You Can’t Build That Here - 3525 Beechwood Blvd
For our fourteenth entry in our “You Can’t Build That Here!” series, we hop on our bikes, coast on down to the jail trail and then head up Greenfield Ave (it helps to either be on an E-bike or switch into low gear here) into Greenfield.
Each entry in this series highlights a currently existing building that would be illegal to build under the existing zoning code. The purpose is to highlight how flawed our zoning code is.
Today, we’re looking at 3525 Beechwood Blvd - a 2-story brick building that can easily be mistaken for a single family home from the front, but is actually a fourplex.
This apartment building is a brick, 2 story building with 4 apartments. The apartment entrances are in the front with a walkway leading to a sidewalk. The building contains a basement that can be accessed through the apartments and from the side. This building is located near Greenfield’s shops on Murray Ave and is a mere 4 minute walk to the Giant Eagle (half of which is walking through the grocery store’s parking lot).
Like much of Greenfield, it was built sometime between 1910 and 1923, as it shows up on the 1923 historical maps. A 2-bedroom unit rents at about $1,050.
The 40 ft by 125.17 ft lot it sits on is parcel number 88-B-44 and is zoned R2-M (residential 2, moderate density).
This building would not be allowed today for multiple reasons. To start, the building has 4 apartments and R2 zoning only allows up to a duplex to be built. So, if this building were to be torn down and rebuilt, you could only build half the number of units. Further, the lot is only 5,007 square feet. Moderate zoning requires a minimum of 1,800 square feet per unit, which means this lot can have a maximum of two units. R2-M requires a 30 foot front yard setback, this building has a maximum of 20 foot setback. R2-M requires 5 ft interior sideyard setbacks. But this 33 ft wide building is on a 40 ft wide lot.
This building also does not have the minimum number of required parking spaces according to 914.02. - Off-Street Parking Schedules of the zoning code. At a minimum, R2 residential should have 1 off-street parking space per unit, for a total of 2 parking spaces. However, this building has 4 units and needs 1 parking space per unit for a minimum of 4 spaces. There is no off-street parking for this building.
If we want to solve the housing crisis in Pittsburgh, we need to make a number of reforms to our zoning policy. Just to build this building anew, we need to:
Every day that passes without making these common sense reforms is another day where the city shouts “You can’t build that here!”
By John Akey with contributions by Jack Billings.
