A pickup truck passes along Crawford Street as seen from Wylie Avenue, which points down into a much debated section of the Lower Hill on Monday, Jan. 9, 2023, in Pittsburgh. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
The Penguins and their development team will wait at least two weeks for a Planning Commission vote on their latest proposal for the former Civic Arena site.
by Eric Jankiewicz, PublicSource
Overview:
Developers want to build a live music venue with a small business incubator along with urban open space around Wylie Avenue between Fullerton and Logan Streets.
Too many new documents and not enough time to go through them led the City Planning Commission to reschedule its vote on a developer’s application to build a live music venue in the Lower Hill District.
Plans to redevelop the former 28-acre Civic Arena site date back to at least 2014, and the latest proposal will have to wait a little longer. Commissioners on Tuesday noted that Penguins-picked developer, Buccini/Pollin Group [BPG], submitted a 101 page document shortly before the meeting and the community and the commissioners did not have enough time to go through it.
The document updates the commission on community benefits from the development. The commission began requiring updates after its 2021 approval of the plans for the First National Bank headquarters now under construction on the western end of the site.
At the commission’s public hearing on the proposal, around half a dozen Hill residents expressed their disapproval of the plan.
The developers want to build a live music venue with a small business incubator along with urban open space around Wylie Avenue between Fullerton and Logan Streets. The 4,600-seat entertainment venue would be operated by Live Nation. The parking garage would have 900 spaces and the developers estimate construction to total $110 million.
“We’ve got a last minute document so we have a little bit of a trust issue,” said LaShawn Burton-Faulk, the commission’s vice chair, after hearing BPG’s presentation of its proposal. “So with respect to that, we need to give everyone an opportunity to review it.”
Commissioner Holly Dick agreed, saying, “Ignorance leads to fear so even if it’s a perfectly honorable document, people don’t know what’s in it.”
Burton-Faulk stressed that the commission wasn’t rejecting the developer’s plan and invited them to hold Zoom meetings with the public, possibly organized by City Councilman R. Daniel Lavelle. The proposal could come back before the commission as early as Jan. 24.
“To the applicant, I appreciate all the things that have been put on the table,” Burton-Faulk said. “And I really believe you have been thoughtful in many ways. But there are some things missing. … There doesn’t need to be a consensus but there has absolutely got to be communication.”
BPG told the commission that it has pledged a $2 surcharge for paid tickets at the proposed music venue for 10 years, something that many in the Hill District have demanded in previous meetings. Funds from the surcharge would go to the Greater Hill District Neighborhood Reinvestment Fund, which also received $7.18 million when construction began on the FNB Financial Center in September 2021.
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