Downtown Pittsburgh's fire-ravaged Midtown Towers won't reopen until fall 2019
Renovation work is set to begin on Midtown Towers this month, nearly a year after a deadly fire ripped through the 110-year-old Downtown Pittsburgh high-rise and displaced more than 100 residents.
It's still going to be a while before anyone can move back in.
Property owner Beacon Communities has notified former residents that they should be able to return in fall 2019.
“Because of the extensive smoke and water damage resulting from the fire, the building interior must be gutted entirely and rebuilt, and we expect construction will take about 18 months,” Beacon Communities CEO Pamela Goodman wrote in a letter to residents dated last Thursday.
“We are truly sorry for the disruption to your lives that the fire has caused,” Goodman added. “Please know that we are doing everything possible to move this process along as quickly as we can.”
Sixth-floor resident Mary Louise Robinson, 75, died in the May 15 fire.
Officials believe Robinson caused the seven-alarm fire by smoking a cigarette in or near her bed.
Beacon Communities did not own the 18-story building at the time of the fire. It assumed control of the property in June.
Goodman attributed the delay in renovations to a “slow and complicated” process involving the company's insurer, architect, contractor and team of consultants and city officials.
The city issued the first permit approval related to the construction work in late February, Goodman said.
A city spokesperson could not immediately provide further information in response to a Tribune-Review request made late Tuesday.
Once renovations are completed, the overhauled Midtown Towers “will seem like a new building in many ways,” with brand-new kitchens, bathrooms and living spaces, Goodman said.
The building will be equipped with fire sprinklers — something it lacked when last year's fire filled hallways and stairwells with thick, black smoke around 3 a.m.
A resident and another man heard glass breaking and spotted 3- to 4-foot flames shooting out a sixth-floor window, spurring them to rush inside and race up and down the building banging on doors to alert residents and help pull some to safety.
Shortly after the fire, Pittsburgh officials told the Tribune-Review that the building had no current violations related to safety systems and had passed an inspection in March 2016. Sprinkler systems did not become a high-rise requirement until 1990.
Several tenants had lamented not having sprinklers and expressed other safety concerns such as the building's fire alarm not being loud enough or startling enough.
Some elderly residents had called Midtown Towers home for decades.
The displaced tenants were initially offered temporary housing at hotels in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood and Monroeville followed by other short-term apartment options.
Those who stuck around have been given free renter's insurance and bus passes, according to Beacon Communities.
Those who had been living in Midtown Towers as affordable housing tenants have retained their monthly subsidies, a requirement of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“We are happy that renovations are commencing and that we are preserving the critically important affordable housing” for qualified residents, Josh Cohen, vice president of development, said Tuesday in a statement. “We recognize the trauma and inconvenience that resulted from the fire, and we look forward to being able to welcome residents back into their homes.”
It's unclear how many displaced residents will choose to return.
At least a few have found alternative housing on their own.
Beacon Communities said it plans to call a resident meeting “in the near future” to answer questions and provide further updates.
Natasha Lindstrom is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach her at 412-380-8514, nlindstrom@tribweb.com or via Twitter @NewsNatasha.
