Should taxpayers reward the failure of a private business? Of course not.
The question arises – again – as an ancillary note to a Post-Gazette story that yet another business is fleeing Pittsburgh’s Golden Triangle.
The Edgar Snyder law firm will leave its space in the U.S. Steel Tower on Grant Street to relocate to what’s now known as The Cascade, the former Equitable Resources building on the near North Shore.
Edgar Snyder will occupy 21,400 square feet in the six-story building that fronts the Allegheny River between Acrisure Stadium and PNC Park. It is owned by the NAI Burns Scalo real estate firm.
News of the law firm’s move comes fast on the heels of report by the Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) real estate firm detailing how downtown Pittsburgh office buildings had lost a net of nine tenants since 2020. That, in a Downtown in which observers fear might soon see a vacancy rate of 30 percent.
Per last week’s P-G story:
“JLL attributed the relocations more to a flight to quality than concerns about safety. It stated that tenants are becoming increasingly attracted to buildings that offer amenities like childcare facilities, fitness centers, better ventilation, indoor and outdoor gathering areas and restaurant-grade cafeterias.
“After buying 225 North Shore Drive in 2019, NAI Burns Scalo launched an overhaul last year, one that included major renovations to the lobby and the addition of Convive Coffee. The building also is the only one on the North Shore to have integrated underground parking,” the P-G notes.
Many of the buildings that businesses have been leaving failed to read the marketplace and update their amenities as those on the fringe of the Golden Triangle have.
And some of those long-in-the-tooth buildings, having failed to respond to market signals, now are seeking or being offered all manner of taxpayer subsidies in a government central-planning effort to turn their buildings into residential units, typically with a cohort of “affordable housing” units.
Back to our original point: Why should taxpayers be forced to cover the failures of private building owners who ignored market entreaties to keep their offerings up to date, more contemporary or converted to another use?
They should not be. And that’s not rocket science. And when the marketplace signals that something is not economically efficient, it is not a signal for government to dubiously turn taxpayers into venture capitalists in a hubristic effort to “make it so.”
And the evidence has become abundantly clear that such government-directed conversions are outrageously more expensive than those private – private efforts that are less encumbered by the nearly infinite onerous government rules at various levels.
Our heartiest congratulations to those who know and understand the marketplace and who are willing to risk their own money in pursuit of profit.
But our wettest raspberries to those and their government enablers who continue to think it’s acceptable to shake down the public kitty for projects that the marketplace clearly has decreed has no business being pursued.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
