Excelius t1_jaj75ef wrote on March 1, 2023 at 8:38 PM

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

> And $120 million!?

I'd be really curious to see a detailed breakdown of where the costs are expected to go.

I'm actually wondering if the city might have gotten itself into a bad deal with the free land from the Federal government.

As far as I can tell the original buildings were all left in tact, which probably means the city is on the hook for the demolition costs. That could easily run into the millions of dollars before even talking about building anything new. And those buildings are old enough that I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they were filled with asbestos.

According to the City of Pittsburgh press release when the land was acquired, the facilities would be required to be "net zero" under 2019 city legislation, requiring them to produce as much green energy as they consume. Which sounds nice in theory, but undoubtedly adds substantially to the up front cost, unless they can get some state or federal grants to foot the bill.

YIMBYYay t1_jamyabf wrote on March 2, 2023 at 4:14 PM

I think that you’re onto something. Asbestos mitigation and demolition alone will be very expensive. And construction costs are up nearly 30% since 2020, so that’s a lot of it.

Also, the city put themselves in a bind with the net zero requirement. It’s one of those things that sounds good but is in fact prohibitively expensive to execute and, frankly, overkill in green building. It’s just another example of the city having outside organizations (GBA for example) and activists craft policy.

Excelius t1_jan35ui wrote on March 2, 2023 at 4:46 PM

The original press release also noted that the site would include stormwater runoff mitigation measures, since this property is within the drainage area of Washington Blvd with it's flooding issues.

I imagine that retention ponds or whatever probably aren't nearly as expensive as net-zero energy requirements, but it's an added expense none the less. I would argue that's a bit more practical with immediate local benefit, than trying to tie this project in with solving bigger far more complex issues around climate change.