After reaching a series of compromises with the developer, despite the significant expansion of parking spaces, the Pittsburgh Planning Commission has approved a long-awaited plan to rebuild the 178-acre Hazelwood Green site.

After years of planning, a 4-0 vote on Tuesday was the latest good news for transforming the former steel plant site into a new urban community. The vote took place a few days after promising to build a $100 million biomedical research and manufacturing facility at the site. Supporters of the project said that more good news is coming.

After the committee voted for the plan, Jonathan Kamin, a lawyer for the development consortium Almono, said: “We look forward to coming back soon to share some very exciting news with you.”

The vote resolved a series of issues raised in recent weeks that involved proposed changes to designs developed before 2018. In the proposal, Almono tried to reduce the minimum height requirements of some buildings and increase the parking space supply at the site to 5,500. This raises concerns that the resulting project will make Green more like a large shopping mall than a mixed-use urban community that has long been envisaged.

Kamen and Kristen Hall, another consultant of the project, emphasized that, as Hall said, the project needs to be flexible in "frankly speaking, it is now a challenging market."

"The situation changes," Cumming agreed. "Although this is 10 years in the making, we are indeed at the forefront of the plan and we need to be flexible."

Nevertheless, Cumming believes that developers are "rational actors. No one wants to build more parking spaces than we need." He emphasized that parking is a transitional step, and green may one day become obsolete.

To prove that such a thing is possible, he showed the committee aerial photos of the Las Vegas Strip area, highlighting the ocean parking lot that existed in 2005 but shrank dramatically in 15 years.

"We actually have a perfect example to illustrate this process [of] the disappearance of temporary parking spaces [which] actually happened organically in the Strip District," he said.

City planners suggested that the committee should add a sunset clause that limits parking time to 40 years as a condition of approval. This measure was not included in the final plan, but after weeks of discussions with planners and others, the developer agreed to establish rules for parking spaces and ensure that parking requirements are reviewed before all spaces are built.

On Tuesday, after Commissioner Becky Mingo expressed concern that the site would not be used as a shuttle parking lot for hospitals and other staff to take buses to work elsewhere in the town, they made further commitments at the meeting . Cumming agreed to add language to ensure that any parking is related to the use of the green site itself.

Almono made similar concessions with regard to the location of the warehouse—limiting the number of such facilities on the entire site to four—and restricting the types of buildings that can use lower height requirements.

City zoning manager Corey Layman (Corey Layman) said that these measures are to "provide some protection for the larger area. Large retail issues have been raised."

Such efforts are sufficient to gain the support of the Hazelwood Initiative, a community organization whose executive director is the only member of the public to comment on the plan on Tuesday.

Sonya Tilghman said the developer’s concessions “helped alleviate the community’s concerns about the proliferation of large retailers on the site.”

She said that increasing parking spaces is reasonable because "we still don't have enough demand" for public transportation services that can reduce dependence on cars.

The committee's vote means that the zoning changes sought by the developers will be submitted to the City Council, which seems likely to be approved: Councillor Corey O'Connor (Corey O'Connor), who represents the area, supports the proposal. However, although the committee also approved the corresponding site plan, its members will hear about the project in the next few years.

As Kamin said, "As various pieces come together, we will not come back to you many times."

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