An end to Riverfront Parking in the strip?

At its December 2010 Board meeting the Urban Redevelopment Authority approved a creative deal intended to kick start development on the former Pennsylvania Railroad yard in the Strip District. In early February 2011 the City approved acceptance of $15 million of State development funds to prepare the site's infrastructure.

The area from 16th to 21st Street has been a railroad yard from almost the beginnings of the Pennsylvania Roalroad. The area downriver of Sixteenth Street was a railroad yard from the Great Depression era to the early 70s. (Before the DEpression it was the site of some of Pittsburgh's earliest foundries -- see Schoenberger Iron Works).

The Terminal Building, originally built to get the wholesale businesses out of the Golden Triangle in the 20s, will include the nonprofit-managed Pittsburgh market and other uses that create revenue for the Buncher Company.

The Buncher Company has been able to be in the right place to take advantage of opportunities. In the Seventies they were able to acquire key parcels of real estate just outside of the Golden Triangle from Penn Central Railroad as the railroad was forced to sale under fiscal duress. The Buncher Company may have had great ideas for developing the site. The PResident of the Buncher Company, Herbert Green, said that "They did not acquire the property just to look at it"

But "look at it" is what all Pittsburghers did...for over thirty years. The best use of the property was for parking...and there was no reason for Buncher to invest in improvements when revenue can be generated by the hundreds of cars that park there nearly every day.

Finally the wait may be over...and it appears Buncher's hold out wore down the public sector to the tune of at least $15 million (and probably much more public investment - stay tuned). Buncher will develop the parcel in return for the promise of rental income from the publically owned Terminal Buildings.

The area downriver of the Sixteenth Street will remain for parking for the foresseable future. Although the abandoned Seagate Building may find a reuse as a high tech incubator of sorts. The Seagate Building is owned by the Buncher Company and under lease to Seagate for another five years...even though Seagate abandoned the building in 2007.

I wonder if there were any other proposals for the Terminal Buildings reuse? The public planning process will begin earnest in 2011.

The Golden Triangle Boundary of the Allegheny

As I begin my riverfront ramble around Pittsburgh I need to pay homage to the first recorded rambles around the point: the surveyors for the Penn Family. Obviously they were not the first walkers nor the first to record visits in their journal...but they were the first to methodically walk along the riverbank for the purpose of creating boundaries...boundaries that still impact our infrastructure and neighborhoods.

The boundary near where my hike started, below the Fort Wayne Railroad Bridge, was marked by George Woods and Thomas Vickroy as surveyors for the Penn Estate in 1784. The descendants of William Penn were preparing to sale the last of the their lands originally provided in the 1681 Charter from Charles II to their ancestor.

My journey started very near the upper right corner of this map...where Watt Street meets the Allegheny River.

The legal property transfers went like this:

(1) Since the Penns took pride in actually purchasing its land from the native Americans, the Penns acquired 'clean' title to the Pittsburgh area by the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix

(2) In preparing their lands for sale the Penns tended to separate the most valuable lands for their future use. The lands were called Manors and the Manor of Pittsburgh was laid out in 1769.

(3) While the Penns struggled to remian neutral during the Revolutionary War, they could not deny that their claim was derived from English Royalty...the loser. During the War the Pennsylvania Legislature divested the Penns of all their land by statute...but they were kind enough to pay the Penns for the divested land and allowed them to keep their Manors. But the Penns were no longer deriving income from their original Charter...so they eventually needed to sale their remaining lands.

(4) To prepare the lands for sale the Penns asked that its Manor be subdivided into Lots. George Woods and Thomas Vickroy were slected for the job.

Thomas Vickroy recalled the event some half a century later:

We arrived in Pittsburgh in the month of May, 1784, and the first thing we did was to circumscribe the ground where we intended to lay the town out. We began up about where Grant Street now is, on the bank of the Monongahela, and proceeded down the Monongahela, according to the meanderings of the river, to its junction with the Allegheny River. Then up the Allegheny River on the bank, keeping on the bank a certain distance, up to about Washington's Street; from thence to Grant's Hill, thence along Grant's Hill to the place of the beginning. I made a draft of it in Mr. Woods' presence, throwing it into a large scale to see how it would answer to lay out into lots and streets. After that there was a good deal of conversation, and the ground was viewed by Mr. Woods and the persons who lived at the place to fix on the best plan to lay out the town with the greatest convenience.

The Penn's first sale of land in 1784 was to James O'Hara and it was the area between Fort Pitt and the Allegheny River. The legal traditions of recording property ownership in Allegheny County started during this period.

Mayor Masloff's RiverWalk Park

Hidden in the urban riparian forest between the Veterans and Sixteenth Street Bidge is this huge rock and monument for a trail constructed in December 1990. Twenty years later it is a reminder of the aggressive and political issue that riverfront development was during the decade of the '80s.

By the end of 1990 I had been back in Pittsburgh for only one year and was incredibly naive to the ways of Pittsburgh politics (some would say I remain incredibly naive but that is the subject of another blog). In the late 80s there was a pitched battle between the Planning commission and City Council over a multi-million $ entertainment district proposal called "Down-by-the-Riverside". Fortunately the Planning Commission , with its requirement for more design oversight and approval, won.

This development and others in the 80s generated enough awareness about the development potential of the City's riverfront that there was a flurry of official studies, including:

1. The Department of City Planning's Riverfront Plan.
2. And when advocates of more access and/or more development complained about that Plan, the Mayor created a special Riverfront Commission to make further recommendations.
3. And even a Citizen's Commission on Riverfront Development sponsored by the Citizens' League of Southwestern Pennsylvania

In light of all this the plaque and its listing of numerous City agencies and many private sector partners seems to be a plea for compromise. But the one thing they forgot was that any project without a longterm stewardship plan is bound to fail.

So now, Twenty years after the rock is placed along the Strip's Riverfront we find it hidden among the growth and another development proposal for the site being advanced. Lets hope this proposal has more partners and that there are even more names on the next monument rock.

the Northern Liberties

The exploration actually started in the beauty of Pittsburgh's Autumn. In late October I walked the Strip District, the Northern Liberties of the early 19th century. If I had waited until 2011 I would not have had much to say until spring, I am not going to walk if the cold and wind make it painful.

The exploraton heads upstream as I will return to the Golden Triangle later in the year when more of the exciting project around the Convention Center is complete.






So on October 24, 2010 I walk upstream from Eleventh Street to 23rd Street, former railroad yards that served the produce terminals of the strip for generations until the 1970s.

In this picture:

St. Stanislaus Kostka
Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish Church in Polish Hill
Otto Milk Condos (former home of the Phoenix Brewery)

Prior to this area's service to freight this was the site for some of the first heavy industry of Pittsburgh. The Schoenberger Ironworks were located near present day 14th to 16th Street. The wealth from this early ironworks (circa 1820) led to the Schoenberger family endowing St. Margaret's Hospital in Lawrenceville. The hospital eventually moved upstream to its present location in Aspinwall and acquired by its current non-profit owner, UPMC. The ancestry of the St. Margaret's Foundation is distantly linked to the wealth generated here.

A row of lumber poles are standing in a straight line along the riverbank in the area beneath the Veteran's Bridge. This must be remnant of barge docks from some point during the industrial use of this section of town.

Twenty Years

It was 1990 when I found myself in the right place at the right time to join up with visionaries to advance the idea of riverfront trails and river access. In the ensuing twenty years I have been to just about every foot of Riverfront in the City.

Now as I grow older...but not old...I thought I would take 2011 to methodically revisit those Rivers with wiser eyes. I will walk every foot of the City Riverfront (with a few exceptions to avoid imprudent trespass) and record what I see, who I meet, what I have learned, and what I think. Ideally this will generate some sort of dialogue in the virtual world and, eventually, in the real world.

In the process I hope to teach something of interest, gain a little confidence, and mature my insight. I hope you will join me every so often.

I start at the first municipal boundary created for Pittsburgh along the Allegheny River.

Underneath the Fort Wayne Railroad Bridge, formerly the site of the Pennsylvania Canal Aqueduct, and near the site where Meriweather Lewis launched his voyage across the West in 1803.