Pittsburgh leaders announce initiative to revitalize Downtown
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Pittsburgh leaders have unveiled a plan to transform Downtown Pittsburgh, aimed at revitalizing the Golden Triangle into a vibrant neighborhood to live, work and play.
Last summer, Mayor Ed Gainey, his staff and corporate members of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development traveled to Cincinnati, where a non-profit group has been able to convert several of its buildings into residential units and revitalize its downtown. Now, the city and its partners have unveiled plans to try to achieve similar results in Pittsburgh.
It's called a "vision plan." It's high on aspirations and short on details, but the public-private partnership putting it together calls it essential for Downtown's future.
A tour of Downtown shows how things are and how organizers say things could be if their plan is fully implemented.
With more police patrolling the streets and more crews keeping them clean, Downtown has gotten something of a facelift over the past year, but all of that can't hide the fact that more and more storefronts are vacant and many of its office towers are still half empty.
The Gulf Tower emptied during the pandemic and plans to convert it into a hotel and upscale apartments have been on hold for over a year. Owner and developer Aaron Stauber said Pittsburgh lags behind cities across the country in offering the help and incentives to convert office buildings and transform its downtown.
This vision to transform Downtown from a business hub of half-empty office buildings into a new neighborhood with new vibrant public spaces is aimed at attracting people to work, visit or live in a new Golden Triangle.
"All of a sudden, the people and the communities here can see a vibrant neighborhood, and they'll want to come day and night, live, work, play," Stefani Pashman of the Allegheny Conference said.
In a walking tour, flanked by the mayor and the county executive, corporate leaders from the Allegheny Conference on Community Development proposed unlocking the potential of three sites.
They want to remake Market Square into a more welcoming public piazza, eliminating cars for outdoor cafes and places for open-air dining.
Officials want to transform the eastern end of Point State Park into a more people-friendly place of activity and recreation.
Another goal is turning an empty lot on Eighth Street and Penn Avenue into a sprawling public park, complete with entertainment spaces and a promenade connecting Downtown with the Allegheny Riverfront and the North Side.
"It's going to be great as we sell the region to new businesses, to tourists, and we can definitely use it as an economic driver, but it is an investment in the people," county executive Sara Innamorato said.
The so-called vision plan is just that -- a vision and an aspiration.
The renderings supplied to reporters are just ideas and the starting point for a design process expected to take at least several months. Additionally, the conference isn't talking about how the projects would be funded. This price tag is likely in the tens of millions of dollars and several public and private partners will need to dig deep.
"We have a real partnership with a number of entities, from the business community to the public sector at the state level, at the local level, [and] philanthropy," Pashman added.
If or when the projects are completed, the sponsors believe they will go hand-in-glove with the effort to convert Downtown office buildings into residential units. The city is asking the state for millions of dollars to incentivize building owners to convert their buildings.
"We're talking to everybody. We're talking to the delegation in Harrisburg. We're talking to everybody as we go forward. We know in order to transform, we need to make this into a neighborhood," Mayor Gainey said.
Funding for this plan is unclear, and the renderings are only preliminary, but organizers say this is a vision for Downtown which is essential for its survival.