Pittsburgh City Council has a chance to strike a blow for better public policy. But that’s about as likely as the council deciding to ratchet back bike lanes on congested city streets.
The council must vote on whether to accept the Pittsburgh Stadium Authority’s dubious vote to extend its existence until April 2049. But this authority should have ceased to exist, as the authority itself declared, with the demolition of Three Rivers Stadium in 2001.
The Stadium Authority was created more than a half-century ago to shepherd the construction of Three Rivers. It voted itself a 21-year extension on life in late July. Four years ago, it sought an extension of between 35 and 50 years.
But that proposal had no legs when then-Pittsburgh City Councilman (and mayor-in-waiting) Bill Peduto argued that the authority should cease to exist when the debt on the West General Robinson Street parking garage was retired 15 years hence, in December 2028. Thus, the Stadium Authority voted, in 2013, to extend its life until then.
The authority long has had nothing to do with sports stadiums. These days it oversees the 25 acres or so of property between PNC Park and Heinz Field.
That acreage now is nearly fully developed. It was done so in a sweetheart deal with the sports franchises and a handpicked master developer, void of any competitive bidding that has led to cookie-cutter architecture best described as “meh” – vanilla and boring.
It’s to what government-backed and or –directed central planning typically leads.
Mary Conturo, the authority’s executive director, defended the extension to the Post-Gazette. It is part of a long-term joint financing deal – still being negotiated – with the Pittsburgh-Allegheny County Sports & Exhibition Authority (which owns the sports stadiums on the public’s behalf, and for which Conturo also conveniently serves as executive director) for fixed-rate financing for three North Shore parking garages.
The Stadium Authority owns two North Shore parking garages and some surface lots; the SEA owns another garage.
The move ostensibly is designed to replace shorter term financing with longer term financing to capitalize on lower interest rates, Conturo told the newspaper.
The terms of that proposed financing – 20 to 25 years – necessitated the authority extending its life beyond 2028, she said.
Ah, we see: Keep yourself alive by reorganizing your debt to keep yourself “needed.” Only in government, right?
Or as Allegheny Institute President Jake Haulk pointedly asks: “(W)hich came first, the refinancing or the vote to extend (the life of the Stadium Authority)?”
He wonders into what next the authority might inject itself to justify its continuing existence.
As far as Mayor Peduto goes, he and his administration appear to have had a change of heart regarding the Stadium Authority’s demise. In 2013, Peduto favored the authority becoming part of the city’s Urban Development Authority.
As Chief of Staff Kevin Acklin told the P-G last week, a Stadium Authority review (again, how convenient) of folding itself into the SEA, the URA or the city Parking Authority (which would have made the most sense) might have led to “additional transactional costs without significant public benefit.”
But that is a specious argument on its face.
Do remember, as the Allegheny Institute reminded in 2012, that, as per the Stadium Authority’s own website in 2001, the authority’s “existence and function will conclude with the planned demolition of Three Rivers Stadium.”
Sixteen years later, the authority is still around. And it will be around for another 32 years — unless Pittsburgh City Council puts the kibosh on the charade of rubber stamping an extension on a duplicative authority that already should have been long out of business.
Colin McNickle is a senior fellow and media specialist at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
