Pittsburgh’s Downtown Tops Ranking Of Small To Midsized Cities

The Golden Triangle is America’s best downtown among small to midsized cities, according to a report released Monday by a Tennessee-based marketing company.

“Downtown has made tremendous strides in the last five years,” said John Valentine, executive director of the Pittsburgh Downtown Community Development Corp.

Livability.com, owned and operated by Journal Communications Inc., said Pittsburgh’s walkable Downtown features a growing population, numerous entertainment options and low vacancy rates.

Officials from Mayor Bill Peduto’s office and two Downtown advocacy groups said they have not worked with the marketing firm but were pleased to accept its recognition.

Read more: http://triblive.com/news/allegheny/7884812-74/downtown-pittsburgh-cities#ixzz3TM0d7C5Q
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Top 12 College Towns For Commuting On Foot

Editor’s note:  Number 3 is a Pennsylvania university!

On his several-days-a-week walks to and from work in Ithaca, NY, Tom Knipe breathes in the scent of lavender plants during temperate months. Along his ¾-mile route between work and home, Knipe also spots creatures like otters, mink, turtles, ducks and heron. Or he stops to chat with friends and neighbors. During the winter, Knipe notices the “beautiful” changes in the ice patterns in Cascadilla Creek as the water freezes and thaws.

“I typically walk when the weather makes it uncomfortable or less practical to ride my bike. So, during the winter months when there is lots of snow on the ground, I tend to walk to work on average three out of five days a week,” said Knipe, the tourism coordinator for Tompkins County, NY.

In Ithaca, a college town with about 30,000 residents in upstate New York’s Finger Lakes region, Knipe is part of an army of walkers. Ithaca, the home of Cornell University and Ithaca College, ranks first among U.S. college towns for the percentage of workers who commute on foot, according to the U.S. Census Bureau analyzed by The SpareFoot Blog. It also leads the American Institute for Economic Research’s list of thetop college towns in the U.S.

Read more: http://blog.sparefoot.com/6684-top-college-towns-for-commuting-on-foot/

Results Released On Wilkes-Barre Downtown Survey

Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Luzerne County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

WILKES-BARRE — Thursday seemed like the best possible day to release a report on a downtown survey.
 
Public Square was filled with people attending the weekly farmers’ market and Mother Nature cooperated by offering a spectacular day of sunshine.
 
Patty Kopec and her daughter, Frankie, were enjoying some of the food and sunshine. Even with no entertainment on the band shell stage, the Kopecs raved about the city and the downtown and said they wished more events were planned for Public Square.
 
“It needs this kind of stuff,” Patty Kopec said. “It needs more events that appeal to families.”

Read more: http://www.timesleader.com/news/local-news-news/50098707/Results-released-on-downtown-survey%23.U-P3K8JH2i4#.U-T5m_RDsxI

Urban Strategist To York County Community Foundation: Stakes High For City

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Blame the millennials.

Those gadget-wielding young people born in the 1980s and 1990s are the reason America’s real-estate market seems, well, a bit confused.

After decades of suburban sprawl designed to accommodate the nation’s love affair with its cars, millennials and “the creative class” want something else — a walkable place to live, said Christopher Leinberger, an urban strategist and researcher who visited York this week.

That demand for urban life — where people can live, work and play within a relatively small geographic area — is both driving and slowing the economic recovery these days, Leinberger said.

Read more: http://www.yorkdispatch.com/news/ci_25776014/design-future

Pittsburgh’s Commuters Are Walking The Walk

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

Suzy Waldo can never call off work with the excuse that her car won’t start. And she can’t really justify showing up late for her shifts, either.

Ms. Waldo lives five blocks from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh South Side where she is the branch manager, and is among the relatively small but growing number of Pittsburghers who make their daily commutes by foot.

A new Census report looking at data from the past five years ranks Pittsburgh third among large cities with commuters who walk to work.

Five years of data from the American Community Survey show 11.3 percent of Pittsburghers commute by walking — ahead of New York City’s 10.3 percent, and just behind Boston, at 15.1 percent, and Washington, D.C., at 12.1 percent.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2014/05/15/Pittsburgh-s-commuters-are-walking-the-walk/stories/201405150327#ixzz31nn7F8Bt

Carbondale Recognized As Top Spot By PA Route 6 Alliance

Map of U.S. Route 6 in Pennsylvania (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

CARBONDALE, PA – An investment in Carbondale’s rich history, a new hotel and improvements to sidewalks and streetlights downtown helped the city garner top honors from a nonprofit dedicated to promoting tourism along historic Route 6.

The PA Route 6 Alliance named Carbondale as the Heritage Community of the Year, making it No. 1 among more than 20 heritage communities that stretch along the 427 miles of Route 6 in Pennsylvania.

“It’s nice to be recognized for working so hard,” Carbondale Mayor Justin Taylor said.

Carbondale began working toward a Route 6 Heritage Community designation in 2003, Mr. Taylor said. The Route 6 Alliance is a nonprofit organization that promotes tourism and economic development along the Route 6 corridor in Pennsylvania.

Read more: http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/carbondale-recognized-as-top-spot-by-pa-route-6-alliance-1.1675579

$60-$70 Million Chestnut Street Residential Development Set To Begin

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In what would transform a bedraggled slice of central Philadelphia, demolition crews are weeks away from dismantling nearly an entire side of the 1100 block of Chestnut Street, part of a $60 million to $70 million redevelopment tapping the soaring apartment market and surging appetites to shop and live east of Broad Street.

Zoning approvals and permits are in place, additional property was acquired as recently as Thursday, and a large section of sidewalk has been closed as lead development partner Brickstone Co. prepares to build a complex of loft-style apartments above towering, three-story retail spaces.

The development will stretch almost the length of the south side of Chestnut between 11th and 12th Streets, Brickstone managing partner John J. Connors said.

Connors would not discuss what tenants are being courted, but the project could include a supermarket if rumors swirling among civic activist circles are true.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20140425__60-_70_million_Chestnut_Street_residential_development_set_to_begin.html#oF4zBbpGx4j9dij1.99

York’s West End: Businesses Want To Infuse New Life Into Neighborhood

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Just across the Codorus Creek from the heart of York’s downtown, a steady line of traffic regularly passes through the 200 block of West Philadelphia Street, following the turn of the street uphill past smartly painted homes and storefronts.

Growing up in York more than three decades ago, Steve Billet knew the area colloquially as the “colonial block.” It was a place that had a good reputation and housed property that was a wise investment for owners, he said.

On a Monday in March, however, many of the cars that idled at a nearby stoplight would continue on West Philadelphia without stopping. The idea that the city has nothing to offer has plagued York’s image and dissuaded business owners for years, and many entrepreneurs have struggled to make their shop a destination.

Still, when Billet had an opportunity to purchase a building in the 200 block in 1999, he took it. And when he and his partner David Smith decided to drop out of the rat race — as Smith puts it — to switch careers and return to the city, they settled on the spot that Billet had bought a decade and a half before as the site of their new venture.

Read more: http://www.ydr.com/local/ci_25440353/yorks-west-end-businesses-want-infuse-new-life

Luxury Apartments Planned In Former Wilkes-Barre Bank

Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Luzerne County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

WILKES-BARRE – Six floors of the historic Citizens Bank building in downtown Wilkes-Barre soon will be converted into 72 luxury apartments.

DxDempsey Architecture in Scranton is designing the apartments in one of the city’s tallest office buildings on West Market Street.

“It’s a very exciting project,” said architect Michelle Dempsey, president of the firm. “It’s in the works and there are still some financial hurdles to leap over, but it’s looking good. Living downtown is great for the downtown. People who live downtown shop downtown and it makes it a safe place. People living downtown is the first step to a successful revitalization.”

The historic bank building was designed by architect Daniel Burnham, who also designed icons like the Flatiron Building in New York City and was a main character in the book, “The Devil in the White City.”

Read more: http://citizensvoice.com/news/luxury-apartments-planned-in-former-bank-1.1628877

Abandoned ‘Goat Path’ Could Become Trail Linking Leola To Lancaster City And Western Suburbs

Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Lancaster County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Municipal leaders, county planners and health advocates gathered Thursday morning to share a vision for a non-motorized transportation corridor that would connect Lancaster city will its eastern and western suburbs.

About half of the proposed Greater Lancaster Heritage Pathway would be on the “Goat Path,” an abandoned bypass built by PennDOT in the 1970s, that stretches from the city to Leola.

The remainder of the 11-mile corridor would link a series of planned trails to carry the corridor to Lancaster General Heath’s suburban campus in West Hempfield Township.

The meeting was called by Lancaster General Health and the Lancaster Intermunicipal Committee. It comes a few months after LIMC received a county grant to study non-motorized transportation.

Read more: http://lancasteronline.com/conestogavalley/news/abandoned-goat-path-could-become-trail-linking-leola-to-lancaster/article_88d9fb1a-8905-11e3-b9bc-001a4bcf6878.html

Sidewalks Necessary To Grow Transit, Improve Walkability In Lehigh Valley, Study Says

wm-license-information-description-missing wm-license-information-description-missing-request LANTA logo.png (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Installing sidewalks and crosswalks along Hamilton Boulevard near Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom in South Whitehall Township would encourage more people to use transit in the area.

It would also make the area, which was the site of a fatal pedestrian crash in 2012, safer and more attractive to walkers, according to a Lehigh and Northampton Transportation Authority study.

The area is one of five highlighted in the study, which outlines how land development in the Lehigh Valley can help promote transit use in the region.

The authority wants to grow ridership, and most municipal officials are committed to improving walkability in their communities, so LANTA has been spreading the message about how best to accomplish both goals, planning director Owen O’Neil said.

Read more:  http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/breaking-news/index.ssf/2014/01/lanta_study_sidewalks_necessar.html

Cincinnati Streetcar Plan Pits Desire For Growth Against Fiscal Restraint

Downtown Cincinnati (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

CINCINNATI, OH — It has been a long time since a streetcar was just a streetcar here.

Instead, a $133 million project to build a 3.6-mile streetcar line through downtown has come to represent, depending on whom you talk to, a debt trap that will sink the city or an ambitious development effort that is central to Cincinnati’s revival.

And when the debate ended last week in an unexpected last-minute victory for the streetcar proponents, it was seen as both a vote of confidence in the city’s future and a reminder of how tenuous support for the project had become.

On the brink of being shut down, the project was saved by a successful petition drive and a written commitment, provided by the Haile U.S. Bank Foundation, from about 15 private backers to pay up to $9 million in operating costs, if needed, over the line’s first decade.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/us/cincinnati-streetcar-plan-pits-desire-for-growth-against-fiscal-restraint.html?_r=0

Fishtown Baseball Factory To Become 30 Homes

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The Zoning Board of Adjustment voted Wednesday to grant a handful of variances to Domani Developers, which is planning to convert a former baseball factory at 1701 Tulip Street in Fishtown into a 30-unit apartment complex. (Yes, that’s an empty factory that used to make baseballs: the A.J. Reach sporting goods company.)

The building has been vacant since 2004, according to developer Roland Kassis, and he was unable to find a viable industrial use for the property, which is zoned I-2.  Kassis said that the city in general and Fishtown in particular have seen a growing demand for small, one- and two-bedroom apartments, which is what he intends to put in the building.  According to the zoning application, the developer intends to build a fifth-story addition, roof deck space, and a canopy over the first floor.

The project, designed by architects at Cecil Baker Partners, won the support of the local RCO, Fishtown Neighbors Association, by a vote of 107 to 77.  A quick calculation shows that that is not a unanimous vote, and the reason seems to be parking: the planned apartment complex contains none.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/Former_Fishtown_baseball_factory_into_30_residences.html#kImEFmot6HpZBt4m.99

Lancaster’s Lemon Street Expands Downtown To The North With Stores, Markets And Apartments

Editor’s note:  Lancaster is leading the way as a highly walkable urban community.  Continued development to bring people and businesses downtown is paying big dividends.

 

Fifteen years ago, real estate developer Ed Drogaris sought to breathe life into a mostly moribund block on North Prince Street.

 

His Prince Street Center project eventually redeveloped two vacant tobacco warehouses and a former car dealership.

 

They became 130,000 square feet of residential, commercial, retail and restaurant space.

 

In recent years, his efforts have shifted to the corner of the block.

 

Read more: http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/626451_Sweet-on-Lemon.html#ixzz1sDpjV5U6

 

York Strives To Emulate Bethlehem And Lancaster – By Becoming A Walkable Community

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A goal that emerged from the Build York Summit, that concluded yesterday, was for York to become a walkable community.  We here at Roy’s Rants think is a great goal.  York has a compact and very historic downtown like Lancaster and Bethlehem.

Urban land use expert, Chris Leinberger from the Brookings Institute was a keynote speaker at the conference and emphasized that York should embrace the “walkable community” strategy to redevelop the city.  Walkable communities are desired by college students as well as other segments of the population.  Walkable communities have a higher rate of retention once students graduate college and seek employment.  York is already a college town so this strategy could be easily implemented and bear fruit quickly.

Downtown Inc. Director, Sonia Huntzinger took this a step further and said York could also capitalize on the city’s hospitals.  Hospitals tend to be large employers.  Having a vibrant, walkable downtown to present to prospective employees would make recruitment easier for the hospitals.