Downtown is offering more places to work, play and live, and a new report shares details on the latest numbers. Here are five takeaways from the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership’s 2018 State of Downtown report:
The Beauty Shoppe is coming.
More than 110,000 square feet of coworking space has opened Downtown in the last three years, and more is soon to come: In June, the Beauty Shoppe will open a 12,000-square-foot location in the Pitt Building at the Boulevard of the Allies and Smithfield Street. The space promises office space, meeting rooms, open coworking spaces and “the hospitality of a boutique hotel,” in what the company says will be “an elevated product” that goes beyond the offerings at their current locations.
Among the unique details: A space called The Warehouse, which will be “home to inclusive business events and classes.” This space, available to members for their own events, will include a programming calendar “anchored by Beauty Shoppe’s collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College.”
Membership costs will begin at $250 per month and private office space begins at $900 for rooms sized for one to six people.
Downtown living keeps on getting more popular.
Although regional population growth remains flat, Greater Downtown’s population has grown by 25 percent (that’s 3,000 residents) since 2010. Occupancy has increased to 94 percent from 89 percent a year ago.
Developers, unsurprisingly, are meeting that demand: The report finds 3,928 units (apartments, condos and townhomes) in the pipeline, with 34 percent of those located within the Golden Triangle. About 1,500 of those are currently under construction and the rest are in the planning phases.
“In 2018, expect to see ground broken on 13 new residential development projects which are anticipated to deliver 1,335 units over the next three years,” the report says. “Notable apartment developments include Trammel Crowe’s Glasshouse at Station Square East with 320 units under construction and The Davis Companies’ redevelopment of the Art Institute’s former residence hall at 620 Second Avenue expected to add 200 rental units to the market. Core Realty’s Kaufmann’s Grand on Fifth project, featuring 312 apartments, is expected to open in summer 2018 as the developer also works to bring 174 new units online in One Chatham Center by converting floors three through eight of former office space.”
The current average rent for a one-bedroom apartment? $1,631. And for a two-bedroom: $1,815.
Downtown buyers have seen a 29 percent increase in condominium sale prices per square foot over the last five years.
Hotel occupancy is steady even as new hotels keep on opening, and office occupancy mirrors rates in similar Central Business Districts (CBDs) nationwide.
Downtown’s hotel occupancy has remained at 67 percent even as the total number of hotel rooms has grown by 26 percent since the beginning of 2015. There are now nearly 6,000 hotel rooms in Greater Downtown.
Meanwhile, 40 percent of Pittsburgh’s jobs currently are based Downtown and there’s room for plenty more.
“Over the last seven years, the Greater Downtown office market has experienced healthy occupancy levels and increasing rental rates, the latter rising nearly 25 percent since 1Q 2011. This was due in large part to market consolidation of more than 3 million square feet with the conversion of a Class B and C properties to hotel and residential uses,” the report says.
However, the report continues: “With few exceptions, lease transactions over the last few years have been absent of larger tenants new to the Golden Triangle, consistent with regional economic indicators that show stagnant job growth between March 2013 and March 2018 of 2 percent.” Elsewhere in the country, “our peer benchmark regions averaged more than 10 percent, or roughly 24,500 jobs.”
Currently, the office occupancy rate in our city’s CBD is 89.2 percent, nearly identical to the national average of 89.4 percent. The numbers for cities in our region are similar, with Philadelphia at 90.4, Columbus at 91.1, Cleveland at 87.2, Cincinnati at 82.6 and Detroit at 90.5 percent.
Safety numbers improved.
Violent and property crimes decreased by 17% in 2017, compared to 2016. And total crime occurrences dropped by 3 percent during that time.
This year, you can explore the report in detail.
New this year, the PDP has created an online breakdown of the report for those who want a deeper dive. Find the full, downloadable report here.