Post Gazette: Apartment Boom Continues in Downtown Pittsburgh

These days, it seems, just about everybody wants to build apartments Downtown.

Whether it's 101 new units planned at the former Saks site on Smithfield Street or 241 at the old Alcoa Building on Sixth Avenue or 100 at the John P. Robin Civic Building on Ross Street, developers seem to be buying and building like crazed Monopoly players.

In all, the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership estimates about 200 apartment units are under construction and another 750 are in the conceptual or planning stages in the Golden Triangle. That's on top of 2,262 existing units in Downtown, the lower Hill District, the Strip District and the North Shore -- or 412 more than four years ago.

PMC Property Group, the Philadelphia developer that two years ago did not own a single apartment Downtown, now hopes to have 1,000 in the next three to five years. It already has completed 158 units at 201 Stanwix St., the former Verizon Building, with another 33 at the Penn Garrison apartment complex on Penn Avenue.

PG graphic: Downtown rentals
(Click image for larger version)

Such aggressive plans didn't stop local developers Millcraft Industries and McKnight Realty Partners from proposing earlier this month 101 apartment units at the site of the closed Saks department store as part of a parking garage and retail development.

All of this building raises a question: Just how many apartment units can Downtown support?