He shoots! He slays! So to speak.
“He” is Bill Demchak, CEO of Pittsburgh-based banking giant PNC Financial Services Group.
At the late April annual meeting of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, he spoke truth to city leaders apparently paralyzed from the head up on how to restore what by too many accounts is a derelict Downtown.
And he also took a hardly tacit shot at the rah-rah-sis-boom-bah-ers – some in media, others being the usual chamber of commerce types — who insist downtown Pittsburgh is a safe and inviting place and that old office space should be converted into apartment spaces.
“For everybody who’s involved in creating the road map that makes it a choice to want people to be Downtown, I would simply say this: You have to make it easy, and today it is not easy,” Demchak said.
As the Post-Gazette reported it:
“From pervasive homelessness and high-profile violent crime to boarded-up buildings that ‘never have a hope of being converted to residential,’ Mr. Demchak said Pittsburgh’s leaders need to do more to create a more welcoming environment for visitors and job seekers.
“’We need honest conversations of how that happens,’ he said. ‘Because the modern office of the 21st century is where people want to go. It’s not going to be where I tell them.’”
And the stories appear to grow worse and worse each week about what downtown Pittsburgh has become.
Open urination, defecation and drug dealing.
Ever more aggressive panhandling, those drug abusers, in no small numbers, passed out and/sleeping anywhere and everywhere in public.
Long-standing businesses picking up and leaving or seriously considering it.
And violent episode after violent episode.
But then, incredibly, in the same meeting, Mayor Ed Gainey makes this delusional statement:
“We need people to return to work. Part of public safety is having people Downtown. The more people we have Downtown, the more we’re going to feel safe.”
But part of public safety is not having people Downtown, it’s protecting those who are Downtown. In the current climate of things, the more people who might go Downtown are going to feel at incredible risk of being harassed or event violently attacked.
It is not merely a perception that Downtown is unsavory, it is the reality. And, in this reality, urging more people to be in downtown Pittsburgh is irresponsible and reckless – until city officials can show tangible proof that they are addressing the problem.
By the way, early Monday morning, in the heart of downtown Pittsburgh, a 50-year-old man was brutally attacked, allegedly by at least three juveniles in what police say was a robbery attempt.
The trio were arrested and charged. The victim was listed in critical condition at a local hospital.
Should this urban wretchedness not abate, city leaders and cheerleaders should feign no surprise when the likes of Bill Demchak and his heavily taxpayer-subsidized PNC announce that even they are pulling up stakes and moving to safer environs.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the
Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
