Pro-Housing Pittsburgh

How the conversion of a parking lot into apartments in Homestead lays bare the negative impacts of Pittsburgh’s current zoning code.

For this installment of You Can’t Build That Here, we head down the Three Rivers Heritage Trail, cross over the Monongahela on the Hot Metal Bridge, and follow the Great Allegheny Passage all the way to The Waterfront, where a new apartment building is going up on the riverfront by the Homestead Grays Bridge.

Photo credit: Amy Zaiss

Built on the site of the defunct Mitchell’s Fish Market, this building will convert three acres of mostly asphalt surface parking—a smaller footprint than some single-family lots in the suburbs—into 250 units of apartment housing. At an estimate of 1.5 people per unit, it will house 375 people, increasing the boroughs’ combined populations by a staggering eight percent without displacing a single longtime resident.

With the GAP trail literally in the building’s backyard, numerous bus stops close by, and both the Waterfront and the 8th Avenue business district a short walk or bike ride away, this is a textbook example of how infill development allows more people to access existing amenities. The fact that it is being built in The Waterfront, right between the Pittsburgh neighborhoods of Squirrel Hill South and New Homestead, demonstrates that Pittsburgh’s antiquated zoning code is hindering its ability to grow.

Land use in The Waterfront is regulated under the auspices of the Waterfront Development District, a special zoning district roughly the size of Uptown which spans the three boroughs of West Homestead, Homestead, and Munhall. In this district, multifamily housing developments can be constructed by right as long as they comply with relatively lax requirements:

• Parking minimums: 1 space per bedroom or 1.5 spaces per unit, whichever is lower (the AMC across the street was renovated to free up parking spaces for this and other, similar projects).
• Building heights: maximum of 7 stories or 84 feet.
• Setbacks: a minimum of 30 feet from public roads and railways, 25 feet from the river, and 0 feet on all other sides.

There is no exact match to the WDD in Pittsburgh’s zoning code, but the nearest equivalent is probably , a district which occurs sporadically in neighborhoods such as Shadyside, the Hill District, and Squirrel Hill. With the exception of Summerset, one apartment complex, and a few other small planned developments, in the parts of the city closest to The Waterfront is zoned as either R1 or R2, meaning that construction is limited to single-family houses or duplexes.