If Downtown Pittsburgh is undergoing a third renaissance, this one won't be built so much on the shoulders of skyscrapers as on the comforts of home.

		Graphic: New life Downtown

With more than $360 million in development in the works or in planning stages, the Golden Triangle could be on the verge of its biggest face lift since Renaissance II two decades ago, which saw the construction of 11 new buildings, including One Oxford Centre, PPG Place, One Mellon Center and Fifth Avenue Place.

While past efforts were built on the premise of bringing people Downtown to work, the latest one is aimed at keeping them here, with a binge of residential construction that will include condominiums, apartments and student housing.

"It's a renaissance of sorts but it is different in nature in that it's not just office towers. We're creating an in-city way of living now and shopping," said Herb Burger, chairman of the Pittsburgh Task Force, the private group of foundations and nonprofit organizations instrumental in recruiting developers Millcraft Investment and Madison Marquette.

Millcraft is redeveloping the former Lazarus-Macy's store at Fifth Avenue and Wood Street into Piatt Place -- which will have retail and residential space -- and Madison Marquette is developing plans for lower Fifth and Forbes avenues.

This time around, the renaissance promises not so much to alter the city's skyline as it does to change what it means to be Downtown.

And it is occurring in or around the very heart of the Golden Triangle -- the Fifth and Forbes corridor that has become forlorn in recent years, with boarded up storefronts and low-end retail.

There will be a high-rise building, the 25- to 30-story Three PNC Plaza office tower whose plans were unveiled Monday, but even that will have a residential component -- 30 top-floor condominiums.

Two other major projects in the works on or near Fifth Avenue are built in large part on housing. Piatt Place, the $49 million redevelopment of Lazarus-Macy's, will feature 28 condominiums and 19 rooftop townhouses, plus one-of-a-kind retail and possibly a grocery.

On Fifth Avenue, Washington, D.C., developer Madison Marquette is working on a $50 million to $60 million development anchored by the old G.C. Murphy building that will include about 150 to 200 units of for-rent apartments, targeting young professionals and empty nesters, and major retail.

In all, about 850 units of new housing are being planned or under construction Downtown.

"The fact that so much is happening in a short period of time is truly going to change the character of Downtown Pittsburgh, all for the good," said David Matter, president of Oxford Development Co., who was Mayor Richard Caliguiri's top aide during the city's second renaissance.

Mr. Matter, whose company will be developer of Three PNC Plaza, said the condo and apartment construction "bodes well for the future of Downtown." He said housing is one of the key ingredients in remaking the Golden Triangle.

"With people comes the need for services, for retail, for restaurants, for grocery stores. It will be a Downtown neighborhood," he said.

John McIlwain, senior fellow for housing at the Washington, D.C.- based Urban Land Institute, said the shift toward residential is not unique to Pittsburgh. He said cities including Washington, Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Baltimore have seen housing sprout in their urban cores.

"Some cities are really having quite an urban renaissance," he said. "It's actually been happening quite significantly. Pittsburgh has been a little slow and late to the party."

Mr. McIlwain said several factors are influencing the trend toward downtown living. At the simplest level, some people are fed up with traffic. Next, a generation of mayors has focused on managing cities, cutting crime, and sprucing up, providing a cleaner, safer environment for downtown living.

Finally, there are people without children, either young professionals or empty nesters, who enjoy urban lifestyles.

Mr. McIlwain said that service-oriented businesses like dry cleaners and convenience stores usually follow residents quickly, with restaurants and other retailers coming later.

"You have to have enough density so there's a real market," he said. "But it works much better than what we tried in the '70s and '80s when we tried to build in-town malls."

Pittsburgh is no stranger to that.

In the late 1980s, a proposal was advanced for Pittsburgh Centre, an enclosed mall between Forbes and Fourth avenues from Wood Street to Cherry Way. It was never built.

In 1994, Mayor Tom Murphy's administration wanted to build a vertical mall on land between the U.S. Steel Tower and One Mellon Center on Grant Street. The upscale Nordstrom department store would have been the anchor tenant, but the project fell apart.

Later in the 1990s, Mr. Murphy proposed the Marketplace at Fifth and Forbes, a $522 million plan that would have razed several blocks in the Fifth-Forbes corridor and rebuilt the area with some of the same trendy shops under consideration today, nightclubs and a movie theater complex.

After preservationists protested tearing down historic buildings, developer Urban Retail Properties of Chicago backed out and the Murphy administration tried several variations with other developers that never got off the ground.

Local officials are expecting much more from the latest batch of proposals to enliven Downtown.

"I think this effort will be different from previous efforts because it has almost unanimous support, because the deterioration [on Fifth and Forbes] has been so substantial that there is no alternative present and because the political and private will and the investment is there to make it happen," Mr. Burger said.

In addition, because there are several projects involved and with each being handled by a different group, there's not as much risk on any one owner or developer, Mr. Matter said.

As the efforts press forward, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, which spearheaded transformation of once-seedy Liberty Avenue and surrounding blocks, is now focusing on a two-block area that lies at the heart of the district, fronting on Fort Duquesne Boulevard between Seventh and Ninth streets.

Downtown, once the dominion of corporate titans, will have a different feel in its latest reincarnation, Mr. Burger believes.

"I think it will be a city with much charm and much more attractive to residents and businesses," he said.

"It's not going to be just big corporations anymore. That's done. General Motors is not going to move to Pittsburgh. I think Pittsburgh has the real potential to become something. In the first place, it's a concentrated city, more like a smaller New York. It's not sprawling like Columbus or Los Angeles. We will look like a real city."