Death by Wrecking Ball

Pittsburgh and the politics of eminent domain.

Bill Steigerwald from the June 2000 issue

(Page 3 of 3)

It's easy to get support for gentrifying Fifth and Forbes from suburban editorial writers and others who don't shop on the streets now. To them, Fifth and Forbes are too messy, too ugly--too urban. City Hall and its downtown allies agree. They're too busy patting themselves on the back to notice the damage their wrecking balls have been doing.

But City Hall's plans have opponents from across the political spectrum. There is Rep. Robinson, and there are businessfolk like Maloney. There are historical preservationists, including Arthur Ziegler, the nationally known developer behind Station Square, the former train terminal that is the city's top tourist destination. Ziegler says the Fifth and Forbes plan is "the 1950s revisited" and predicts that relying solely on national retailers is guaranteed to fail. Trying to make the best of a bad situation, he had his influential Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation commission a New York architect to draw up a more sophisticated, commercially diverse, and street-life-friendly alternative. It too would use eminent domain to remove unwilling property owners, and only about 25 percent of the existing businesses would be able to stay. It saves more buildings and adds about 700 residences above the stores; as a bonus, it includes a new Market Hall over Market Square that would be home to food stalls and a rooftop skating rink. Thus far, Urban Retail Properties has ignored these ideas.

A more hard-core opponent is the Allegheny Institute, a pro-market Pennsylvania think tank that's less interested in designing a more livable plan than in stopping the city's power to impose such plans at all. Funded by local billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife (of Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy fame), the institute has organized rallies against the mayor's eminent domain abuse. Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune Review has also railed against the plan, in contrast to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's relentless editorial cheerleading. The city's two alternative weeklies also strongly oppose the plan.

There are even a few opponents within the city government. By January, the Urban Redevelopment Authority, the City Planning Commission, and the Historic Review Commission--all of whose members are appointed by the mayor --had approved the plan with no squeaks of dissent. Most people expected the all-Democrat City Council to rubber-stamp the plan as well. It's been less compliant than expected, though, with leftist councilman James Ferlo mounting the fiercest fight.

Ferlo believes he can scrape together a 5-4 vote to stop the Fifth and Forbes project. Few insiders agree. They predict most council members will cut private political deals with Mayor Murphy. As of late March, it's too early to tell whether Ferlo will prevail, or if soon only the lawyers will stand between the district and the wrecking ball.

Assuming that the city gets the go-ahead, there's at least one more problem with the Fifth and Forbes plan: It probably won't work. Since the malls came, Pittsburghers have shown a deepening disinterest in the Golden Triangle: About 125,000 people work there by day, but virtually no one but the opera-and-symphony crowd goes there regularly at night. Pittsburgh's nightlife is on the South Side and the Strip District--two neighborhoods largely untouched by city planning. A rebuilt Fifth and Forbes shopping and entertainment playground would have to compete with those districts, with new developments planned for Station Square, and with the urge simply to head home to the suburbs after work. Furthermore, though serious, predatory crime is rare, the bums, pushers, and prostitutes who haunt the area's sidewalks can't be ignored. Their numbers are small, but they are visible enough to drive most suburbanites away.

Even if the Fifth and Forbes project succeeds in resurrecting downtown--a wild crapshoot at best--its costs will be high and many. The middle of the Golden Triangle will be torn up for another three years. At least 62 old buildings, some of them architecturally precious, will be lost forever. Pittsburgh will lose the only shopping market in the center city for poor people and people dependent on public transportation. As many as 1,000 jobs will be lost. And scores of small and medium-size businesses will have to move.

Assuming, that is, that they can find a place to move to, in this downtown that's been steadily stripped of its character and vitality by government planners and their demolition crews.