Downtown affordable housing projects and others set to receive key tax credit to go forward

After sitting on an empty downtown property for nearly three years, David Massaro can now see a financially viable plan for what’s next at 421 Seventh Avenue, a modest-sized office building that hasn’t been used much since Pittsburgh Technical Institute closed up toward the end of 2022.

Since then, Massaro, president of Massaro Properties LLC, a division of his family’s larger construction company, said they considered prospects to turn the building into a hotel as well as into market rate residential only for the cost to be too prohibitive.

Yet Massaro and its joint venture partner, Cleveland-based CHN Housing Partners were named one of six new affordable housing projects in Pittsburgh to receive a Low Income Housing Tax Credit award through the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency.