PNC will boost city - PittsburghLIVE.com PNC Financial Services Group is expected to unveil plans in coming weeks to redevelop properties it owns on Fifth Avenue near its headquarters Downtown, giving a private boost to stumbling public attempts to breathe new life into the moribund city center.
But the effort won't come without a further infusion of taxpayers' money.
Gov. Ed Rendell hinted Friday he would be in Pittsburgh sometime around Thanksgiving to serve up a heaping helping of state subsidies for the latest redevelopment effort in the Fifth and Forbes corridor.
Saturday, October 22, 2005
PNC will boost city -- OR -- PNC robs the taxpayers with lots of corporate welfare.
Here comes santa clause -- with more corporate welfare. To take money for a private development is wrong.
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By Michael Yeomans
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, October 22, 2005
PNC Financial Services Group is expected to unveil plans in coming weeks to redevelop properties it owns on Fifth Avenue near its headquarters Downtown, giving a private boost to stumbling public attempts to breathe new life into the moribund city center.
But the effort won't come without a further infusion of taxpayers' money.
Gov. Ed Rendell hinted Friday he would be in Pittsburgh sometime around Thanksgiving to serve up a heaping helping of state subsidies for the latest redevelopment effort in the Fifth and Forbes corridor.
"It's a huge project and the state obviously is going to play a part," he said while delivering a $3.1 million state economic development package to a titanium products company in Houston, Washington County. "We are negotiating right now."
Earlier yesterday, at a similar event where he gave $5.5 million to American Eagle Outfitters Inc. to move its corporate headquarters to the SouthSide Works and expand its distribution center in Marshall, Rendell said he spoke this week with executives at PNC, adding that he expected an announcement "in four to six weeks."
"I think it will be an announcement that will spark a tremendous revitalization in downtown Pittsburgh," Rendell said.
PNC is working with Oxford Development Co. on a plan to redevelop more than a dozen Fifth Avenue properties it has been buying over the past eight years between Liberty Avenue and Wood Street near its Downtown corporate headquarters buildings, local real estate experts say.
A possible centerpiece to the development could be a new home for the Reed Smith law firm, which confirmed it is discussing with PNC a new building to house its nearly 650 Pittsburgh-area attorneys and support staff.
The employees are situated primarily at the company's building at Sixth Avenue and William Penn Place. But lack of space has forced the firm to house some employees at the Federated Investors Building and Gulf Tower.
Reed Smith spokesman Dave Egan said the firm has narrowed its search to the PNC project or vacant office space in Downtown office towers, such as the Dominion Tower, which is nearly 40 percent vacant.
Reed Smith's lease doesn't expire until 2008, but Jeremy Kronman, executive vice president of commercial real estate brokerage CB Richard Ellis/Pittsburgh, said anyone contemplating relocating in 2008 would have to begin planning now.
PNC has been reluctant to talk about its plans.
Chairman James Rohr said Thursday the company is "very interested in improving our situation on Fifth Avenue."
"I've talked to Greg (Jordan, Reed Smith managing partner) about it, but we're not in a position to comment. We're not a real estate developer per se, but we'd like to see improvements in our neighborhood, to say the least."
The Urban Redevelopment Authority also has acquired about two dozen properties in the corridor on the south side of Fifth Avenue, and on Forbes Avenue and Wood Street, as it seeks to assemble a block of properties to turn over to a developer.
The Pittsburgh Task Force, a private group established after two failed redevelopment attempts engineered by Mayor Tom Murphy, is talking with Madison Marquette, a Washington, D.C.-based retail development company, about taking on the development.
Richard Hodos, president of Madison HGDC, a New York-based subsidiary of Madison Marquette, said he believes the Downtown area could improve with a new approach.
"With the right mix of housing and retail and a luxury hotel, Downtown can not just survive, but it can thrive," he said.
Michael Yeomans can be reached at myeomans@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7908.
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