For the better part of a century, Downtown Pittsburgh functioned as the region’s economic dynamo. Companies and workers flocked to the Central Business District — there it is, right there in the name — and to city and county government offices for the day’s labors. Though it long had a reputation of emptying out after 5 p.m., in more recent years, “town” managed to attract people for the after-hours pleasantries of drinks, shows, and events, and even started to develop a fledgling residential population.
But the 2020 arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic arrested that momentum, and forced cities around the globe to reconsider what happens in their downtowns.
“Work looks different now prior to the pandemic,” said Kyle Chintalapalli, the city’s chief economic development officer, and board chair of the Urban Redevelopment Authority. “But that doesn’t necessarily do anything to minimize the import of Downtown within the overall health of the regional economy.”
In 2022, the city — and its URA — joined with the county and state to announce a $9 million pilot project called the Pittsburgh Downtown Conversion Program. The idea was to take underused or vacant offices and convert them into homes, affordable homes in particular. To be eligible for aid, all projects were required to rent 20% of their planned units to people living on 80% or less of the area’s median income, with more funding allowed for units with deeper levels of affordability.
But for months, the initiative failed to entice even a single project. URA officials heard from developers that one problem was that the funding caps were too low, and so the staff tweaked the guidelines. Chintalapalli posits that the change, combined with a growing economic optimism and a rosier outlook for interest rates, has altered the program’s course. Seven projects are now currently in the pipeline, though just one has received funding: the historic Triangle Building on Liberty Avenue.
Pittsburgh-based developer Hullett Properties owns the site, and will be converting it into a 15-unit apartment building, with ground-floor retail.
Brett Walsh, who is a Hullett principal along with his wife Breanna Tyson, said funding from the program closed a critical gap in the project. He said it’s complicated to turn a place of business into a home.
“The reality is society changes, norms and trends, much more quickly than the built space,” he said.
The Triangle Building made sense to convert because it has a smaller footprint, Walsh said: it’s got plenty of windows and high ceilings, rather than a sprawling space meant for windowless cubicles. But because it’s smaller — and old, with ancient utilities the company is responsible for replacing — the project lacks an economy of scale.
“The engineering and the economics are at odds,” Walsh said, adding that public money can help ensure that the clash of such realities isn’t insurmountable.
Tyson noted that, unlike other North American cities, “Pittsburgh has a lot of these smaller buildings that are currently sitting vacant, and it provides a great opportunity for conversion.” Even so, she said, caps on city and state money likely will have to go up for that potential to be realized.
However, privately-funded efforts to convert office buildings in Pittsburgh are also picking up. In addition, the URA saw significant interest in its recent request for qualifications to rehabilitate 200 Ross Street, a city-owned building that formerly held offices for city workers.
The momentum is encouraging, Chintalapalli said, but city officials have always known that more money will be needed to “have a level of resource commensurate with the scale of the challenge or opportunity before us.”
And the challenge is large: Jeremy Waldrup, who leads the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, said his organization’s data shows that Downtown’s daily population, which includes the employees who commute in to work each day, are at just 72% of pre-pandemic levels.
“Things are different, and they’re likely never going to be the same,” he said.
That reality has only lent more urgency to PDP’s efforts to ensure Downtown is a “live, work, play” neighborhood, he said. Growing the current residential population of 7,500, the organization argues, will require parks, open spaces, and playgrounds.
The big question, Waldrup said, is how to pay for those things. He echoed Walsh, Tyson, and Chintalapalli when he said the city, county, and state will have to “create some new tools that don’t exist.”
However, Waldrup said he’s optimistic, because securing the future of Downtown is “important for everyone regionally.” In the meantime, he’s buoyed by the success of the 16 new businesses that opened Downtown in 2023 and ongoing efforts to remake major streets such as Smithfield and Liberty into more pedestrian- and transit-friendly corridors.
