The Allegheny County Health Department has begun public hearings on U.S. Steel’s proposal to build a state-of-the art hot strip mill at the Edgar Thomson Works, which straddles the Braddock-North Braddock line.
But we are forced to wonder if the Health Department — which recently spearheaded what surely will be an economy-retarding parental-leave plan for all businesses in the county (including nonprofits) and onerous new sick-leave requirements for even the smallest businesses – will, for the second time, thwart real economic revival in the Mon Valley.
You’ll recall that U.S. Steel, now owned by Nippon Steel, canceled a $1.5 billion upgrade at its Mon Valley Works in 2021, blaming the Health Department for slow-walking the permitting process for several years. Department officials denied the allegation, saying they were merely following the law.
But the bottom line with this project, seen as cementing steel production in the Mon Valley for decades to come and turning around a long moribund economy there, is this, as reported by the Tribune-Review:
“[T]he project — powered by coke ovens and natural gas — would lower overall emission rates in the Mon Valley after the strip mill at Irvin is idled … .”
Should the Health Department scuttle this massive economy-regenerating, and, on net, pollution-reducing project – coupled with its prior de facto mill upgrade scuttling and its parental-leave and sick-leave edicts – it should be renamed as the Allegheny County Politburo.
There’s a quite telling nugget of truth buried in a Pittsburgh Business Times story about the fading fortunes of the old Chamber of Commerce building in downtown Pittsburgh.
As the Business Times tells it, the 126-year-old, 16-story tower generated no outside bids when it hit the sheriff’s auction block on Nov. 2.
“Instead, the plaintiff and loan holder for the building, a commercial mortgage-backed securities trust organized by an affiliate of Goldman Sachs, made an opening bid of $1.4 million on the property.
“There were no other competing bids, allowing the lender to take over as the new owner. That, after its previous owner, 411 Seventh Avenue Associates LP, faced foreclosure.”
The low priced “shocked” those in the appraising community, including Scott Brazinski, in the Pittsburgh office of Valbridge Property Advisors.
“I think that sale price on a per square foot basis is going to be the new bottom for a downtown office sale,” he said. “I’ve honestly never seen anything that low before.”
He noted that the $1.4 million price translates to not much more than $4 a square foot for the property, expecting sale prices for fully vacant buildings downtown, which the Chamber of Commerce building is not, to fetch in the range of $20 to $40 a square foot.
But here’s what we find quite telling: Brazinski said he expected such a property would fetch a higher sales price — based on the expectation of getting public grant funding mainly for a residential conversion.
Which more than indicates to us that the appetite for such a shortsighted public policy that distorts the marketplace while turning robbed taxpayers into involuntary venture capitalists is waning.
In the grand scheme of things, that’s great news. Developer wealthfare long has been out of control in Pittsburgh. Pushing off costs onto taxpayers, costs that should be borne solely by developers, does not make such projects suddenly “affordable.”
And no amount of vivid lipstick on the same old pig of a public policy should allowed to be continually applied.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
