A truck kicks up dust at the Esplanade development site on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024, in Chateau adjacent to the North Shore and Manchester. (Photo by Anastasia Busby/PublicSource)
The Pittsburgh City Planning Commission’s approval of the proposed $740 million housing, entertainment and retail complex allows Piatt Companies to focus on the design of each of seven buildings, which will go through similar hearings and votes.
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The $740 million Esplanade proposal cleared the City Planning Commission following rave reviews from residents and business leaders, paving the way for construction on a site in Chateau, with likely ripple effects into Manchester.
Esplanade, in the works since 2017, would replace 15 acres of post-industrial wasteland with seven buildings, including:
- A retail, restaurant and entertainment center with a Ferris wheel on top
- Two apartment buildings, in which 20% of the units would be affordable to households of modest incomes
- A pavilion-style building including dining and entertainment, plus an amphitheater with waterfront views
- An office-focused building with public parking
- A hotel and entertainment structure, potentially anchored by a cinema, aquarium or other attraction
- A condominium tower.
“It’s a fantastic project,” said Commissioner Peter Quintanilla, shortly before the vote, which included no nays. “It was also great to hear a lot of the comments from some of the residents.” He noted that some neighborhoods hope for a single project which will turn things around. “This is not a silver bullet, this is like a massive, humongous bullet.”
Sixteen people wrote letters to the commission about Esplanade, and 13 people provided live public comment, including residents and people with current or planned businesses in or near Manchester. Only one speaker opposed the project.
“Our neighborhood has struggled to attract even the most basic of businesses,” said Frederick Mannion, a founder of the Manchester Historic Society. “It isn’t often a community like Manchester has a $700-million-plus opportunity dropped into its lap like Esplanade.”
The development team has “engaged with many of us in the community … and they have been receptive to our needs and those of our businesses and our residents,” said Rev. Brenda Gregg, of Project Destiny, Inc., which works with young people in the area.
Manchester has lacked a city-approved registered community organization [RCO], and the march of Esplanade toward a commission vote energized a race between local activists to assume that role and speak for the neighborhood. At the Tuesday evening commission meeting, though, representatives of both the Manchester Citizens Corp. and Manchester Neighbors spoke in favor of Esplanade.
Manchester Neighbors has “no objections to this development, none whatsoever,” said that group’s advisor Stanley Lowe, who once led the Manchester Citizens Corp., but is now a defendant in a lawsuit filed by MCC after he filed state paperwork claiming MCC’s name. He said his group has faith in the Piatt team.
Planning Commission Chair LaShawn Burton-Faulk, who is the MCC’s executive director, recused herself from consideration of Esplanade.
Economic impact promised
Esplanade is slated for a triangular site bounded by West North Avenue, a combination of Kroll Drive and Route 65, and the Ohio River for 1,600 feet. The plan calls for roughly half of the site to be built out, with half of it open space — including bicycle-focused and pedestrian trails — open to the public.
Much of the site has been owned by the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority, and untaxed, since 2003, said Lucas Piatt, of Piatt Companies.
“This is a project for everyone,” he said. He pledged that it would “impact, economically, our entire region,” in part via 9,300 construction jobs and 4,500 permanent jobs directly and indirectly spurred by the project.
“We can create a project that is a place for everyone in this entire region to thrive. Manchester deserves it. Pittsburgh deserves it,” Piatt said.
Jim Holcomb, Piatt’s director of development, said the company will help Manchester residents to train for those jobs, and will work with MCC to construct 100 off-site housing units for households earning between 30% and 50% of the area median income.
The site’s design and zoning allow for some building heights to reach 250 feet, but the plan does not contemplate approaching those limits, said Philip Wilkinson, a principal architect with AE7, which is working for Piatt.
He added that the site’s design aims to largely keep cars along the edges, preserving the middle for pedestrians.
“We aspire to be as sustainable as possible and as future-looking as possible,” he added.
While the commission approved the master plan, each building will go through its own public process, said Vice Chair Rachel O’Neill.
The neighborhood testimony for the project, said O’Neill, “is indicative of your devotion to the public process. … We think that it’s going to be a huge catalyst for the surrounding area.”
Commission approves three housing plans
The commission also approved:
- Plans for Uptown Place, at 304 Jumonville St., in Uptown, which would add three stories of residential space to an existing two-story commercial building. Jumonville Street Holdings I LLC plans to construct 66 units, mostly one-bedrooms, and pledges that at least 10% will be affordable to households earning between 60% and 80% of the area median income. Units could open in 2026. The addition is expected to cost $17 million, and the building could reach 70 feet in height.
- Construction at 4107 Willow St. in Central Lawrenceville, of a building with 97 residential units — mostly studios and one-bedrooms, but including 18 with two-bedrooms and a lone three-bedroom suite. Around 10% of units will be affordable to households at 50% of the area median income, and Housing Choice Vouchers will be welcomed. The building will add to The Foundry at 41st, a project of Fort Willow Developers and Walnut Capital. “Their plans have been quite positively received and we’re excited about the transformation of this corner,” said Sarah Trbovic, executive director of Lawrenceville Corp., a nonprofit which owns and operates the nearby Ice House Artist Studios.
- Development of Walnut McKee Apartments, in Central Oakland, by Walnut Capital. At the corner of McKee Place and Louisa Street, the 226,000-square-foot building would rise 11 stories and include 159 units. Replacing century-old, two- and three-story brick buildings, it would maintain the 40-foot setbacks along student-heavy McKee.
Rich Lord is the managing editor of PublicSource and can be reached at rich@publicsource.org.
This article first appeared on PublicSource and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.