Who's Moving Downtown? Or, with Suburbs Like These, Who Needs a City?

So high-end condos at the Carlyle are selling like hot cakes. (Twenty units sold already!) Awesome. But I still wonder where all those people are coming from. If they are just moving there from elsewhere in the city, who cares?

Enter this article in the Tribune-Review. Wow. Things sound great:

Bishoff said about 30 percent of Carlyle buyers are out-of-towners who transferred to Pittsburgh. The remainder are primarily suburban residents.

One is Brian Ritz, an attorney with the Downtown firm of Pietragallo Bostick & Gordon who said, "I now own a little piece of the Golden Triangle."

Thirty percent of 20 condos means six are occupied by people who are "out of towners." I guess that means from way out of town. Because the rest are "primarily suburban residents." Which makes most of them new to the city. Follow? Brian Ritz is "one of these," meaning, I presume, a resident of a Pittsburgh suburb. Primarily speaking.

Welcome to the city, Brian! Can we learn a little more about you? Well, sure!

A resident of the city's Friendship area, Ritz said he decided to locate Downtown to be closer to his job and to eliminate the commuting time. He chose a two-bedroom unit on the 15th floor.

Friendship, eh? Is that out by Cranberry? No. Actually, it's where I live.

As the article helpfully points out, it's in the city.

Weird.

How many are from out of town again?

Update: OK. Maybe the Trib just struck out. So let's go see who the Post-Gazette found:

One Carlyle buyer, Brian Ritz, is trading in his Friendship home for a two-bedroom, two-bath unit on the 15th floor. He likened his investment to "owning a piece of the Golden Triangle."

Uh oh. Is every guy in the place named Brian Ritz?

And really. "Ritz"? Sounds pretty upscale. Who's his neighbor? Baron Von Screw the Working Man? If so, I hope he's from Cranberry.

Comments

[Jonathan Potts]

Ouch.

[Anony Mouse]

If you talk to the developers of these projects you'll find out that the people buying these are either those who live in other urban neighborhoods of the city (Shadyside, Friendship, etc...) who think nothing of spending $400k on a place to live, and transplants from other cities who see $400k for a downtown condo and think "Wow, what a deal!" These new downtown residents are not Pittsburgh area suburbanites who have rediscovered the city as hoped.