Downtown Pittsburgh Office Vacancy Pushes Owners Toward Conversions
Photo: Unsplash/@itsharryshelton
Office vacancy in downtown Pittsburgh has climbed to nearly 28 percent, according to figures compiled by regional commercial brokers, pushing several building owners along Grant Street to seriously study residential conversions rather than continue marketing space to shrinking corporate tenants.
Two mid-rise towers built in the 1980s are furthest along in the process, with feasibility studies examining floor-plate depth and plumbing stack locations, the two biggest engineering constraints on converting office buildings into apartments.
"The economics only work if the floor plates are narrow enough to get natural light to both sides of a unit," said a developer involved in one of the studies. "A lot of downtown Pittsburgh's older stock actually fits that profile better than people assume."
City officials have floated tax abatements for qualifying conversions, modeled loosely on programs used in Philadelphia and Chicago. Commercial landlords with newer, amenity-heavy towers say they are seeing steadier leasing, suggesting the vacancy crisis is concentrated in older buildings rather than the market as a whole.
No conversion project downtown has broken ground yet, though two are expected to file permits by the end of the year.
