Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Hello. Doing a quick sound check.

Hello. So it's a flight and a drive.

How long do they stay?

Two weeks, probably. Yeah, that's worth it. I think that they come out like, you know, like much. That's fabulous. And now I don't know which flight I'm supposed to keep. Keep your jump floors canceled. I see. Well, maybe you should let your wife do that.

Because if you screw it up, she's going to be very upset.

And you don't want to accidentally do this. I can't imagine because I know I would do that. That's why I'm being, I'm trying to help you out because...

See, we're so small.

There we go.

We're about three minutes to start. I believe Commissioner Vatz will only be coming online for hearing and action. We're about one minute out from start. All right, it is exactly 1.30. So good afternoon, good and beautiful people. Welcome to the briefing session for today's planning commission. Today is June 16, 2026. Briefing session is where we hear the cases preliminarily and we do not take public testimony. I'm going to go ahead and do roll call for commissioners. uh at this time commissioner burton fall present commissioner hunt present thank you commissioner interiano president thank you commissioner kelly president thank you commissioner o'neill president thank you so much uh commissioner quentinia president thank you uh commissioner repi is not here today uh commissioner vats will be online for hearing in action and commissioner walker here thank you

Okay, moving. Commissioner Rafferty did say that he would be online for session.

He's not going. He's on vacation, so we've got quorum. Yeah, yeah. Thank you though. And we will move through the briefing agenda items. We have one item for briefing today, and that is as follows. Briefing item A, BDA-2025-11988. At 6325 Penn Avenue, this is new construction of six-story mixed-use multifamily apartment building in the East Liberty neighborhood. Presenting that this afternoon will be Mr. Fraker.

Good afternoon, Commissioners, and hello to our applicant team. So I'll read it. I'll read in the case and then turn it over to the applicant team for the presentation. An application was filed for land development plan BDA 2025-11988. by Strada Architecture on behalf of Walnut Pen Shady LP, the property owners for new construction of a multi-unit residential building at Bakery Square in the East Liberty neighborhood. The proposal is for a six-story building with 199 total units. The project will have ground level residential amenity space and office space. The applicant proposes 70 parking spaces and two loading spaces at the rear. A parking demand analysis was submitted as part of the application. It notes that parking demand will not be entirely met on site, but that parking will be accommodated elsewhere within the SP9 Bakery Square District, and that transportation demand management strategies will be provided. As per the SP9 zoning text requirement, 5% of the units will be reserved as affordable units for households making between 80% and 120% of area median income. If the applicant receives approval for participation in the Housing Authority's project-based voucher program, The applicant must reserve 10% of the units for households earning 50% of AMI and 5% of units for households earning between 80% and 120% of AMI. The applicant has indicated the intent to apply for the program. Urban open space is provided at the front of the building along Penn Avenue. The open space will be for primarily pedestrian circulation, but will also serve as passive recreation and informal activity area. The applicant will provide signage noting that the space is for public use. A development activities meeting was held with the Village Collaborative of East Liberty on January 28. A copy of the DAM report is attached. The applicant submitted a construction management plan, the plan has been reviewed by the city planning and by the Department of mobility and infrastructure. The applicant intends to close pen have the sidewalk on pen have for the duration of the project these plans are currently under review by Domi. The stormwater permit was issued conceptual review approval. and the project was reviewed by the contextual design advisory panel in December of 2025. Per the requirements of the preliminary land development plan, buildings shall be designed and constructed with the intent of achieving LEED certification or higher or an equivalent within a third party certification system at the time of design. The applicant intends to achieve bronze certification from the National Green Building Standard The PLDP also notes that the rear of the site facing the drive should be a secondary frontage. The applicant has expressed that this is no longer intended to be a secondary frontage as the plans are now just for private drive access into the site. An update to the preliminary land development plan will be required on submittal of the following BDA building development application in the Bakery Square portfolio. And that was a determination of a planning commission decision in January of 2026. The transportation impact study was submitted and is currently under review. With that, I'll turn it over to the applicant.

Thank you, Joe. My name is John Kamen, K-A-M-I-N, and I am counsel for the applicant Walnut Penn Shady. With me today is Kevin Rutledge, who's our architect from Strata Engineers, and the one and only Cindy Jample, who all of you know as our traffic engineer. Also, we have Todd Rebord from Walnut Capital here to go ahead and be present for this afternoon's presentation we're excited to bring forth the first phase of the new sp9 district this is the penn shady project that we're talking about and this again is the first phase of multiple phases that will be happening over the course of the next several months and several years with regard to the shopping center that was there in this parcel in the corner. So I'll walk through the slides and then go ahead and answer any questions that you may have. This is a view from the corner of Penn Avenue. This is right across from the new Meridian project. As you can see from this slide, this is the project site is highlighted in red and the remaining portion of the shopping center as it exists. Trader Joe's and down is beside that. This is an aerial view of the site. Again, you can see our first phase here highlighted in red. Trader Joe's is the black roof adjacent to that. Another sort of bird's eye aerial of the site location. This no longer looks that way because that giant eagle is gone and the New Meridian is there. This is an existing condition survey, shows 2.36 acres for the site. And there will be some interconnectivity, as we'll show you later on. But again, this first phase is just this piece. Here are some shots. We'll walk through them to show you what it looks like now and what it's going to look like in the after condition. So this is the first slide that shows before. This is a slide that shows after. And you can see the meridian has actually been placed into this one for context purposes. This is another site without the trees, another slide I should say without the trees. This is a current view of the site as it exists now. You can see Trader Joe's in the background. And then this is the site afterwards. this is without the trees so again planning commission can see the detail associated with the actual building materials itself just one thing i would want to note before we leave this that we are planning on putting in a bus shelter and bus stop at this consistent with what we did on the other entrance to bakery square Um, this is another view, Penn Avenue looking West. You can see again existing location that's target in the foreground there. And then this is what it looks like in the after condition with trees. This is the after condition without the trees. I did want us to say while we are on this slide that you do see that we have some public open space and a raised podium there as an amenity for not just our tenants, but also for some good interaction with the public realm. I went too fast. This is again existing condition view from Penn Avenue and you can see the building coming in. One thing that I wanted to highlight on this slide is you can see from a massing perspective. Well, it is a larger building. It does seem to sit in nicely and have sort of a good relationship with the public realm. And by being set back a little bit from Trader Joe's, it actually opens things up as you head down Penn Avenue towards Target. um again this is a picture without the street trees shown for clarity this is a view from broad street so this is on the other side across uh the busway looking at the site this is what you see now this is what you see in the after condition um we'll get into a couple more slides that show the site again you can see the aerial view you can see the meridian sort of placed in to this slide And then here it is with the aerial showing the building in place. Another view, same thing, building now inserted. This is the overall site plan for the project. And again, as Joe said during his presentation, it's 199 apartment units. It is a mixed-use building. There will be approximately 6,700 square feet of office. We had talked about working with Partners for Work to go ahead and have them have an office here. We're working through some of those details. One of the things that I wanted you to note is that we have two entrances here. One, the apartment entrance is on Penn Avenue. And then the main office entrance will be sort of at that corner of Penn and Shady. You can see the busway in the foreground and there is, this plan doesn't show it super well, but there is a significant drop off between what is our elevation of where the building is and where the busway actually is. So it's probably, I'd say 16 to 20 feet below the site. This is just a little bit of a zoom in on the streetscape area. We have worked hard with strata and our landscape architect team to try and soften this and to put in a good use of street trees and wider sidewalks and this elevated terrace plazas. We're calling it to again have some interaction with the public realm and to make it more not just inviting but also to the public realm, if you will. The bus shelter is also shown in this site plan picture. These are some elevation pictures. We'll just walk around the building. As Joe noted, we did have a conversation with CDAP. We have a good use of materials and colors here, which we think will not only honor the character of what's there, but create some interest for the folks who are enjoying the building from the public realm and for our tenants. This is a view of the west elevation. And again, you'll see the mix of materials that we have there. And we have a materials board coming up. North elevation, same thing. Another north elevation picture. East elevation, again, same thing that we were showing before. Good mix of materials. Here's the material palette that we're using. You can see it's a combination of glazed brick, your regular red smooth brick, some cast stone, some fiber cement, which matches the brick, and then these blue accent colors that we're talking about, which again we think is extremely attractive and again provides a really nice amenity. Here are some of our plant palettes and these are all of course native species to be finally reviewed by staff as they go ahead and sign off on our plan. But we've had pretty good experience with a lot of these materials in our other projects. And as you know, being close to Penn Avenue, you have to be careful with the salt and the other things that happen in the wintertime. But these have been hardy and seem to have worked. Right now is just a selection of our materials that we're proposing to use subject to final approval from staff. Um, this is our traffic and parking analysis as Joe noted 1 of the things that we did provide in our district is that we're allowed to have campus parking. So we don't have to sort of over park the site and we do have capacity in our existing garages on the bakery square side. So we are talking about having some overflow parking that would park there. This is sort of the overall map that shows the intersection in the study. I should say the site location and study intersections that we used. Cindy can talk a little bit more if you have questions, but basically when we changed the site from what was originally considered to be a drive that was gonna go all the way through the site from Penn Shady to just a site driveway for this building, that basically reduced our impacts to nothing associated with the property itself. And that's what Cindy's diagram here shows you. This is just basically a straight table that summarizes sort of our trips. There's the 6,700 square feet of offices we talked about. That requires essentially eight spaces. Our residential, based on the existing code, requires about 100 spaces. That's 108 total that would have to be provided. We have essentially 70 spaces that we're providing on site. And as I talked about the other 38 spaces, will be provided as part of shared parking on the campus. Here's some of our TDM strategies that we're going to implement. The nice thing is that Bakery Square already implements many of these strategies, so this is going to be utilized holistically with the entire campus. And essentially, there's multimodal trip planning. We're going to go ahead and provide information to our tenants how they can go ahead and take advantage of not just the multimodal aspects, but also the transportation that's offered to and from the campus. There is shuttle services offered from the campus to the universities. As you know, we are right on the bus line and we have tremendous access also to the bus way. And additional items that we will be adding are the bus shelter improvements, which we talked about, and we will have a secure bike room. This TDM plan for this particular phase is part of the overall TDM plan that was established for Bakery Square. And one thing that we can say nicely after more than a decade being added is that it does work. So we feel very confident that what we're going to be providing will actually result in the results that we're looking for. We have a construction management plan. As Joe said, this is going to be finally reviewed from staff. Our contractor is PJ Dick. As many of you may know, Walnut is committed to 100% union construction on its projects. PJ Dick is their contractor, and they are very well versed in how to do a good construction management plan so that there are not issues associated with not just the project, but the surrounding infrastructure around it. This is just a highlight of the way PJ is looking to control the site. In terms of overall accessibility, we will have type A units with accessible entrances. We'll have elevator access to all floors and we'll have five accessible parking spaces, one of which is van accessible. All of that is in compliance with the code. In terms of sustainability, as Joe mentioned, we're going to build, I should say, design to the national green building standard for bronze certification. We have native and water efficient landscaping. As I said, we're going on with what we've done on the other buildings at Bakery with what we feel comfortable with. We will have a building recycling program, which is available to all the residents, and then we will have EV charging stations. Um, working into the SP district. So this is a map of the overall SP nine is reconstituted, um, by the, which was adopted last year. Uh, you can see that this building, um. is so a is the existing bakery square b is the existing office parts of bakery square we have c and we have d as the two sub districts associated within this this actually will fall within district d because of the corner piece that it comes in on And these uses are permitted as of right, so there's no variance or anything else that's being requested associated with this. As you know, there's review criteria that's associated with going ahead and building within an SP district. The review criteria for the Planning Commission is under 922.11 and that walks through each of these items. I don't need to go through them all with you. uh but in our presentation and in our submittal we've gone through how we go ahead and respond to each of those criteria and when we get to the hearing we'll have Mr Rutledge work through those so we put it on on the record as to what we're doing but we think that in terms of what we've designed it's 100 compliant and when you look at your review criteria I think you'll find that to be the case these are the additional criteria associated with an fldp which are the same as the pldp but a little bit more a couple of the other items that i did want to note and these are special review criteria that are come out of the sp9 district we did have a community benefits agreement that we signed years ago december of 2023 that was signed with not just the village collaborative which is the RCO for this district but also the Larimer Consensus Group because Bakery Square is now in both neighborhoods and we are abiding by all of our commitments in the CBA including the on-site affordable as Joe talked about and then also the commitment to utilize TRID funds as we have them to make investments in various projects that the community has identified including off-site for sale affordable housing. Just a couple of project metrics. Again, the site's 2.36 acres. We're set back approximately 15 feet from the 20-foot wide easement. There was an old easement that was in place there that was given by the prior owners to PennDOT for widening Penn Avenue should that ever happen. The urban open space complies with the requirement 10%. The building footprint is approximately 38,790 square feet. Gross building area is about 200,000 square feet. We're gonna be six stories, 199 units and 70 parking spaces. As we talked about before, we did have a dam meeting in January, but this project is the first phase coming out of a robust multi-year community process. And when I say multi-year, I mean multi-year community process. So it goes all the way back to 2021. When we first had discussions, the Community Benefits Agreement came out in 2023. We've been continuing to work with our partners through this process for the past several years and are happy to be delivering on phase one now. i think that's the last slide so happy to answer any questions that you may have we do have kevin rutledge from strata and cindy jample here um for any questions that commission or staff may have and i just want to say it's it's a pleasure to be in front of the new commission i think this is my first time here so happy to see all of you

fantastic thank you so much uh given that concludes the presentation at this time we don't take any public testimony so we're going to open the floor commission for questions comments uh if you would like to give some as it relates i think we also have commissioner o'neill um only online so do we have some comments no oh my okay just one for the record um

Thank you for your commitment to working families. That means a lot of paying great wages and health care for people. That says a lot. So thank you.

but commissioner continue yeah hi good afternoon so first of all thank you so much i think this is a great building it really does add a lot to the personality and the place in east liberty um i think it was during during the cdap that we talked about you know especially this entrance here like being able to do something about it because this is the one that you're going to see through penn avenue i think all the way back to like whole foods and being able to do something and it was so funny because one of your slides actually shows a little tower that the old bakery square building has, you know, and I'm just wondering if there was something else that you guys could do to make that corner feel the, you know, more of a presence, I think. And this is obviously not something that planning commission, I think we are allowed to talk about or say, but it is more of an urban design and it's also responding to, to the hierarchy of the spaces. So yeah.

Yeah.

So I think we can take a look at it and we'll come back to you at hearing and see if we've come up with any options that would help. I mean, I do think that between the signage and we are, you're right, you have that great view because of the way it sits on the corner. but we're a little constrained in what we can do just based on the actual physical size of that corner but that's why we did move the entrance you know amongst our various designs to have that office entrance sort of prominently there so you can see it and announce that the building's there yeah thank you yep

no all right so i'll say a few things um unless commissioner o'neill let me let you go first i'm sorry no no thank you so much um i just want to echo the sentiment thank you for including the affordable housing and um you know continuing to explore that further um based on the grant funds i do appreciate the design of the building and kind of the entrance to bakery square I did just have some clarifying questions, and I think most of them are related to viewing these renderings on a PDF version. If we could go to, let's start with just PDF page 26. And it's really just a question about the materials because understanding that the colors and you're using some similarly colored materials. If when you come back.

Is this the page you're looking for, Rachel?

Yes. Thank you so much. If you could differentiate on kind of these elevation drawings, you know, where the fiber cement panels are being used versus the, you know, brick, modular brick. And the tile, I think I can tell looking at it, but it's a little bit hard when I zoom in on a PDF. I can't really get that kind of level of detail. Sure. Let me walk through that a little bit.

Right. Let me, I think you can probably see it better on the actual rendering than the elevation just because of the way it is. But Kevin, do you want to go ahead and answer her question? I think we can.

She might not be able to hear you. Yeah, sorry. I can hear somebody back there. He's coming to the mic.

This is Kevin Rutledge, K-E-V-A-N-R-U-T-L-E-D-G-E from Strata. We are the architect for this project, as John mentioned. So to address the question that Commissioner O'Neill has, yes, we are looking at high quality, durable materials, timeless materials along all of the public frontages. So when you look at the Penn Avenue facade in this image, anything in that brick red color is modular brick. Anything on the upper levels that is that sort of lighter blue color, that's a concealed fastener metal panel that will add some dimension and shadow line and depth to that upper story and sort of that central bar above the residential entry to help differentiate the main entry point for the building. The lower level is intended to give us an impression of sort of a limestone cast stone base. So it's more of a buff stone material. And then those sort of darker blue spandrels above the ground level storefront is that glazed tile. So the intention there is to give us a higher end material, something with... some shine, some interest, something that will really activate the ground level and the pedestrian experience. The fiber cement materials that you noted on the material board, these are saved for the courtyard-facing facades, anything that really faces onto the access drive that goes along the north edge of the site. That's not to say that these materials are lesser in any way. It's really meant to be complementary and to sort of modulate the expression of the facade as we move around the building.

Thanks. That's really helpful. Can you go back to the Penn Avenue or public facade and just explain, I can't see here, where's the granite base?

Oh, sure. If you go around the street level views, that should show it pretty well.

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to get back to.

One second, Rachel. Yeah, take your time.

Okay, here I can see it in the elevation drawing. It looked a little lighter color, so I wasn't sure. Okay. And then if we could just go to PDF page 30, just a follow-up question on the actual material palette. If you, when you come back, if you could just provide the fiber cement panel rib, the FC2 that's included, so we could see what that looks like. We see the fiber cement in that kind of Adobe color, but not in the rib. If we could include that here so we could understand how that is interacting. and the granite, I think that would be helpful. And then the glazed brick here, that is the glazed tile that was included on the elevation drawings, correct?

That's correct, yeah. From a design perspective, we're using tile and brick interchangeably there because the attachment method is the same.

I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything. Thank you. I appreciate the commitment to the materials and especially the quality materials along the public realm, understanding your statement that they're all quality materials. But it looks like an attractive building. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, so I'll make a few comments here. The first, I do remember sort of going back and working with the community with the CBA and I'm glad to see that's continuing and it's being honored. So that just a sort of shout out on that. um i will echo uh vice chair o'neill the color palette really makes this building easy to admire i think the variation of texture is is pretty well done here at first i thought that was black and not blue that's just my lens though and i think blue is great uh it sort of reminds me that corner it's interesting that you said what you said because i i almost felt like it um gave a little presence to the corner, gave me a little bit of a John Wick, his hotel vibe, you know, that sort of entry that let you sort of roll with two streets at once. And even though, you know, it might be entering the back of the building, I think it might have honored that corner. So I think And the step backs, you know, the elevation, color change, step backs, a little bit of sort of ribbing around there, I also appreciated. So I think that's all I have in terms of comments. No more. And I see no additional commissioners online. So thank you very much for the presentation today. And we'll see you back in two. All right, that concludes today's briefing portion. So commissioners, would it be okay for like five minutes because we really don't have much on the hearing and action agenda? Okay, very good. Well, thank you all so much. Have a great day. And for those that will be here for hearing and action, we'll be back in about five minutes. That puts us at 2.07. See you soon.

Okay, bud. All right. Good to see you. Nice to see you.

We're good. He can come in any second. Okay, we are about a minute out from starting back up. All right, it is 207. So we are going to start back. Good afternoon, good and beautiful people. We are at Planning Commission for June 16, 2026. This is the hearing and action portion of today. I'm going to go ahead and do roll call for the commissioners so that we know who is here. All right. Commissioner Burton Falk present. Commissioner Hunt. He'll be right back. Commissioner Interiano. Present. Thank you. Commissioner Kelly. Present. Thank you. Commissioner O'Neill. Present. Thank you. Commissioner Quintanilla. Present. Thank you. Commissioner Reppy. Good to see you. Present. Good to see you too. Thank you. Commissioner Vatz.

Present.

Good to hear you. And Commissioner Walker?

Present.

Thank you. And Commissioner Hunt has just come back in. I'm going to go ahead and read through the agenda for June 16, 2026. And it is as follows. Agenda item A is approval of minutes. Agenda item B is correspondence. Agenda item C... is hearing in action and there are two items under hearing in action for today moving back up to agenda oh and um agenda item d which would be directors report all right moving back up to agenda item a approval of minutes commissioners we have no minutes to approve for today Agenda item B, which is correspondence. We are not in receipt of any correspondence for today. Moving forward to agenda item C, which is hearing and action. Again, we have two items. I'm going to read them both in and then we'll go back to number one. Agenda item 1 under C, hearing and action, is title 11, historic preservation code. This is updates to the historic preservation code. Agenda item 2 under item C, hearing and action, is the Arsenal historic nomination. This is the historic nomination of the Allegheny Arsenal and Lawrenceville neighborhood. moving back to item 1 title 11 historic preservation code updates to the historic preservation code presenting this afternoon is ms reed good afternoon commissioners and thanks um

this is um the title 11 historic preservation ordinance updates um this is final review of the legislation the finding of fact is that in 2023 city planning requested an audit of the historic preservation program from the pennsylvania historic and museum commission the city received the audit document in 2024 Updates fall into several categories that are designed to streamline the process. Staff held two historic preservation ordinance working group meetings in March and April 2026 to gather feedback from preservation professionals, community groups, and the design and development community. Staff has briefed the mayor's office on the updates. Staff has briefed city council members on the updates. Currently the draft document is with the city law department. Planning Commission was briefed on these updates on June 2nd, 2026. Historic Review Commission received their first of two briefings on the updates on June 3rd, 2026. No significant concerns were raised. Staff hopes to send the document to City Council for a public hearing and their approval in approximately September 2026. Next slide. Oh, yeah, I have the clicker. You told me that, Christian. I'm sorry. Okay. This is an update to Title 11, as we have said many times. This is a map that shows all the historic landmarks and districts around the city of Pittsburgh. All right, what is Title 11? Title 11 is the Pittsburgh Code of Ordinance. And the Pittsburgh Code of Ordinance is the city's primary legal tool for protecting its architectural, cultural, and aesthetic heritage, provides regulation needed to prevent the demolition or inappropriate alteration of significant local landmarks. Why are we updating it now? We wanna clarify roles and processes, ensure that all groups are represented, and update the language and organization of the ordinance to reflect best practices in historic preservation. so uh the biggest part of this that impacts um planning commission which we went over last time so none of this should be new um is that we want to eliminate commission redundancies so currently um historic districts go to two planning commission meetings a briefing and a hearing in action and also two historic review commission meetings and individual landmarks go to the same two planning commission meetings and two historic review commission meetings under the proposed updates to the ordinance historic districts would go for one planning commission meeting and then one historic review commission meeting and individual landmarks would actually not come to planning commission they would only go to historic review commission and as you can see there just to remind you below there's a quote from the current code that says the City Planning Commission's purview with regards to historic landmarks is only to consider the effects of designation on adjoining properties and surrounding neighborhoods within the framework of established planning development and land use objectives for the City of Pittsburgh. So therefore, the purview of the Planning Commission is somewhat limited. Just to note, there are still plenty of opportunities for public engagement in all these processes. There will be a public hearing at Historic Review Commission and one at City Council, and for the districts, there'll be one also at Planning Commission. So plenty of opportunities for the public to respond. The other proposed changes to the ordinance are commitment to inclusive preservation, reorganization of the sections for clarity and a simplification of language, clarification of process timelines, including a process for revoking landmark status, making city staff ex officio instead of voting members, expanding and diversifying the commission membership, and introducing framework for interior landmarking of public buildings. Okay, tentative timeline. We're in the midst of this right now. As I said before, the city council updates are completed. We had briefing with all of you a couple of weeks ago. The historic review commission has received half of their briefing. We'll receive the rest of it on July 1st. We're here for hearing and action. HRC will have hearing and action on August 5th, and our hope is to submit the ordinance to the mayor's agenda so that it can go to council approximately mid-August. Obviously, there's the August recess for council, so they won't hear it until September.

that's it well thank you for a very uh thorough presentation miss reed um at this time we don't open the floor for public testimony but commissioners at this time if you have any comments or questions uh now would be that time are there uh any Okay, hearing none. What we have before us, Commission, I'll remind you to open it to public testimony because this is hearing in action. Oh, I'm sorry. Wait a minute. I'm backwards. My apologies. I'm opening the floor for public testimony first, then commissioners. All right. Didn't have enough caffeine. Is there anybody here or online that would like to speak regarding this? There are no hands raised. Okay, thank goodness because I screwed up. All right, commissioners, now it's our turn. Okay, so recognizing that this is a recommendation to council to approve, do I have a motion from the floor to approve?

So moved.

All right. Commissioner Cantina move. Do I have a second? Second. Second from Commissioner Kelly. I'll do roll call. Commissioner Burton-Falk. Aye. Commissioner Hunt.

Aye.

Thank you. Commissioner Interiano. Aye. Thank you. Commissioner Kelly. Aye. Thank you. Commissioner O'Neill. Aye. Thank you. Commissioner Quintanilla. Aye. Thank you. Commissioner Repi.

Aye.

All right. Thank you. Commissioner Vatz.

Aye.

Thank you. And Commissioner Walker? Aye. Thank you. All right. There you go. Thank you so much. We'll move on to agenda item B, which is, or agenda item number two under C, which is the Arsenal Historic Nomination. This is the Historic Nomination of the Allegheny Arsenal in the Lawrenceville neighborhood. Presenting this afternoon is Ms. Reid.

all right thank you again commissioners um okay this is the historic nomination of the allegheny arsenal officer quarters and wall segments um the finding of fact here is that dcp hn 2025 zero zero two zero eight was submitted on august 20th 2025 by butler and 40th llc for the historic nomination of the allegheny arsenal office quarters walls and magazine structures Well, segments and magazine structures, this historic nomination was prepared to satisfy 1 of the stipulations of the memorandum of understanding between Butler and 40th LLC and the Pennsylvania historical and museum commission, which was developed as part of the 2015 arsenal project. The is attached to the staff report for commission review. In a site meeting, a city staff member who is no longer working at the city requested that the nomination be expanded to include the entire historical Arsenal site, not just the 2015 Arsenal project sites. It was later found that the additional property owners were not consulted when the scope was expanded from the initial development parcels to the entire historic Arsenal site. One property owner, Allegheny County, does not support the nomination. Therefore, this nomination is coming back to Planning Commission for a new recommendation to only landmark the parcels north of Butler that were part of the original MOU. The nomination is also attached to the staff report for commission review. So you can review that if you would like. And actually, sorry, the recommended motion is that the Planning Commission of the City of Pittsburgh votes to provide a positive recommendation to City Council regarding historic designation. All right. Okay. As I just said in the previous presentation, this is all tied together, right? Planning Commission actions on nominations are only related to the effects of designation on adjoining properties and surrounding neighborhoods within the framework of established planning development and land use objectives for the city of Pittsburgh. So just to give you an idea of what your purview here is. All right, this is a location map that shows you where the Allegheny Arsenal is located there in Lawrenceville. It's in lower Lawrenceville, though right on the edge of central Lawrenceville, as you can see there, that yellow dot is. All right, so the previous recommendation that was made was that the Historic Review Commission vote to provide a positive recommendation to City Council regarding the historic designation of the parcels within the boundaries of 39th, Penn, 40th, and the Allegheny Valley Railroad. I'll show this to you on a map in a minute, including all the parcels that are listed there. The new recommendation is a vote to provide a positive recommendation regarding the historic designation within the site boundaries of 39th Street, Butler Street, that's the change, 40th Street, and the Allegheny Valley Railroad with the parcels that are then listed there. Okay, so the previous extent of the nomination was everything that's included in red here. To the far right, what you see there is the county-owned property, which is known as the CLAC property. Second from the right is Arsenal Park. Third from the right, in the other little yellow rectangle, is the Arsenal School. And then the area that you see there to the left, which is north of Butler, is the area of the Arsenal development. So what's being recommended now for designation is just the area that you see there in blue, which is the extent of the the development site. So what's included in that area that includes the officers quarters, which were rehabilitated as part of the project, and nine wall segments, which includes the wharf wall that runs along the Allegheny Valley Railroad. these are the parcels that are included in the revision north of butler all right here are just some images uh the one on the left is a historic image of the arsenal just showing you what intact um walls looked like at the time um the one on the right there is the officers quarters building uh after it had been rehabbed The pictures on the top and bottom left are pictures of the wharf wall running along the railway. And the pictures on the right are sections of existing or wall segment sections. They're existing along 39th Street to just show you what they look like in relation to the development that is now in place. All right, where we are in the process, as I said before, Historic Review Commission made a recommendation to city council on the revised scope on the third. Now it's here for recommendation from you all. And next it'll go to city council for a public hearing, and it have a public hearing, and then it'll go for a vote to city council. OK, so this these elements are eligible for designation under a number of different criteria. I'm going to read them off. It's a bunch. One is its location as a site of significant historic or prehistoric event or activity. Six is its location as a site of an important archaeological resource. Seven is its association with important cultural, social aspects or events in the history of the city. state mid-atlantic region or the united states nine is its representation of a cultural historic architectural archaeological or related theme expressed through distinctive areas properties sites structures or objects that may or may not be contiguous and last one is 10 its unique location or distinctive physical appearance or presence representing an established and familiar visual feature of a neighborhood community or the city of pittsburgh So the other part of being eligible for designation isn't is that the that the elements show that they have integrity. So it is shown that there is sufficient integrity of location, design materials and workmanship, which are all the different parts of integrity for this to be listed as a local landmark. And that is all.

all right thank you ms reed at this time we open the floor for public testimony uh no one in the room is there someone online no thank you so much all right commissioners at this time uh we'll open the floor for any comments questions um if there are some it looks like commissioner vats may have one uh commissioner vats the floor is open

Yeah, hi, thanks for the presentation. I have a quick question. So I'm just trying to make sure I'm understanding correctly. So the property that is being suggested for historic preservation here, it is being nominated by the property owner and it is only the parcels that they own because you said that some other parcels were going to be a part of it, but it was objected to by those property owners.

Yeah, so this was originally, the reason that this came to us for nomination was because it was part of the memorandum of understanding between, as part of the Section 106 process that took place for the Arsenal development. APARTMENT DEVELOPMENT PROJECT, RIGHT, THAT'S A HISTORIC SITE, AND SO PART OF WHAT WAS AGREED UPON TO PRESERVE THE HISTORIC INTEGRITY OF THAT SITE UPON DEVELOPMENT WAS THAT NOMINATION WOULD BE WRITTEN FOR THE REMAINING HISTORIC ELEMENTS THAT ARE PRESENT ON THE PARCELS THAT WERE DEVELOPED. um so then upon a site visit um that took place uh staff member who's no longer with the city asked for an expansion of the scope um and um that was it was mistaken should not have been expanded um upon the expansion um uh it was found that the county um was opposed to the nomination um and we decided that it should was best to roll it back to the original memorandum of understanding which was what was originally intended for the project um

And so this is being nominated by the property owner. Is that right? Yes.

Yep. Yes.

The nominator is the property owner.

It is Butler and 40th LLC.

Great. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

right if that concludes questions commissioners uh what we have before us is um a vote for a positive recommendation to council um do i have a motion from the floor so move to approve all right that was uh commissioner walker for move and second oh okay commissioner hunt for a second uh now i'll do roll call commissioner burton falk aye uh commissioner hunt aye Thank you, Commissioner Tariano. Aye. Thank you, Commissioner Kelly. Aye. Thank you, Commissioner O'Neill. Aye. Thank you, Commissioner Quintanilla. Aye. Thank you, Commissioner Reppy.

Aye.

All right. Thank you, Commissioner Vatz.

Aye.

Thank you. And Commissioner Walker? Aye. All right. Thank you so much. So thank you and have a great rest of your day. We'll move on to Agenda Item D, which is the Director's Report. And I understand that there is not a Director's Report today. Thank you so much, Mr. Dash. All right, so it looks like at this time, commissioners, we are able to adjourn, but we need a motion in order to do that. Do I have a motion from the floor? So moved. Second, Tariano? All right, all in favor? Aye. All right, good job, guys. Wrap it up. Thank you. You're welcome, thank you. Hey, thank you, all of you who joined online. Repi went already, but he was on vacation. That was great that he showed up.