Pittsburgh City Council will once again take up the future of Oakland at a meeting Wednesday, when it begins consideration of a long-contentious effort to rezone the city’s university district.
“That is, we believe, the last time that we have an opportunity to introduce amendments to the rezoning of Oakland,” said Councilor Erika Strassburger, whose district includes much of the neighborhood.
The high-stakes effort has consumed hundreds of hours for residents, institutions, community groups, developers, and city officials. The minutiae of zoning — building heights, lengths, parking requirements, and crucially, what kinds of activities can happen where — determine the feel and function of city neighborhoods. In Oakland, the third largest employment center in Pennsylvania, the pressure to get it right has been enormous.
The legislation before council would scrap much of Oakland’s existing zoning, and replace it with three distinct districts:
- Urban Center-Employment (UCE) would cover an area that includes the Fifth and Forbes Avenues corridor and a piece of Boulevard of the Allies bordered by Craft Avenue. It aims to “support life sciences, health care,” and other employment engines. Neighborhood-serving businesses are also encouraged on the ground floor. The proposed language emphasizes transit and, where parking is needed, sharing it between different building owners. Buildings would have to be at least 40 feet tall, but could reach a maximum height of between 85 and 210 feet, depending on location.
- Urban Center-Mixed Use (UCMU) would cover an area clustered around Boulevard of the Allies as it moves east toward Schenley Park. Buildings here would have to be at least 24 feet tall, but could reach a maximum height of between 65 and 185 feet, depending on location. The zoning rules are an effort to encourage the development of small businesses and commercial uses for the neighborhood, along with affordable and workforce housing.
- Residential-Mixed Use (RMU) would cover much of Central Oakland. It aims to create new housing, both through the restoration of historic homes and the creation of new apartment buildings. Retail space is also encouraged. Buildings here would have to be at least 24 feet tall, but could reach a maximum of between 40 and 95 feet, depending on location.
The legislation also adds an “inclusionary zoning” overlay to the neighborhood. Such designations require housing developments to make a percentage of the units affordable to people who earn less than the area median income.
The Oakland Plan
In 2019 the Department of City Planning began the process of helping Oakland create a new plan to guide the community’s next 10 years. The plan ranges from proposals to create new jobs and housing, to support art, address historic inequities, and make it easier to get around. In order to help make those proposals reality, the plan includes recommendations to rezone the four neighborhoods that make up greater Oakland.
Work on the plan was still in progress when former Mayor Bill Peduto’s office introduced legislation in 2021 to create a bespoke zoning district for a nearly 18-acre project called Oakland Crossings from developer Walnut Capital. Some residents and stakeholders, including one of the neighborhood's registered community organizations, Oakland Planning and Development Corporation, decried the move as upending the traditional planning process. They also criticized the effort to rezone a large section of the neighborhood through a process carved out from the broader Oakland Plan.
Ultimately, in June, Pittsburgh City Council approved a limited rezoning that allowed Walnut Capital to begin work on a slimmed-down version of Oakland Crossings. But the Oakland Plan, and the rest of the proposed zoning changes, remained an open question. The zoning recommendations generated so much negative feedback at a public hearing in September that council paused the project to consult with the Planning Commission, and spend more time in discussions with stakeholders. Despite that work, when the hearing reconvened in December, significant concerns remained.
At the close of that meeting Strassburger again promised to work with stakeholders before council took up the broader Oakland zoning legislation.
A fine line
That post-hearing discussion was intended to hash out “where exactly is it that we disagree, or where might we find some compromise?” said Andrea Boykowycz, interim director of the Oakland Planning and Development Corporation, OPDC.
For OPDC, it is critical that the Urban Center-Mixed Use district, UCMU, clustered near the Boulevard of the Allies, disallow universities’ educational activities. The universities already have a strong presence in Oakland, Boykowycz said, “and shouldn't there be one place in Oakland that is open and welcoming to uses that are not dominated by the universities and the hospitals?” However, OPDC did not object to a request that other parts of Oakland permit greater percentage of both classroom and residential uses.
Karen Brean is a principal with Brean Associates, and a planning consultant for developer Walnut Capital. She said she will be looking for the legislation to iron out concerns about building heights and building lengths.
“We want transparency,” Brean said: a clear explanation of what the city thinks can and can’t be built in the various zones and why.
A relative newcomer to the discussion, Pro-Housing Pittsburgh, has advocated for the legislation to allow residential buildings to be taller. David Vatz leads the group, which is affiliated with YIMBY Action, a national housing advocacy group. There are a number of fine-grained points about height limits and setbacks the organization wants to see changed.
“We want to be sure it’s easy to build housing, that’s the bottom line,” Vatz said.
Representatives of the University of Pittsburgh, who had been so concerned by the legislation in September that they asked council to return it to the Planning Commission, declined an interview request in advance of council’s Wednesday meeting. Neither the Oakland Business Improvement District nor the Oakcliffe Community Organization, two other community organizations in the district, responded to interview requests.
Discussions with stakeholders, which various people characterized as helpful and productive, were ongoing as recently as last week. But as of Monday evening, no one knew how those discussions may be codified into a newer version of the legislation.
“We are still awaiting feedback from our technical experts at the city Planning Department,” Strassburger said on Monday. “We expect to be introducing amendments that will address some of the concerns brought up since the December vote, but not comprehensively for every single concern that was brought up since then.”
However, exactly what council can change has to walk a fine line. If the modifications are too great, it could force the bill back to the Planning Commission, though “that’s a judgment call that the city Planning Department has to make,” Strassburger said.
The aim is to have proposed amendment language ready for introduction tomorrow that won’t necessitate a return to the commission. In addition, Strassburger said, council will offer, in writing, a rationale for changes that cannot be made.
Zoning changes will have a material impact on the future of Oakland, but this long-running discussion may only have a few more days to reach resolution. In December, the Department of City Planning advised council it had just 90 days to vote on the legislation, or it would expire.
Brean, the Walnut Capital consultant, worries what that means for the complicated legislation.
“We’re getting these … kind of at the eleventh hour,” she said, noting that a final vote on the legislation is expected at council’s regular meeting on Tuesday, February 28. “I hate to see us approve things that don’t work.”
Brean wondered if council would be able to secure an extension. But Boykowycz, of OPDC, said she’s not sure how that would help matters, or how stakeholders could arrive at a better consensus.
“This is the point at which you just kind of have to do the best you can with what you've got,” she said.
She added it’s critical for Oakland’s new zoning to be in place, setting out clear rules for building reuse, affordable housing, and sustainable practices.
“The longer we delay this the more opportunity there is for new development to come forward that includes none of those things,” Boykowycz said.
