IN THE LAST WEEK
Bulldozers and construction cranes will be ordered up for some projects around the region — but not all that had been planned — based on news last week.
The North Shore riverfront will be transformed once more, this time by a $35 million hotel that the
Rivers Casino plans to add to its existing building. The 214-room hotel would front the Ohio River in stretching toward the Carnegie Science Center, whose officials are backing the project. The project has been under consideration for several years, as it is common for casinos to have hotels connected to them.
It is also common for universities to contemplate upgrades to their athletic facilities, which is what
Robert Morris University is intending by January 2019 with a new,
4,000-seat basketball arena on campus. UPMC is a major backer of the project, which will replace the Charles L. Sewall Center, opened in 1985.
In Beaver County, the biggest, most heated debate for months has been over the massive petrochemical complex planned by Shell Chemical Appalachia. Shell cleared a vital step with Potter supervisors’ approval of a conditional use permit. Shell will be expected to take part in noise, traffic and lighting studies related to the cracker plant, which is to be constructed starting in 2018.
A new office skyscraper Downtown has, however, been shelved.
Oxford Development Co. spent more than four years preparing for erection of a 33-story tower that would replace the existing building at 441 Smithfield St. It found itself unable to land the anchor tenant needed for such a large venture; it is instead planning to sell the property.
One sign of the vitality of the region — or lack thereof — is the use of its airport. While Pittsburgh International Airport clearly is nowhere near as crowded as in its days as a USAir hub, when 20 million passengers a year walked its corridors, it’s getting busier. As a result of adding new airlines and flights to more cities, the airport attracted 8.3 million travelers in 2016, the most since 2008.
The foot traffic hasn’t been growing at the struggling Galleria at
Pittsburgh Mills mall along Route 28 in Frazer. Open since 2005, the mall has never lived up to projections and went on the auction
block. Wells Fargo Bank, which foreclosed on the shopping center in 2015, essentially bought the mall from itself through a $100 auction bid. It now will determine whether to try to sell or rehabilitate the property. The Pennsylvania Legislature and Gov. Tom Wolf have received a five-month extension to June 6 to address compliance with the federal REAL ID law. Complying with the anti-terrorism law could mean replacing all 9 million existing state driver’s licenses with new ones that are harder to counterfeit. Without the change, Pennsylvanians might face difficulty accessing federal property and airports because their driver’s licenses won’t be considered acceptable ID.