to sell would hold up one entire component of the project.

But three task force members said eminent domain should remain completely "off the table."

The issue of eminent domain was a major factor in the opposition to Murphy's "Market Place" proposal, which he pursued in 1999 and 2000.

At that time, Murphy was willing to use property condemnation as a last resort to acquire property. But just the threat of eminent domain stirred up a lot of opposition from building owners who feared the city would seize their property.

But Murphy sought yesterday to defuse that issue. "We wouldn't expect to move forward with a plan [containing] eminent domain," he said.

He said he didn't think that the city's condemnation power will be needed to assemble the land needed for redevelopment.

The report estimates that about $52 million in public funds would be needed to implement all phases of the plan. The public money would go mainly to build the apartments and the public market.

Hunter said he believes private capital could fully fund the $90 million office building on Fifth Avenue and the $129 million hotel at Liberty and Fifth.

Many hurdles still have to be cleared before any actual redevelopment happens in the Fifth-Forbes area. First, a master developer, or several smaller firms working together, would have to be found. So would the money to build the projects