Not quite sure what to make of Pittsburgh leaders’ big announcement last week of a grand makeover of Point State Park, Market Square and a large swath of the Cultural District?
Join the club. For neither are we.
But, at least at first blush, this “Downtown Revitalization Plan” has all the markers of a rush job to see how many new shades of lipstick can be applied to the same old pig.
A group led by the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, armed with a preliminary plan drafted by a New York landscape architecture and urban design firm, is proposing an expansive plan that would, among other things, include (per the Tribune-Review):
“Point State Park’s eastern portion — the Gateway Center side — could see upgrades and more amenities along its perimeter to attract more residential growth, as well as sports courts or dog parks in the medians on Liberty Avenue, the plan said.
“Liberty Avenue could be adjusted as well, and there could be improved infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists. Running tracks, children’s play areas, an outdoor cafe and dog run areas are being considered.
“In Market Square, there could be new paving, furnishings and other features, as well as a possible restriction in vehicular entry and exit points, the plan said.
“A proposed civic space at Eighth Street in the Cultural District would transform acres of surface parking adjacent to Fort Duquesne Boulevard and the Allegheny River, and it could include a lawn, cafe, outdoor amphitheater, water play, a backyard area with outdoor games, food trucks and furnishings, according to the plan,” the Trib reported.
What all this is going to cost, and who’s going to pay for all these cosmetics, remain huge question marks. But there’s the usual talk of a grand public-private partnership.
Hold on to your wallets, folks.
And although planners say this proposal has been in the works for a few years and was not part of any bid (still not released to the public) to bring the 2026 NFL Draft to Pittsburgh, they now say there’s a sense of urgency to get approvals for the plan and bring it to fruition in time for the draft extravaganza.
Gee, what could possibly go wrong?
All this said, the Allegheny Conference indeed has an ulterior motive beyond spiffing things up for the NFL Draft.
Again, per the Trib:
“A key component of the plan, [conference CEO Stefanie] Pashman said, is enhancing office conversions to residential spaces. To attract more of those spaces, she said city amenities need to support the effort.”
Conversions so full of economic nonsense that they require hefty public subsidies in one form or another.
Yet Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey continues to tout such conversions, replete with their mandatory (and deceptively monikered) “affordable housing” component:
“We know that there’s a demand for housing Downtown — young professionals that want to live Downtown,” the mayor said at the Downtown remake news conference.
“Right now, we already know that the demand is there. The reality is about creating the right formula to ensure that we can do the conversion that’s necessary to make Downtown a neighborhood.”
Well, Mr. Mayor, if there’s such a demand for professionals that want to live Downtown, there should be no need for the kinds of massive taxpayer subsidies being dangled like a carrot from a long stick – the stick that will be used to spank taxpayers.
There can be no respect for this latest iteration of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County leaders who haven’t a clue. It’s far past time to put the cosmetics case away and to act like responsible adults.
Job growth remains anemic. Economic growth is a quaint notion. Over-regulation continues to strangle progress. Population growth is an oxymoron. City schools long have been an expensive failure.
Billions of taxpayer dollars have been squandered as government repeatedly attempted to command the economy and miserably failed. The list is as long as it is obnoxious of the taxpayer-funded projects that were to send us on the path to Nirvana – from stadiums to a convention center, from the North Shore Connector to the new terminal forthcoming at Pittsburgh International Airport.
None has created demand for much of anything. After all, such things don’t create demand; it’s the other way around — demand creates the need for such things.
Taxpayer pockets are being picked on a regular basis to, in some cases, preserve union-backed bloat and gross inefficiencies. The failure to outsource refuse collection and the delivery of water comes to mind, as but two examples.
It was last September, writing in the Elko (Nev.) Daily Free Press, that columnist Dennis Clayson recounted the prophetic Thomas Jefferson quote, “The government you elect is the government you deserve.”
And continually re-elect, despite the grave damage the pols’ ignorant policies inflict on the public weal.
But, Clayson adds, “Awareness is growing that we have a leadership class that is corrupt. In fact, morally bankrupt at a level difficult for most people to fathom, but who put them into office and who keeps them there?”
Or, to paraphrase Shakespeare’s Cassius, “The fault, dear Pittsburghers, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
Underlings too regularly transformed into just as uninformed and just as ignorant sheeple.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
