Pittsburgh URA Set To Approve Housing Developments In Larimer, East Liberty

A new day is dawning in Larimer, with the city getting ready to plant the first seeds in a massive effort to revitalize the neighborhood with the help of a $30 million federal grant.

Pittsburgh Urban Redevelopment Authority board members are poised to give the go-ahead Thursday for construction of 85 mixed-income residential units in Larimer and East Liberty, the first phase of a broader $400 million revitalization strategy.

The townhouses and apartments will be built at the site of the former Liberty Park site and Omega Place in East Liberty and the former Auburn Towers site in Larimer.

They were made possible in part because of a $30 million Choice Neighborhoods Initiative grant awarded last year by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Pittsburgh was only one of four cities in the country to win a grant. Forty-three had applied.

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http://www.post-gazette.com/business/development/2015/04/08/URA-set-to-approve-Larimer-housing-project/stories/201504080115

Thrival Festival To Showcase Pittsburgh’s Music, Tech Scenes

Locator map with the East Liberty neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania highlighted. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Pass through East Liberty and Larimer this week, and you might hear some music and see some gadgets made right here in Pittsburgh.

The Thrival Festival starts Monday, featuring a week’s worth of novel computer products and people brainstorming about how to persuade tech types that Pittsburgh fosters innovation. Plus, there’s music. Talib Kweli will play on Saturday, and Moby will perform on Sunday.

“The goal of this year is to make some noise, to get Pittsburgh on the map more than we already are — to darken the blot,” said Bobby Zappala, CEO of Thrill Mill, an East End tech business incubator sponsoring the festival.

Read more: http://triblive.com/news/allegheny/6735665-74/festival-pittsburgh-products#ixzz3CkFI9PJP
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Google To Expand Pittsburgh Operations

The Internet search giant Google Inc. said Monday it will become an anchor tenant in a six-story office building planned in the East End’s Bakery Square 2.0 development.

“Google has signed a lease for an additional 66,000 square feet at Bakery Square 2.0 to accommodate for natural growth in our Pittsburgh office,” the company said in a statement.

It said local hiring will continue, but declined to offer specifics.

Bakery Square developer Walnut Capital Partners, based in Shadyside, hopes to begin construction on the office building in March. Google will occupy about a third of the building. Work is expected to take 18 to 24 months and cost at least $40 million.

Read more: http://triblive.com/business/headlines/5529819-74/square-bakery-google#ixzz2sOi8VvgS
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Pittsburgh’s Larimer Revival Concerns Residents

A map of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with its neighborhoods labeled. For use primarily in the list of Pittsburgh neighborhoods. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Plans to revamp Pittsburgh’s Larimer section promise the creation of a new kind of neighborhood, where low-income residents are no longer clustered in housing projects or crumbling apartments, where subsidized housing units are scattered among market-rate ones.

But some are worried that the blueprints for the $100 million housing development would push residents in two places slated for demolition — East Liberty Gardens and a Pittsburgh Housing Authority-owned project — farther from transit lines and business districts.

“[The housing authority] is talking about moving me somewhere else,” said Robert Morton, who lives in one of 27 units in the Auburn/Hamilton-Larimer complex, which is owned by the housing authority. Mr. Morton, 64, uses a wheelchair.  “I can’t just uproot and go somewhere else.”

The city is currently preparing an application for a highly competitive $30 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, with hopes of building some 350 units of mixed-income housing in the struggling neighborhood, to support jobs, parks and businesses similar to those in neighboring East Liberty.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/neighborhoods-city/pittsburghs-larimer-revival-concerns-residents-697299/#ixzz2aRwXiz1o

Wheel Mill: One Man’s Vision Turns Pittsburgh Warehouse Into Indoor Bike Park

This place is so new, you can smell it. Walk into the low-slung warehouse on Hamilton Avenue in Homewood, and the effect is immediate: Fresh-cut lumber, a little bit of sweat, a flash of motion — hey, did that kid just pop a wheelie?

Locator map with the Homewood West neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania highlighted. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A year ago, this building was stuffed with city equipment and impounded cars, 80,000 square feet of space that officials never quite knew how to handle.

Where Harry Geyer is standing?  That’s where the Pittsburgh Public Works Department used to dump their junk, something the 40-year-old has to laugh about now, surrounded by the loops and whorls of his creation.

This is the Wheel Mill, a massive indoor bike park the Lawrenceville entrepreneur has built almost single-handedly, a testament to his twin loves of mountain biking and sustainable construction that he hopes will resonate with the city’s cyclists.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/life/lifestyle/wheel-mill-one-mans-vision-turns-homewood-warehouse-into-indoor-bike-park-688207/#ixzz2TqmN5KRG