An economic impact study of that proposed $86 million convention center/hotel in Westmoreland County says the project would, as the Tribune-Review reports it, “generate nearly $270 million in direct revenue, contribute another $16.2 million in taxes paid to local government and provide more than 120 jobs in its first decade in operation.”
As the Trib further notes, nobody’s offering any specifics about how this thing would be paid for. But it is “suggested [that] brand-name hoteliers along with owners of Westmoreland Mall and Live Casino Pittsburgh be major players in the potential construction and operation of the proposed facilities,” the Trib also reports.
As we noted last week, independent experts say such studies should be taken with a very large grain of salt, given that the economic benefits for such facilities typically are greatly/grossly overstated.
But there’s one thing that should be a given: There should be no public money in this venture. If the benefits are going to be so great, those involved with it should stand to make a tidy profit.
Heck, we’ll go as far as advising that the project be charged an impact fee – as once was done in the days of yore – to cover any additional demand the project likely will place on the public infrastructure.
A local newspaper editorial notes the spike in the student census this year for the incoming freshman classes at the University of Pittsburgh and Point Park University and their moves to house the overflow in Oakland and Downtown hotels, respectively.
And it suggests that, hey, wouldn’t it be just peachy-keen to solve the problem by converting empty Downtown office space into student housing?
Inexplicably, it even suggests that part of the ghost town that is the 56-story BNY Mellon Center be considered for student housing. Never mind that the building generally is considered not to be a good candidate for an office-to-residential conversion.
But there’s a much larger “never mind” in this proposal – the “demographic cliff.”
That’s the phrase being used to describe the growing relative paucity of college-age students because of declining birth rates
Per an NPR report, American “colleges and universities already collectively experienced a 15 percent decline in enrollment between 2010 and 2021.”
And data suggest there will be a further 13 percent decline in the pool of college-aged students by 2041.
Couple that with the ever-increasing cost of a college education and the long-term enrollment picture looks even more grim.
Thus, spending millions of dollars – likely public dollars at that – to convert office space to residential space in response to an anomalous spike in the student count certainly doesn’t make much sound public policy sense.
And then there’s this, pointed out by Frank Gamrat, executive director of the Allegheny Institute:
Let’s say one of the universities decides to go full-tilt-boogie into such a plan, based perhaps on some outlier projection that the student census will stay at increased levels and/or keep increasing.
They then purchase a vacated Downtown office tower and turn the whole shebang into student housing.
“Let’s not forget that if one of the universities owns the tower, it comes off the tax rolls,” the Ph.D. scholar notes.
“Talk about an unintended consequence!” he says.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
