Interest keeps growing in new residential units Downtown, and now, fortunately, there's a place for the rest of us. That is, the rest of those who'd like to live in the Golden Triangle but don't have an executive salary to spend on housing.

Thanks to $515,155 in federal tax credits awarded last week by the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, Trek Development Group will be able to convert the 100-year-old, 12-story Century Building on Seventh Street to apartments.

The building will offer 60 units, from single-room studios to one- and two-bedroom lofts, and be ready in early 2009. Rents, however, won't be in the stratosphere. A tenant will pay $550 to $1,150 a month, depending on income level. That compares to the $1,400 to $3,275 a month commanded in the same block by the Encore on 7th building that towers above the Allegheny River (which, by the way, just raised rents even higher).

William J. Gatti Jr., president of Trek Development, said he wants the Century to be "Downtown Pittsburgh's first truly affordable residential loft community" and his marketing efforts will target young professionals, artists and middle-income renters. Any of them looking for a place to keep a car will have the opportunity at the adjacent Theater Square Garage.

This is all good news, and it's worth the financial support that was also kicked by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, the city's Urban Redevelopment Authority, the Strategic Investment Fund and the county's economic development department.

Too often, Downtown Pittsburgh, apart from its heterogeneous workday mix, strikes the unsuspecting visitor as a place for either the upper crust or those down on their luck. But the Century Building, and more developments like it, will offer Downtown living to the broad middle -- and that's solid ground on which to build.