To clarify one point, Amazon is willing to consider an existing building for their first phase, but they would actually prefer a shovel-ready site. From their RFP:
"If existing buildings are available that can be retrofitted/expanded within an acceptable budget and time schedule, Amazon may consider this option; however, the company acknowledges that existing buildings may not be available to meet its requirements. As such, Amazon will prioritize certified or shovel-ready greenfield sites and infill opportunities with appropriate infrastructure and ability to meet the Projects timeline and development demands, as set forth below."
With respect to things like bus routing and a direct flight to Seattle, Amazon would presumably have to be persuaded there will be sufficient public support to make sure that sort of thing happened. But my guess is that for something like this, the necessary public officials will all be in alignment--an opportunity of this sort tends to make for strange bedfellows, because the politics of opposing a competitive bid would be bad for almost every official, regardless of their general ideological persuasion. And in fact there are already plans to increase bus service to ALMONO as it develops, and the airport has already been working on Seattle service, so really this would just be accelerating existing plans.
In my view, craft cocktails and innovative American/fusion cuisine fit right into Pittsburgh's deeper roots, specifically the "Golden Era" Pittsburgh which generated great wealth, and also attracted ethnically-diverse immigrants, and created great fine art, and great pop art, and so on.
I agree not every drink in this town should cost $10 or more. But I think Pittsburgh is blossoming in this era in part because there really is a natural fit between Pittsburgh and the ever-growing number of people who are now craving cultural connection to history and stability blended with humanism and optimism, all loosely covered by words like "authentic," and in fact words like "craft" and "innovative."
I think it is important to keep the bigger picture in mind. Public amenities are important both because of the value they provide directly, and also because they tend to increase the value of the other properties around them. Looking at just how creating a new public amenity may fail to maximize the tax value of that particular property is therefore taking too narrow and atomized a view of what it takes to grow a tax base overall.
That does not mean every project should be a public amenity, but some should, and this seems like a good fit between the property in question and the public's interest in adding a particular sort of amenity. In that context, the fact they did not choose the project that would do the most to grow the tax base directly was a reasonable decision.
Meanwhile, I very much support the new affordable housing fund. But it is just one of many purposes that would be served by increases in the tax base in the area, and I do not think the public is necessarily bound to discuss all of those consequences in individual detail each time these issues come up. Rather, I think it is usually fine for the public to understand there are going to be many such tax base tradeoffs involved when evaluating projects like these, and then to decide whether the specific project at hand is worth doing in light of those tradeoffs.
In other words, this is really a broad issue, and I think it was fine for the public to view it that way. Of course it would also be fine if someone had wanted to call specific attention to some of the specific implications, but I don't think the public is bound to go line by line through each of the implications each time when discussing these issues.
So a couple points. First, McCormack Baron Salazar and the Penguins actually jointly hired BIG, and they are saying they intend to start building on the plan next year.
Second, BIG specifically addressed the "this looks too expensive for Pittsburgh" observation. They consulted with a bunch of construction, landscaping, and so on firms (they listed west 8, atelier ten, massaro, graves design group, la quatra bonci associates, mongalo-winston consulting, michael baker international, and sota construction services), and they explicitly said they knew it looked ambitious but that they had designed it to be deliverable on the budget given.
Together, all this implies to me that BIG's plan is at the minimum a serious proposal for the initial residential phase, which McCormack Baron Salazar has contracted to develop. The lower portion is probably more speculative, but that is OK with me--it actually has some questionable elements, and in any event it might well be best in the long run for someone else to put a different spin on the lower portions.
So yes, maybe this will stop in the middle--but it may well get that far first.
The political coalition against privatization includes more than just allies of the union. For example, it also includes representatives of rural areas where private entities either would not locate a store at all, or would only locate a store with less selection and higher prices. In that sense the state store system is subsidizing those rural areas, and their local representatives do not want to give up those subsidies.
Giant Eagle and other grocery stores can use a certain type of license to sell beer and wine in an attached cafe. I believe all of Wegmans, Weis, Giant, and Sheetz have also done that in one or more stores, and more are looking at it. I believe the main problem, though, is that you have to allow in-store consumption, and that raises all sorts of cost and liability issues which serve as a practical barrier to more grocery stores wanting to do it.
We had a pretty lively and interesting discussion of the reasoning behind this project in the comments to the prior thread linked above. Rather than repeating all that, I'll just note that I think the key to understanding the transit benefits this project could bring is realizing the large number of riders that funnel through that corridor every day, heading not just between Oakland and Downtown but also to points all along the corridor from a variety of other points outside the corridor.
Recent Comments
"If existing buildings are available that can be retrofitted/expanded within an acceptable budget and time schedule, Amazon may consider this option; however, the company acknowledges that existing buildings may not be available to meet its requirements. As such, Amazon will prioritize certified or shovel-ready greenfield sites and infill opportunities with appropriate infrastructure and ability to meet the Projects timeline and development demands, as set forth below."
With respect to things like bus routing and a direct flight to Seattle, Amazon would presumably have to be persuaded there will be sufficient public support to make sure that sort of thing happened. But my guess is that for something like this, the necessary public officials will all be in alignment--an opportunity of this sort tends to make for strange bedfellows, because the politics of opposing a competitive bid would be bad for almost every official, regardless of their general ideological persuasion. And in fact there are already plans to increase bus service to ALMONO as it develops, and the airport has already been working on Seattle service, so really this would just be accelerating existing plans.
I agree not every drink in this town should cost $10 or more. But I think Pittsburgh is blossoming in this era in part because there really is a natural fit between Pittsburgh and the ever-growing number of people who are now craving cultural connection to history and stability blended with humanism and optimism, all loosely covered by words like "authentic," and in fact words like "craft" and "innovative."
That does not mean every project should be a public amenity, but some should, and this seems like a good fit between the property in question and the public's interest in adding a particular sort of amenity. In that context, the fact they did not choose the project that would do the most to grow the tax base directly was a reasonable decision.
Meanwhile, I very much support the new affordable housing fund. But it is just one of many purposes that would be served by increases in the tax base in the area, and I do not think the public is necessarily bound to discuss all of those consequences in individual detail each time these issues come up. Rather, I think it is usually fine for the public to understand there are going to be many such tax base tradeoffs involved when evaluating projects like these, and then to decide whether the specific project at hand is worth doing in light of those tradeoffs.
In other words, this is really a broad issue, and I think it was fine for the public to view it that way. Of course it would also be fine if someone had wanted to call specific attention to some of the specific implications, but I don't think the public is bound to go line by line through each of the implications each time when discussing these issues.
Second, BIG specifically addressed the "this looks too expensive for Pittsburgh" observation. They consulted with a bunch of construction, landscaping, and so on firms (they listed west 8, atelier ten, massaro, graves design group, la quatra bonci associates, mongalo-winston consulting, michael baker international, and sota construction services), and they explicitly said they knew it looked ambitious but that they had designed it to be deliverable on the budget given.
Together, all this implies to me that BIG's plan is at the minimum a serious proposal for the initial residential phase, which McCormack Baron Salazar has contracted to develop. The lower portion is probably more speculative, but that is OK with me--it actually has some questionable elements, and in any event it might well be best in the long run for someone else to put a different spin on the lower portions.
So yes, maybe this will stop in the middle--but it may well get that far first.
Giant Eagle and other grocery stores can use a certain type of license to sell beer and wine in an attached cafe. I believe all of Wegmans, Weis, Giant, and Sheetz have also done that in one or more stores, and more are looking at it. I believe the main problem, though, is that you have to allow in-store consumption, and that raises all sorts of cost and liability issues which serve as a practical barrier to more grocery stores wanting to do it.