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Tuesday, June 19, 2001

By Patricia Lowry, Post-Gazette architecture critic

Nearly 200 politicians, planners, local government officials and interested others gave up a blue-sky Saturday recently to learn about something called smart growth.

"That wouldn't have happened 10 years ago," Duquesne University law professor Joseph Sabino Mistick told the group.

But a lot has changed in Western Pennsylvania in a decade, a point Bruce Katz brought home when he kicked off the Smart Growth Conference, held earlier this month at the Sheraton Station Square, by telling us that our neck of the woods is up to its ears in sprawl. Sponsored by Sustainable Pittsburgh, the conference focused on tactics for reversing the trend -- ways to have development without sacrificing quality of life and the environment.

In the Pittsburgh metro area, urbanized land grew by 42.6 percent between 1982 and 1997, even though the population was shrinking.

"Sprawl is worse in places with too much government," said Katz, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. Yeah, we got government right here in River City -- some 500 municipalities in a nine-county region, Pitt professor Jim DeAngelis told the group.

So instead of thinking regionally about the best place to put that Wal-Mart or shopping center, communities try to outbid each other with incentives to land them.

"We are highly competitive," said Mistick, who is also a private land-use attorney. "Unfortunately we use that competitive spirit to compete against each other instead of against the world."

Now, at least, the fix-it tool is in place. Last year, the Pennsylvania House and Senate adopted legislation that enables counties and municipalities to plan together for both development and conservation, to protect rural resources and encourage development in older boroughs and suburbs.

"Sprawl, in the end, is not just about too much growth," Katz wrote last year in the Brookings Review. "It is also about too little growth in many parts of metropolitan America."

While governments and school districts often prefer commercial over residential development because it brings an infusion of tax revenue without putting more kids at school desks, both kinds of growth have hidden costs, said Marcia Taylor, Mt. Lebanon assistant manager -- like the $80,000 needed for traffic signals at a new four-way intersection.

Taylor advised the group to analyze how revenues generated by development relate to its true costs.

"It's not anti-development," she said. "It's a matter of keeping your eyes wide open."

In many places, however, "There's still a lot of pressure on communities to take the deal that's in the door," said Mark Schneider, president of the Rubinoff Co., developer of Washington's Landing and Summerset at Frick Park. Both are bringing new housing to brownfield sites in Pittsburgh. At neo-traditional Summerset, 40 houses were sold in 90 minutes to people looking for new homes in an urban setting.

"The most amazing thing going on right now is that the market is moving that way," Schneider said.

To Barry Ford, vice president of Continental Real Estate Companies, developer of The Waterfront in Homestead, West Homestead and Munhall, fragmentation of the region's political structure was the biggest obstacle to development in Western Pennsylvania. That was followed by the region's topography, "ancient infrastructure," chronically closed roads, government regulators from PennDOT to the PUC and rail lines that act as barriers.

"But the good news is these brownfield sites, when cleared, provide the greatest opportunity," Ford said. "We have 2 1/2 miles of waterfront in the heart of Allegheny County."

Continental's Waterfront, on the former U.S. Steel Homestead Works site, occupies a crescent-shaped sliver of land with a something-for-everyone mixed bag of development, from waterfront apartments to big-box retail to faux Main Street.

Ford spent 18 months crafting the plan with input from community groups and planning commissions in the three municipalities. In the end, he said, residents agreed "it's not perfect, but we can support this plan."

Evan Baker, Homestead councilman and planning commission member, said the challenge now is for the community to find ways to integrate The Waterfront with the historic, deteriorating older neighborhoods across the tracks. The railroad remains the biggest barrier -- and threat, as elderly residents (and no doubt others) cross the tracks where it's convenient. Shuttle buses may be the solution.

While there was little cooperation among Homestead, West Homestead and Munhall in the past century, Baker said, they recently completed a comprehensive plan for the Eighth Avenue commercial corridor. Parking -- the lack of it -- is one problem they'll address as they try to attract some of the 40,000 cars that visit The Waterfront each week.

While Ford may see The Waterfront as a model for smart growth ("How do you replicate this project? Hard work."), it's really infill sprawl, to coin an oxymoronic phrase. Cars rule at The Waterfront, where, within the token sidewalks and riverfront trail, vast acres are given over to surface parking, even along part of the river's edge. The project's real main street is an overscaled behemoth six lanes wide.

With a spectacular setting opposite a green hillside, Continental could have given the three municipalities a dynamic waterfront community with a strong sense of place, with human-scale streets, new houses, apartments above shops and restaurants and structured parking. Instead The Waterfront, drawn on the suburban model, is all about separation, creating islands of apartments, shops, restaurants, corporate headquarters and instant town square in an ocean of cars.

The Waterfront is a hit -- so popular Squirrel Hill's Browns Hill Road is often congested all the way to the Parkway East -- but smart growth it isn't.

Patricia Lowry is the Post-Gazette architecture critic. Her e-mail address is plowry@post-gazette.com.