mmphoto412 t1_jaijil1 wrote on March 1, 2023 at 6:10 PM

Reply to comment by Excelius in As construction begins on Atlanta’s “Cop City,” Pittsburghers are concerned about an allegedly similar local project by LostEnroute

They scrapped plans to do this, and to make it exclusively a cop playground. Meaning this property is no longer available for this. Someone posted this elsewhere in the thread.

Nonetheless, they would likely spend more on a replacement then whatever they would make on a real estate sale.

Excelius t1_jaila52 wrote on March 1, 2023 at 6:21 PM

The land already belongs to the city, it was transferred in 2020.

They city may have scaled back their initial ambitions for the site given the ballooning costs, but the land will still be there and could be further built out at a later date. Assuming they didn't expand the scope of the police training center to include the portion of the land that would have been used for vehicle maintenance and storage.

OnyxFiskar t1_jajbnim wrote on March 1, 2023 at 9:06 PM

Part of the stipulation of the federal govt selling the VA hospital and all the facilities was that the city HAS to use it for public safety. They legally are not allowed to use that property for any other purchase. The cost of relocating all of those operations from the strip would dwarf the revenue from what they would recouperate from selling the land and the added tax revenue. Its not even close.

Excelius t1_jajeq99 wrote on March 1, 2023 at 9:24 PM

> The cost of relocating all of those operations from the strip would dwarf the revenue from what they would recouperate from selling the land and the added tax revenue. Its not even close.

Certainly, I wasn't imagining those things would somehow recoup the entire cost, merely offset it.

Apparently not all of the existing operations are on city owned property, in their press release the city claimed that the move would "allow the City to save millions of taxpayer dollars on leases of private properties used by the Department of Public Safety and to move key City-owned properties and parcels back onto tax rolls".

It didn't specify which operations were on city owned properties, and which are on leased properties, nor the time horizon that the "millions in savings" might be realized.