"I'm not in any rush. I want to do it, I'm not just doing it to do it. We had a vision in mind, we want for-sale condos. I think you need to get certain criteria for that to work, and height is probably one of those, so rather than rush it, we're going to be patient and see if other people share our vision at the next administration."
That's developer Jonathan Moritz, explaining why he'd rather sit on a vacant lot at 1700 Penn Ave than redesign the 64-unit condo tower he wanted to build there. On Dec. 29, 2025, Pittsburgh's Zoning Board of Adjustment turned down the height and setback variances his project needed, and instead of scaling the plan back to fit the Strip District's existing rules, Moritz and his partner Francois Bitz decided to wait out the political cycle. Their site sits a few blocks from three separate construction projects that are moving forward right now without any zoning trouble at all, because none of those projects are trying to sell condos.
That gap is the actual story in the Strip District this fall. The neighborhood has a genuinely large residential pipeline. It just isn't a condo pipeline, and the one project designed specifically to add condos at scale is on hold by choice, not by accident.
What the zoning board actually said no to
The Strip District's Urban Industrial Zoning District caps new buildings at four stories or 60 feet, with a floor area ratio of 3:1, meaning a building's total square footage can run up to three times the size of its lot. Moritz and Bitz asked for a lot more than that at 1700 Penn Ave: a 14-story tower with zero setbacks on either side and a floor area ratio of 10:1, more than triple what the base zoning allows.
The board's chair, Alice Mitinger, explained during the hearing that the code does allow additional height under certain conditions, and that the developers argued they'd met them. The board wasn't convinced on the setback or floor area questions, though it did grant a separate exception allowing multi-residential use on a site that had been zoned for other purposes. That partial approval is why the project isn't dead. It's also why it isn't moving. Multi-residential use without the height and bulk to build a 64-unit tower just means a much smaller building, and Moritz has said publicly he'd rather wait than build something smaller.
You can read the zoning board's decision yourself on the city's development review site for the parcel, which shows the case moving through hearings across 2025 before the board issued its Dec. 29 decision. NEXTpittsburgh's coverage of the ruling includes the full exchange with Moritz about the garage entrances he refused to move to a back alley, a design compromise he made for neighbors during the review process that didn't end up buying him their support anyway.
The cranes around that lot are for renters
Two days before this article was written, McCaffery Interests broke ground on Brickworks, its 300,000-square-foot development spread across eight buildings at 2121 Smallman St, a few blocks from the stalled 1700 Penn Ave site. The plan includes 228 apartments across two large buildings. It also includes a smaller for-sale component: 20 townhouses and 20 two-bedroom units the developer calls "stacked townhouses," which were priced between $800,000 and $1.6 million when the project went through the planning commission. That for-sale slice is real, but it's a minority of the 288 total units, and it sits at a price point well above what most Strip District condo shoppers are working with.
A few blocks over on Railroad Street, Oxford Development's Station 28 is a six-story, 224-unit apartment building that's already under construction, no for-sale units involved. A separate Midwood Investment and Development proposal for a stretch of riverfront land would add 441 more apartments alongside a smaller number of townhomes and a 37,000-square-foot grocery store, and it went before the planning commission in November 2025.
Add those up with the smaller projects working through the city's approval process and you get close to 2,000 planned residential units in a neighborhood whose 2025 State of the Strip District report put the population at roughly 3,242, up sharply since 2015. That's a real construction boom. It's overwhelmingly a rental construction boom.
What's actually for sale right now
The condo side of the Strip District's growth is a much shorter list, and most of it is close to sold out.
- Penn 23, at 2330 Penn Ave, is a completed condo building designed by Indovina Architects and developed by Francois Bitz, the same developer now waiting on 1700 Penn Ave. It's move-in ready now, with only a handful of units remaining.
- 2700 Penn Avenue is a limited series of five townhomes. Two are left.
- Springfield Lofts converted a historic building into 14 condos. Two remain.
- W Lofts, inside the historic Bittner Building at 80 26th St, is the one project still ahead of it. Fourth River Development LLC acquired the 80,000-square-foot warehouse in late December 2025 as part of a planned $23 million redevelopment, adding up to 39 total residences, including 33 condos ranging from 791 to 1,851 square feet, plus rooftop townhomes and flats. Managing principal John Watson told Axios in January 2026 that he expected construction to start that summer, and as of a July 2026 report the project was still described as not yet underway, with work expected in the near future.
That's it. One mid-size conversion still working toward a construction start, three small buildings running out of inventory, and a 64-unit tower that isn't moving because its developer would rather wait than compromise on scale.
What the gap means if you're shopping to buy
The apartment pipeline doesn't compete with condo buyers for anything except construction crews and city planning bandwidth. It doesn't add inventory a condo buyer can actually purchase, and it doesn't put pricing pressure on existing condo buildings the way a comparable wave of new condo supply would. When a neighborhood adds 200 new apartments, existing condo owners don't feel it directly. When a neighborhood adds a 64-unit condo tower, existing condo owners usually do, because buyers suddenly have a bigger comparison set and more room to negotiate.
The Strip District hasn't had that second kind of event happen, and won't until either 1700 Penn Ave gets resolved or another developer proposes something at similar scale. Until then, the comparison set for anyone shopping a Strip District condo is genuinely small: a near-complete building like Penn 23, a couple of units left at 2700 Penn or Springfield Lofts, and a conversion project at the Bittner Building that hasn't broken ground yet. That's a market where sellers in existing buildings don't have much reason to compete hard on price, because there isn't a wall of comparable new supply coming to undercut them.
If you're timing a purchase around W Lofts, worth knowing that Fourth River Development was still finalizing floor plans and exterior details as of January 2026, and a July 2026 update still described the groundbreaking as pending rather than done. Pricing hasn't been released in any report found so far. If you're watching 1700 Penn Ave hoping it eventually adds real scale to the for-sale side, worth knowing that Moritz has been explicit about waiting for a different zoning board composition rather than redesigning, and two of the current board's three members won't see their terms expire until 2027 and 2028.
A few questions worth asking before you tour a building
Does more apartment construction in the Strip mean condo prices will soften? Not on the evidence so far. The apartment pipeline (Brickworks, Station 28, the Midwood proposal) adds rental supply, not ownership supply, so it doesn't create the kind of head-to-head competition that pulls condo prices down. Prices in existing buildings are driven by how many comparable condos are actually for sale, and that number has stayed small.
Is 1700 Penn Ave dead? No, but it's paused by the developer's own choice. The zoning board approved a use exception for the site, so a smaller multi-residential building is possible under current rules. Moritz has said publicly he's holding out for the scale and height his original vision needed rather than build something smaller now.
What should I actually track if I'm interested in W Lofts? The actual groundbreaking date, since a summer 2026 start was still described as pending as of a July 2026 update, and whether Fourth River Development releases pricing before or after construction begins, which will tell you how much room there is to get in early.
If you're trying to make sense of what's actually available to buy in the Strip District right now, versus what's just visible from the sidewalk, New City Pittsburgh tracks these projects as they move through zoning, construction, and sale. Schedule a free consultation and we'll walk you through what's real inventory and what's just noise.
