Vote delayed on Penguins’ development

URA wants more time to look at deal

It’s another delay for a deal to give the Pittsburgh Penguins more time to redevelop the former Civic Arena site in the lower Hill District.

The Pittsburgh Urban Redevelopment Authority board voted 5-0 Thursday to table a vote on a tentative agreement between the city and the team until next Wednesday. Board chairman Kevin Acklin, chief of staff to Mayor Bill Peduto, said his colleagues and the public needed more time to digest details of the deal, which was still being tweaked until late Wednesday.

It’s the latest in a series of setbacks that have hampered development of a high-profile site on the edge of Downtown where the Penguins have plans for a 1,000-unit residential project, 500,000 square feet of office space and what the team is calling a destination entertainment district.

The delay came after the Pittsburgh-Allegheny County Sports & Exhibition Authority board voted earlier in the day to approve the agreement — but not without a call by one member for a delay.

The URA board now is expected to vote on the tentative

agreement next Wednesday after discussing it in an executive session Monday. The URA and the SEA own different parts of the 28-acre site. The Penguins won the rights to develop the property in the 2007 deal to build PPG Paints Arena.

Travis Williams, the Penguins chief operating officer, said afterward the team “is certainly disappointed” with the decision to table.

“This is a good deal for us and the public, and we look forward to moving it forward so we can get development underway,” he said.

URA board member R. Daniel Lavelle, a city councilman who represents the Hill, said afterward he would not have voted for the deal Thursday had push come to shove.

He said he did not have enough time to assess the final terms, adding he couldn’t answer questions from community members because he didn’t get the completed document until Thursday morning.

“The devil is in the details,” he said. “Not having an opportunity to review and digest it, I didn’t feel comfortable voting on it.”

Mr. Lavelle, who asked for the delay, said his main concern is whether the agreement holds the Penguins accountable enough to ensure that development actually takes place on the site.

Under the current agreement, the Penguins have to forfeit land if they do not meet development deadlines. Under the new one, they would sacrifice parking revenue if they do not meet those targets.

While Mr. Acklin believes the new agreement has a number of elements that benefit the public and does advance development, he said he did not want to put the board in a difficult spot of voting on it without having time to digest it or to talk to community members.

The last time the board reviewed the terms, he said, was about a week ago before the final details were hammered out. He said afterwards he remained confident the deal ultimately would be approved.

“I still believe this is, on par, a better deal for the residents of the city that clears some hurdles to development and ultimately will advance development and still hold the Penguins accountable,” he said.

With the delay, the URA board also decided to give the team until Wednesday to buy the first 2.1-acre parcel needed for development under the current agreement. Without the extension, the Penguins would have had to forfeit the land after exhausting two years’ worth of extensions.

The decision to table came after Sports & Exhibition Authority board members voted 6-1 to approve the tentative agreement, one Mr. Acklin and the Penguins have said should quicken the pace of development.

SEA board member Sala Udin voted against the agreement after he failed to persuade his colleagues to table action for 30 days to give the public time to comment on the revised proposal to develop the land.

He called the original deal a “humongous giveaway” to the Penguins and suggested one reason for that was the lack of public input.

“I do think we owe [the public] the opportunity to see it, to understand it, and to comment on it, and then we come back and make the best decision we can make,” Mr. Udin said.

But board member James Ellenbogen said the public seemed to be more concerned about “whether the Penguins beat the Blackhawks” than they are about the development deal.

“I don’t think the public really is engaged in this,” he said.

The new deal would give the Penguins an additional year, until Oct. 22, 2025, to redevelop the entire site.

That could be extended to 2028 based on various scenarios, one being whether there’s timely construction of a publicly funded parking garage of up to 1,000 spaces. The Penguins also have the right to two extensions but will have to pay $6,000 an acre for them.

Under the tentative agreement, they will exchange about $14 million in credits they received in the 2007 arena deal for the 17 to 18 acres of land to be developed, excluding green space and the parcel needed for the garage.

That takes the public off the hook for potentially owing the Penguins millions of dollars in cash if the team had not used up all of the credits by the end of the 10year development period under the current agreement.

Mr. Acklin, who negotiated much of the new agreement, said that was one of the key benefits.

If the new agreement ends up being approved, the Penguins will have until 2020 to develop 6.45 acres or risk forfeiting 20 percent of the revenue received from parking at the site. A new wrinkle to the agreement requires the team to develop a total of 10.75 acres by 2023 or risk losing another 10 percent of parking revenues.

Despite past delays, Mr. Williams with the Penguins, said after the SEA vote that the team is ready to get started on development.

It plans to begin design charrettes on the first 250 units of housing in December and has lined up Philadelphia developer Core Realty to do a destination entertainment district that would include a music venue, hotel, bowling alley, movie theater, restaurants, bars and other amenities.

“We have development projects that are ready. We are on the cusp of being able to move this transformational development forward for the region,” he said.