Pittsburgh’s Zoning Board of Adjustment dealt a setback Monday to a major development planned for the city’s Bloomfield neighborhood on the site of the former ShurSave and current Community Market; the ZBA denied a request for additional height.
Echo Realty, which purchased the roughly two-acre site in 2020, proposed to build a new, slightly larger grocery store, a public plaza, and 248 apartments. Because Bloomfield is part of the city’s inclusionary zoning overlay, ten percent of those units would have been rented at prices affordable to people who earn less than 50 percent of the area median income. After long-running discussions with community groups, the company had also agreed to accept housing choice vouchers at the development — so that more people with lower incomes would be able to access the new housing — and to pay for pedestrian improvements at nearby intersections.
The company’s plan depends on building a six-story building in an area where just three stories are permitted. At a July community meeting, Echo officials said the height was necessary to cover the costs of the building, including the added costs that come with renting 10 percent of units below market rates.
Members of the Zoning Board of Adjustment denied the request for a height variance, and another regarding residential compatibility standards (which shape how new buildings fit in with existing ones). They noted that the city’s zoning regulations for Local Neighborhood Commercial, or LNC, districts doesn’t allow height to be treated as a special exception. Citing numerous Pennsylvania legal cases, they argue that changing the height restrictions set out for any given area “is policy-making and for the governing body to decide.”
The board also wrote that they were “not persuaded that the variances requested are the minimum that would afford relief.”
Echo Realty’s special exception request to build and operate a grocery store on site was approved, with the board writing, “The evidence that the Applicant presented is sufficient to demonstrate that the site is appropriate for a grocery store use and that the Applicant intends to comply with those criteria.”
However, Monday’s decision throws the future of the site into some uncertainty. Plans for the gateway site have evolved considerably since 2018, when Indianapolis-based Milhaus proposed building 237 apartments with no grocery store. The idea met with fierce community opposition, and Milhaus ultimately walked away from the deal. Since then, neighborhood groups and residents worked to create a community-driven plan for the area, and Echo Realty embraced it.
Unlike many new developments proposed in Pittsburgh, plans for the ShurSave enjoyed broad support.
Bloomfield is a walkable, transit-rich neighborhood with a busy commercial district. During the last ten years, the rate at which new households move to Bloomfield is nearly double that at which new units are created, according to the Bloomfield Development Corporation. The proposed Echo Realty project would have added new homes, and new affordable homes, that are now in jeopardy, said director Christina Howell in a statement.
“As an organization, we envision a Bloomfield where everyone can build a home, a business, and a future. We are concerned that this decision makes that vision harder to accomplish,” she said.
In particular, Bloomfield residents have expressed a consistent desire to preserve a grocery store on the site. Howell said she is concerned that Echo Realty will no longer consider a full-service store “viable” without the built-in customer base provided by apartments above. She wonders what a development that doesn’t require zoning variances would look like, adding that such a “by-right development” wouldn’t require community engagement, or allow for the addition of conditions such as the community-won promises that Echo made to accept housing choice vouchers and to improve intersection safety for pedestrians.
Echo Realty has thirty days to appeal the zoning board’s decision to the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas.
