An ambitious plan to reorganize city of Pittsburgh planning and development functions has apparently resulted in little more than orphaned furniture.

Yesterday Mayor Luke Ravenstahl confirmed that an effort to reshuffle city functions to streamline development, outlined in his November budget address is "more dead than alive. ... I would characterize it as on hold right now with no plans to revisit it in the near future."

As recently as March, parts of the plan were still in play. The most tangible result: a March 19 order for six cubicle-style workstations, at a total cost of $15,375, that were supposed to accommodate shifted Planning Department employees.

Last week the workstations were delivered and installed, at an additional cost of $1,950, but yesterday they sat empty in a an air-conditioned suite on the sixth floor of the City-County Building. The employees for which they were bought remain two blocks away in their longtime Ross Street offices, in a building with other development-related agencies.

"We're not sure exactly what's going there yet," said city Finance Director Scott Kunka of the suite, vowing the workstations would not be wasted.

The effort to streamline development processes, though, may have been for nought.

Mr. Ravenstahl and his development czar, Urban Redevelopment Authority Executive Director Pat Ford, pushed an ambitious reorganization plan last fall. It would have placed the permitting functions of the Bureau of Building Inspection, the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, the City Planning Department and the Public Works Department in a single suite, rather than three separate buildings.

Parts of the planning function would shift to the Urban Redevelopment Authority. Planning staff that handle federal development grants would move to the Finance Department.

The $17,325 the city paid to Monroeville-based CIS Office Installers and Refurbishers came from the City Planning budget. Mr. Kunka said there was consideration given to moving the planning personnel who handle federal grants not just from Ross Street to the City-County Building, but into his department.

Shifting employees from one department to another would have required an amendment to the budget, said Council Finance Chair William Peduto, whose committee oversees Mr. Kunka's department. "If the goal is to disassemble the Planning Department, that should be done through the budget.

"It just seems ironic, I guess, that the failure to plan is going to cost us $17,000 from the Department of Planning," he said of the workstation spending.

The Planning Department has sometimes seemed to be endangered. Positions have been left vacant, while the URA set up its own internal planning unit, the Finance Department eyed the funding managers, and Mr. Ford had employees draft plans to move its permitting roles into the Bureau of Building Inspection.

At a Feb. 27 special meeting, Council President Doug Shields told Mr. Ford that he would never allow the Planning Department's merger into the URA.

That comment took much of the steam out of the reorganization, as did an ongoing break in Mr. Ford's role. He is on paid leave pending a State Ethics Commission review of his receipt of gifts from the Lamar Advertising executive who negotiated an arrangement for a digital billboard on Grant Street.

The Public Works Department recently scoped out the vacant space with the fresh cubicles, Mr. Kunka said. "It's a matter of putting employees where they're best suited to be."