Uptown, a Pittsburgh neighborhood of fewer than 1,000 residents, is ready to explode. For decades, the neighborhood that abuts the Monongahela River between Downtown and Oakland, has been dominated by vacant buildings and parking lots.
But with large development plans recently announced, Uptown is due for a huge transformation. UPMC is expanding its Mercy Hospital with a 300,000-square-foot vision-care center, and the Pittsburgh Penguins finally released plans for a massive, 28-acre mixed-use development in the adjoining Lower Hill District, right next to PPG Paints Arena. Additionally, regional leaders are promising that a modernized bus line will run through Uptown, which could drastically improve the landscape of the neighborhood’s two thoroughfares, Fifth and Forbes avenues.
UPMC Mercy president Mike Grace told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in November that the hospital’s expansion will be “transformative for Uptown.”
However, many Pittsburghers have likely heard this before. Starting around 2009, city leaders, developers and prominent thinkers dubbed Uptown the “next hot neighborhood.” The one-third-square-mile neighborhood checks all the boxes for a development tinder box: close proximity to the region’s two biggest job centers, Oakland and Downtown; affordability; great public transportation; and plenty of undeveloped land. But in the time since Uptown started receiving attention, neighborhoods like Lawrenceville and East Liberty have taken off and become hot housing and retail markets, while Uptown has remained mostly stagnant.
Why didn’t Uptown take off too? Some nonprofits and public officials say that land speculators are to blame. A handful of people own hundreds of properties in Uptown. Critics say these property-owners are waiting for the market to catch fire to maximize their profits, but in doing so they are holding back the neighborhood by refusing to sell or renovate their properties. Real-estate developers, meanwhile, defend property-owners and say they are merely capitalizing on the current system.
City leaders and nonprofits want to see Uptown become a neighborhood for all income levels and backgrounds, while property-owners are likely to cater to those who will cough up the most cash. And these differences have set up a battle to determine what Uptown will look like moving forward.
“The future is bright for Uptown,” says Pittsburgh City Councilor Daniel Lavelle (D-Hill District), who represents Uptown. “Unfortunately, you still have bad landlords that still own large swaths of the neighborhood. They still hold most of the community back.”
In 2014, Uptown was chosen by Portland, Ore.-based city-planning nonprofit EcoDistricts to participate in an “Eco-Innovation District” plan, which aims to develop the neighborhood into an inclusive place with great public transit, homes powered by green energy, and a commercial district filled with small businesses. Pittsburgh city planners, Uptown nonprofits and architects were provided training and resources on building an equitable neighborhood.
Jeanne McNutt, of nonprofit developer Uptown Partners, says her group has worked hard to bring more than 200 housing units to Uptown over the past several years. McNutt notes that Uptown has a large number of affordable-housing projects and, currently, one of the highest percentages of subsidized units of any neighborhood in Pittsburgh.
However, McNutt worries that all of Uptown’s plans for equity could be jeopardized by the actions of land speculators, and of one in particular: Bob Eckenrode. The Mount Lebanon real-estate agent and landlord owns more than 40 properties scattered throughout Uptown. They are listed under his or his wife’s name, or those of his two limited-liability companies, BRGS and JCWS.
Eckenrode has been buying property in Uptown since the early 2000s, according to property records. An analysis of Eckenrode’s Uptown properties conducted by Pittsburgh City Paper suggests a pattern. When Eckenrode purchases an Uptown property for more than $100,000, he usually rents out units in that building. When he buys buildings or parcels of land cheaply (typically for less than $50,000), he sits on them.
Eckenrode currently owns at least 17 vacant properties in Uptown, which he purchased for a combined total of about $500,000; most of them have sat vacant for more than five years. Some properties have their windows and doors boarded up. Eckenrode has never sold a property in Uptown.
And he’s not alone. Allegheny County property records show a dozen additional properties sitting vacant in Uptown that are owned by people who live outside the neighborhood. Eight of those were purchased more than 10 years ago.
Many areas of Uptown are empty and blighted. McNutt believes this is compromising the neighborhood’s quality of life and is making it harder to develop Uptown.
“Despite our good work to responsibly and equitably revitalize our neighborhood,” wrote McNutt in an email to CP, “the amount of vacant and boarded-up properties Mr. Eckenrode owns in Uptown continues to give a public impression of blight. Many millennials, immigrants, and others are eager to purchase an affordable home in Uptown to fix up for their own. Unfortunately, Mr. Eckenrode’s many vacant properties are not available because he will not sell.”
CP reached Eckenrode by phone on Dec. 8, but he denied a request for an interview and didn’t want to comment for this story.
Rick Schweikert, a Pittsburgh real-estate agent with the firm Keller Williams, has dealt with Eckenrode and other property-owners in Uptown. He doesn’t endorse Eckenrode’s and others behavior, but says that under the current system, they’re not doing anything wrong.
“It is a free-market system, where anybody can buy any property they can afford,” says Schweikert. “They can be disposed of any way they want as long as it fits city-planning guidelines. Personally, I am very much in favor of government having a bigger say in how property is disposed of, but at the same time, we live in a capitalist system.”
Under this system, it’s typically wealthy people who already own a lot of land who end up buying most of the properties in neighborhoods like Uptown.
In Pittsburgh, this system is reaping huge benefits for real-estate developers. In the December 2016 issue of Pittsburgh Economic Quarterly, published by the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Social and Urban Research, economist Chris Briem notes the meteoric rise of real estate as a popular and high-paying profession.
From 2010 to 2014, according to U.S. Census figures, the Pittsburgh region saw an increase of 1,355 real-estate nonemployer filings, the most of any nonemployer sector. (Nonemployers are businesses with no paid employees; the real-estate sector includes both developers and landlords.) And in that same time period, property-owners and landlords pulled in hefty earnings, more than $98,000 a year on average. This is by far the highest earnings of any nonemployer sector in Pittsburgh.
In Uptown, real-estate developer Sal Williams owns more than 100 properties. For years, Williams either demolished buildings to convert into parking lots or sat on the properties, waiting for the best moment to sell. Recently, Williams has started to sell many of his properties, and he is making a killing.
In June, Williams sold four lots at the corner of Fifth and Pride to J&H Commercial Holdings. He bought the lots throughout the 1990s and early 2000s for a total $221,000, but sold them for $700,000. In 2015, Williams sold a large parcel to Uptown Associates for a $685,000 profit. That parcel became the upscale lofts Flats on Fifth.
Schweikert admits it can be difficult for average residents to get their hands on affordable properties, but he says Pittsburgh officials need to pass laws that would help inexperienced buyers compete with the likes of Eckenrode. At the same time, Schweikert says that “a lot of properties would have just fallen to the ground” had it not been for developers like Eckenrode. For example, CP noticed that at least one of Eckenrode’s vacant properties, a rowhouse on Forbes, is undergoing rehabilitation.
But City Councilor Lavelle feels some of those units currently held by speculators shouldn’t just remain at the mercy of property-owners in perpetuity. He says city government can help new homeowners buy and fix up properties thanks to Urban Redevelopment Authority programs that offer consolidation loans for purchase and rehab costs. But Lavelle says land speculators are repressing programs like these by purchasing many homes in soon-to-be desirable locations like Uptown.
If speculators would look to sell some of their properties, says Lavelle, “One of the first things we would be able to do is rehab the vacant and abandoned buildings. And those buildings could become a wonderful entry point into Uptown for young families.”
Lavelle says speculators appear to have “no concerns for the communities in which they own a lot property.” He adds that the URA would be happy to work with developers, and would even offer financial incentives and expertise, as long as developers are willing to work with the community.
Currently, Lavelle says there is little the city can do to make speculators like Eckenrode work with the community, since Eckenrode is keeping his buildings up to code and paying his property taxes. (Eckenrode’s property taxes in Uptown range from highs of around $600 a year for large parcels to as low as $12 a year for some small buildings.)
In the end, it might already be too late for a truly equitable Uptown. Schweikert says the odds are stacked against nonprofits, the city and even average buyers. He says property-owners have already purchased most of the best, affordable property in the neighborhood. The era of finding great deals in Uptown are waning.
“I think it’s too late, there is nothing left,” says Schweikert. “Those days are gone in Uptown for sure.”
This article appears in Dec 13-19, 2017.
Whoever wrote this article is your typical Pittsburgh City Paper socialist. Anybody could have bought the Properties that Williams and Eckenrode purchased. Keep in mind these owners paid taxes on these properties for years while nobody had interest in them. Just because the city is finally coming around does not obligate them to sell. Take a lesson children. They are not obligated to sell because Jeanne McNutt says they should.
“Under the current system…” See, that’s the nice thing about politics. Things can change on a dime. If the majority oppose the current system, then change it.
If the issue is mass holdings for speculation that lead to a blighted landscape for years, then consider imposing an annual fee on blighted, unlivable properties. Consider a fee if a property sits undeveloped with no work for more than 2 years.
If the majority of the community feels this is an issue, it is well within their power to push for change that alleviates the situation.
Hmmm…equity.
It seems that equity only matters to this author when he thinks it ought to. So, due to the authors hardcore bias, allow me to fill in some blanks…for equitys sake.
Sal Williams was born to Italian immigrants (1928), and raised in Uptown. He moved away after he got married to move to the neighborhood that his wife was from, McKees Rocks. He still has family living in Uptown.
He has sold property to the U.R.A. (the author had to have known this, but chose to leave it out.) The U.R.A. hasnt touched that property in the years that they have had it. This is directly counter to the assertion of the article that he wont do anything to help the city or the people out.
Nearly all of Sal Williams properties were bought at public auction because they were tax delinquent and the owners had abandoned them. A good majority of them were bought at the starting bid price, because NOBODY bid against him. Yes, in a public auction, the mythical people that the article asserts would have loved to have gotten these properties, didnt show up.
He has sold property, and backed-off from acquiring property if a party shows interest in buying it to live in or house their business in. Hed walk away from a deal if almost ANYONE ELSE had showed interest in a property.
Jeanne McNutt had toured a then-recently acquired property of Sal Williams (tax delinquent, nobody bid against him) and agreed that it ought to be torn down. I should know, I was standing right next to her the entire time. He wasnt tearing down gems. He was tearing down long-abandoned structures.
The only brand-new structure in decades on Fifth Avenue to be built without a lot of free governtment money was the new apartment building on Fifth. It sits there now completed, and relatively unoccupied. It is a way to gauge how ready Uptown is for development. Judging by that buildings occupancy rate, it isnt.
Land assemblage is a value-add. Land like what the U.R.A. and the developers of the apartment building bought off of Sal Williams took years, if not decades, to assemble. You acquire a small parcel here, a small parcel there, then eventually, you have a workable bit of land that a nice new development can be built on. Adding up the purchase price of like twenty 800 square foot lots, and then decrying that they sold all together for triple the price twenty years later is pretty absurd. It ignores so much about the economics of real estate.
Theres more, but I wont bore you with it.
Capitalism is soo bad, yet the only reason that the City Paper is produced is because they bring in more ad revenue than it cost them to print the paper and pay people to write useless articles like this one.
Mr. Eckenrode has been renovating his many properties a few at a time, which is all that one man can do. His investment in Pittsburgh neighborhoods should be commended. A lot of his renovated properties have been sympathetically restored, all are code compliant, some in historical districts have been historically restored, and they are all taxed fully, based on there upgraded values. Lets give capitalism and entrepreneurship a pat on the back and not a slap on the face.
JS
Uptown Partners is a BIG factor in the unhappy condition of Uptown. They are an impediment to improvement. There are buildings in Uptown in such disrepair they can not be repaired with out the costs being one and half to twice of new construction. But applying for permits is a waste of time and money because it if does not match their vision, which is self serving, one is horsed around, costs accrue and zero progress is made.
Uptown Partners have a vested interest in keeping the area in distress. They are paid salaries and provided funds to keep the area from progressing they then act shocked the rest of city prospers. They are not partners for progress, they are abusers and parasites.
They could be no less a tool then if they were Swiss Army
I happen to know Bob Eckenrode very well. This man owns a lot of properties and yes, there are many that sit untouched. However, what you don’t see are all the buildings year after year that he has done from the ground plumbing up to the last shingle. All legal, all done right no corners cut. You can’t expect him to rebuild the whole city In a day, all the while dealing with ungrateful rich kids who want to destroy these units then call him a bad landlord because he yells at them, or god forbid something breaks, These things happen. I can’t speak for any other property owner mentioned in this article but before you try to judge Bob, take a look at all the great things the man has done for the pittsburgh area…
If “the community” wants this change so badly, why didn’t they have the foresight to start purchasing these properties like Eckenrode?
Because I know this article will continue to pop up on Google searches from people wondering what the hell Bob Eckenrode is up to and how many different LLCs he hides his business dealings under: he now seems to have another LLC in addition to BRGS and JCWS. The new one is Lare Realty, LLC.
As of October 2018, he’s still at it, buying even more houses in Uptown. I fear for the future of our neighborhood.