About the URA
The Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh (URA) is the City of Pittsburgh’s economic development agency. Their goals are to create jobs, increase the city’s tax base, and improve the vitality of businesses, neighborhoods, and the City’s livability as a whole. Incorporated in 1946, the URA was one of the first redevelopment authorities in Pennsylvania. Organized by corporate and civic leaders, the URA undertook the first privately financed downtown redevelopment project in the United States — Gateway Center.
Since then, the URA has constructed and rehabilitated tens of thousands of homes, reclaimed thousands of acres of contaminated brownfield and riverfront sites, and assisted hundreds of businesses in neighborhoods throughout the City of Pittsburgh. Today, the URA offers a variety of programs and financing products that range from assisting low income clients achieve home ownership to reclaiming brownfields for new development and helping communities reinvent themselves. You can learn more about the URA from their website: www.ura.org
Senator Ferlo has been on the Board of the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh since 2004, and has been involved in local economic and community development issues long before he took office on Pittsburgh City Council in 1988. Ferlo currently serves as the Treasurer of the URA.
URA Projects in the 38th Senatorial District
East Liberty/Eastside Development
From the 1930’s throughout much of the 1950’s, East Liberty stood as a regional destination of booming businesses, entertainment attractions and a vibrant residential corridor. Unfortunately by the 1960’s and lasting well into the 1990’s, the neighborhood experienced a period of rapid decline due to well intentioned but seriously flawed urban renewal initiatives and stiff competition from outlying suburban areas. That downward spiral began to change in 1999 with the release of the community’s unified vision plan that called for a broader range of businesses, an enhanced street grid, better jobs and housing.
Since 1999, 1,400 public housing high-rise units have been replaced with 450 mixed-income units. The first spark of commercial revitalization occurred with the opening of the Home Depot store in East Liberty in 2000. The success of the Home Depot store ignited the Eastside development project which now boasts of the highly successful Whole Foods store which opened in 2002. The developer of the project, the Mosites Company, brought Whole Foods to the neighborhood through the help of the community based organization East Liberty Development Inc. (ELDI).
The Eastside development initiative stretches along Centre Avenue linking the Hillman Cancer Center of UPMC with national and local retailers and the Port Authority busway to downtown Pittsburgh. A Walgreens, FedExKinko’s, restaurants and a Target store are pillars of the Eastside development.
Target
The $100 million Target project in East Liberty broke ground in July of 2010 and the store opened its doors for business in May of 2011. The project was privately and publicly financed including $2.1 million in assistance from the state Department of Community and Economic Development and $2 million in state Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program (RACP) monies. The 145,000 sq. ft. store sits on five acres of the demolished Penn Towers public housing high rise. The store borders Penn Avenue, Penn Circle and Broad Street and is the only Target in the city of Pittsburgh. This Target is somewhat different from the average suburban Target as it has two floors; the first floor for parking and the second floor for retail. The Target project created over 200 post construction jobs and provides an additional $1.62 million annually in new state and local tax revenue.
Bakery Square
Interconnected to the East Liberty/Eastside development is the Bakery Square project in the adjacent neighborhood of Larimer. In 1918, the Nabisco Bakery was built in Larimer as part of a nationwide expansion by the National Biscuit Company. The Regional Industrial Development Corporation (RIDC) bought the plant in 1999 after Nabisco closed the plant’s doors. RIDC leased the building until January 2004 and then the building sat vacant and was declared “blighted” by the city of Pittsburgh in 2006.
Walnut Capital, a developer, purchased the 6.5 acre site a year later from RIDC for $5.4 million and dubbed their redevelopment plan for the site “Bakery Square.” Bakery Square is a $130 million project that includes a mix of private and public funding with 90% of the cost being privately financed. The project received $10.5 million in public investment through Tax Increment Financing (TIFs), $1 million from the state Department of Environmental Protection for site remediation and additional assistance through historic tax credits and financing through the Urban Redevelopment Authority.
Today, Bakery Square boasts of over 121,000 sq. ft. of ground floor retail space, 216,000 sq. ft. of office space and a 41,000 sq. ft. Urban Active Fitness Center. Next to the office and retail space is the 110 room Marriott Springhill Suites hotel. Current retail tenants include Coffee Tree Roasters, Jimmy Johns, Anthropologie and others. Office tenants include the University of Pittsburgh, UPMC and Google. Google Pittsburgh now occupies 40,000 sq. ft of the 250,000 sq. ft. building with plans to expand 70,000 sq. ft. that could house as many as 500 employees. Bakery Square also has a 952 space parking garage and 99 surface parking lots.