PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh exists for three reasons: the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio.
In the 20th century, the banks of those rivers were controlled by industrial behemoths. They largely lost that identity after the waning of the steel industry in the 1980s. Over the last two decades, however, the city’s progress in clearing and cleaning its waterfront has created 12 miles of recreational trails, three professional sports stadiums, several boat landings and an influx of nearly 2,000 new downtown residents.
The city has managed to leverage a $124 million investment in publicly accessible riverfront into $4 billion in corporate, public, nonprofit and entertainment development downtown.
That success has renewed a debate that would have been unthinkable in Pittsburgh’s polluted industrial heyday: how best to expand public access to the shorelines of the three rivers. Projects proposed for two of the largest tracts left to be developed on the downtown fringe illustrate the opportunities and limits of public-private partnerships.
This month, the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority approved preliminary plans for an $80 million to $90 million investment in new roads, streets and utilities on a 178-acre former industrial site that is the biggest remaining waterfront property in the city. The developers will use a tool called tax increment financing, which earmarks a portion of a site’s future property taxes to build its infrastructure. Such financing, approved by both the authority and the City Council on a case-by-case basis, has galvanized redevelopment on Pittsburgh’s complex industrial sites.
The latest project, which uses the acronym Almono for the city’s three rivers, is a case in point. It envisions a $900 million office, industrial and residential development on a former steel and coke manufacturing site on the Monongahela River that closed in 1997.
In 2002, an alliance of four philanthropies bought the property for $10 million to protect it for postindustrial development. “It was a once-in-a-century opportunity to develop the riverfront, and we thought foundations, as nonprofit owners, could supply patient money,” said William P. Getty, president of the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation.
The current Almono partnership comprises the Heinz Endowments, the Benedum Foundation and an affiliate of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development. It is managed by the Regional Industrial Development Corporation of Southwestern Pennsylvania, a nonprofit economic development group.
The former industrial site occupies a strategic location between downtown and two rapidly expanding research institutions, the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon. Both universities lease space in the adjacent Pittsburgh Technology Park. Carnegie Mellon also conducts robotics field testing at the Almono site.
Donald F. Smith Jr., president of the development corporation, says the partnership is talking with both universities about their futures at the site. “The universities are important players,” he noted. “They will have space needs for their tech transfer efforts.”
Private developers will be asked to submit proposals for four interconnected zones on the Monongahela River that will include two million square feet of office space, research and clean manufacturing, and 1,200 residential units. The master plan developed by the Rothschild Doyno Collaborative, an architecture and urban design firm, calls for alternative technologies for energy generation and storm and wastewater management, along with 25 acres of parks, trails and river access. The design also suggests new uses for a few historic structures, like a rail yard roundhouse and a 1,300-foot-long steel mill.
“Riverfront access, beautification and redevelopment of the entire neighborhood is important,” said Jim Richter, executive director of the Hazelwood Initiative, a community development organization.
While plans include continued traffic on a CSX rail line through the site, a proposed highway has been suspended because of its $4 billion price tag and community opposition.
Square Feet: Pittsburgh Seeks to Expand Riverfront Access to the Public
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Square Feet: Pittsburgh Seeks to Expand Riverfront Access to the Public
