Drone measures parking in Greensburg as developers pitch 99 new apartments

A drone hovered above a parking lot in Greensburg this week, taking photos to measure parking usage on South Pennsylvania Avenue.

The photographs it took are part of a parking study that could help decide whether 99 new apartment units will be built downtown.

Arizona developer Urban Communities partnered with Greensburg’s planning department and Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s department of geography and regional planning for the parking study.

Urban Communities has plans to renovate two long-vacant Greensburg buildings to create 57 apartments at 225 S. Pennsylvania Ave. and 42 at 114 S. Main Street.

The Phoenix-based company’s business model is building mid-range apartments that fit in the middle ground between government-subsidized affordable housing and expensive luxury apartments, said Ben Samson, Urban Communities’ vice president of development for the steel valley.

“(People) are looking for apartments, and nobody is there to really serve the middle,” he said.

The company has established operations in the Great Lakes, Pacific Northwest and Pittsburgh regions.

The two Greensburg buildings are among the company’s first local endeavors, along with a proposed project in Slippery Rock.

However, Greensburg’s zoning code poses a problem, Samson said.

The city requires any new construction provide plenty of parking spaces for its tenants. To build 99 apartment buildings would require building almost 200 parking spaces, and there’s nowhere in the city to do it, Samson said.

“Right now, as it stands, nobody would be able to build any housing in the entire City of Greensburg,” he said.

That’s where the parking study comes in.

Eye in the sky

Urban Communities plans to make a case to Greensburg’s zoning hearing board that the city has enough existing parking to service its tenants. While most of the spaces in the Buncher parking lot on South Pennsylvania Avenue are leased, the company hopes to come to an agreement with the city to allow its tenants to use the lot at night, when commuters have gone home.

John Benhart, chair of IUP’s geography and regional planning department, and student Spencer Samios made several trips to the lot this to get a drone’s-eye view. They took high-resolution photos from 200 feet above the lot at midday and during the evening, on weekdays and weekends, to see how parking fluctuates at different times of day.

“Drone technology is good for many things, but one of the things it’s really good for is capturing patterns on the earths surface,” Benhart said. “You can capture it over time and see the change that takes place, or you can model the change that takes place over time.”

Greensburg planning director Jeff Raykes helped arrange the study.

“To understand the built environment, there is no better perspective than getting up in the air,” Raykes said.

Raykes had planned to partner with Benhart and Samios to use the drone for a citywide parking study earlier this year, but the initiative was scrapped due to the coronavirus pandemic. He hopes to revive that idea in the future, but for now the smaller study of the Buncher Lot is a start, he said.

Urban Communities will present its plans to Greensburg’s zoning hearing board at 4 p.m. Wednesday.

False starts

This is not the first time Samson has pitched an apartment building in Greensburg. He’s native to the region, and is part of Pittsburgh-based Atlas Development. Atlas Development CEO Daniel Berkowitz is also president of Urban Communities Steel Valley.

Atlas proposed a 14-unit apartment building on West Otterman Street in 2016, but the project never materialized due to a lack of funding, Samson said.

These new projects are more likely to become a reality thanks to Urban Communities’ backing, as well as Samson and Berkowitz having more experience, Samson said.

“It took us four years of legitimate tax returns and going from startup wide-eyed developers to a real company,” he said.

Greensburg has been trying to court developers for 225 S. Pennsylvania Ave. for years.

The city had hoped to see someone turn the property into a hotel, but developers never responded to the Greensburg Community Development Corporations request for proposals last year.