Pittsburgh plans to transform office spaces into housing to boost Downtown life

Downtown Pittsburgh Partnership, a nonprofit community development organization, wants to more than double the residential population in the city over the next decade.

In a quarterly address this week, the organization said it plans to to raise residential numbers Downtown from 7,000 to more than 15,000 by repurposing commercial office spaces.

“Downtown Pittsburgh is one of the least diverse places from a use perspective,” Jeremy Waldrup, president and CEO of PDP said.

Over the past several years there has been a large discussion over whether or not Downtown Pittsburgh is considered safe as trouble has driven away business owners.

“Unless there are new large anchor tenants coming into the market, 30 to 40% of office space could be vacant within the next decade,” said Aaron Sukenik, PDP’s vice president of district development.

In October 2024, Gov. Josh Shapiro announced nearly $600 million of investments for Downtown Pittsburgh including roughly 1,000 new housing units, improvements to public spaces in the Golden Triangle and increased public safety efforts.

Since then, The Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership unveiled a three-year strategic plan to revitalize the Downtown area and increase retail occupancy by 10% within the next decade.

Currently, residential occupancy in Downtown stands at about 93.7% which is up about 2.5% since last quarter, according to PDP officials.

“There’s currently are 1,062 residential units already in the pipeline for delivery to market over the next three years,” said Cate Irvin, PDP’s senior director of economic development.

In the Downtown office space, market vacancies are at nearly 19% — as companies downsize as workers move to remote and hybrid work schedules.

Meyer, Unkovic & Scott law firm was one example of this phenomenon, which is moving from the Oliver Building, where the office has been located since the late 80s, to the U.S. Steel Tower.

Christopher Smith Jr., managing partner at Meyer, Unkovic & Scott, said the law firm will going from 38,000 square feet to 32,000 square feet due to the “evolving technology,” which allows employees to work out of the office.

Irvin said the vacancy trend is not unexpected or misaligned with surrounding cities.

According to data collected from JLL, total vacancies, which is made up of direct vacancies and active subleased spaces, for Pittsburgh is at 23.3% while surrounding cities show a similar trend, such as Philadelphia at 20.4% and Cleveland at 21.3%.

Currently, the Downtown area is made up of 66% work and office spaces — they hope to bring this number down to 45% within the next few years.

“Downtown Pittsburgh is a part of a national reset and our ability to stabilize will depend on how we respond,” said Cate Irvin, PDP’s senior director of economic development.