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Clear View Strategies
158 48th Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15201
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The Client: The Mosites Company and East Liberty Development, Inc.
The Task: To Complete the First-Ever Transit Oriented Development in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The Story: Eastside Development is a $90 million mixed-use, urban renewal project located adjacent to a transit hub that serves more than 63,500 riders a day. This development alone has the capability to rejuvenate a neighborhood within the City of Pittsburgh that has been deteriorating economically and socially for more than 30 years. The Developer engaged Clear View Strategies to formulate and execute a plan that would result in the integration of transit and pedestrian access with the development, the support and collaboration of a multitude of public agencies and the acquisition of nearly $7 million in public funds.
The Dilemma: Transit Oriented Development as a community development method has never been implemented in Western Pennsylvania. No less than seven public agencies have an interest in the properties that are being assembled as the final phase of Eastside Development; most of which do not have real estate development as their core business. None of the agencies has additional funding for which to dedicate to the advancement of this project phase. For the Developer to accomplish Eastside, it is imperative that these agencies be motivated to support it, dedicate their staff and resources to work on it, and lobby for funds on the state level to complete it.
The Approach: Clear View developed a strategy that consisted of three facets: generate local interest in Eastside Transit Oriented Development; coordinate local multi-agency efforts; and obtain state government support.
We first developed speaking points and coordinated materials that depicted Eastside Transit Oriented Development as a priority investment congruent with local and regional economic development and transportation plans. Clear View Strategies targeted seven area agencies that potentially had an interest in Eastside. We then delivered one-on-one presentations to officials at the local levels of each of those agencies. Calculated, follow-up phone calls and meetings were conducted continually with each official to keep them up-to-date on the progress of Eastside Development and our funding initiatives. The premise of this strategy was education: to enlighten local stakeholders; build awareness of the benefits of Eastside Development; and foster relationships that would be of assistance throughout the process.
As part of the next phase, Clear View Strategies put together a plan for only those agencies whose collaboration would be needed to complete Eastside Transit Oriented Development. The premise of this phase hinged on the ability of Clear View Strategies to convince these agencies, whose core businesses are not development, that Eastside was a priority project and that they should commit resources to complete it. For instance, three of the public agencies all owned property within Eastside Development. It was therefore necessary to coordinate these agencies individually and collectively to complete pre-development activities like planning studies, real estate due diligence, local approvals and funding strategies. Clear View conducted a series of meetings held collectively with these key stakeholder agencies and built momentum for support and coordination of the above mentioned tasks. We relied primarily upon Clear View Strategies skills as relationship and consensus builders to achieve our desired results.
Finally, Clear View Strategies identified non-traditional funding sources for planning studies and infrastructure costs, submitted grant applications and then lobbied state officials for approval of those funds. The awareness, momentum and support that Clear View Strategies built on the local level was a key factor in receiving approvals at the state level. The state agencies relied heavily upon the opinions and advice of officials at the local level during their decision making processes.
The Results: Through the relationships and collaboration that Clear View Strategies was able to achieve at the local and state level, we were able to assist the Developer in obtaining: $1 million Hometown Streets Safe Routes to School Program grant to fund some of the pedestrian infrastructure components of Eastside Development; $80,500 in Land Use Initiative Planning funds to study ways to integrate the transit hub and service into Eastside TOD; and $168,500 Business In Our Sites Planning Grant to conduct a variety of pre-development activities on the Eastside TOD. Along the way, Clear View Strategies discovered other state grant and loan programs that fund high density, urban renewal development projects. To that end we developed grant applications for other Business In Our Sites funding that resulted in the acquisition of an additional $6.2 million.
Upon completion of the final phase of development, Eastside will become Western Pennsylvania's first Transit Oriented Development. |
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