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Wednesday, July 10, 2002

By Patricia Lowry, Post-Gazette architecture critic

At a daylong, open-house design workshop in the Hill District, architect Rob Pfaffmann and an ever-changing group of about 30 architects, city planners and neighborhood residents came up with some spectacular, innovative ideas for reinventing Mellon Arena -- and weaving the iconic, isolated building into a new community linking Downtown and the Hill District.

In this view from a room of the hotel built inside Mellon Arena, the city skyline forms a backdrop to a swimming pool/ice rink bisected by a pedestrian bridge. The bridge is part of a path linking Wylie Avenue and a proposed maglev station below the arena. The concrete walls surrounding the arena have been replaced by glass. (Drawing by Rob Pfaffmann) View more drawings from Pfaffmann's charrette.

Suggestions for alternative uses for the 40-year-old structure include a hotel with jazz venues and restaurants, a jazz/blues-oriented performing arts center, ethnic marketplace and restaurants, and a museum devoted to the Hill's history as the region's Ellis Island and its subsequent evolution.

Some envisioned a biosphere with ties to Pittsburgh's biotech research community. A prototype is Montreal's transformation of the Olympic Velodrome into the Biodome, a sort of combination botanical garden, aquarium and zoo.

In Pfaffmann's view, these ideas are not mutually exclusive.

"The anchor tenant might be a hotel with supporting recreational, retail and restaurants," Pfaffmann writes in the charrette summary. "The whole redevelopment could have a combination of ethnic themes as well as environmental themes."

One of the biggest problems with reusing the arena is the perception that it's a gigantic, immutable barrier. Pfaffmann's drawings show that need not be the case.

He envisions the arena as the centerpiece of a new community of homes, shops and rooftop gardens stepping down from Crawford Street in a crescent around the silver dome. His drawings, based on sketches done at the charrette, show the arena as a partially transparent structure, with its seating bowl removed and glass walls installed at the base. A pedestrian street cuts through the arena, possibly connecting Wylie Avenue with a new maglev station.

The housing -- live/work lofts -- steps below the existing Crawford Square homes and is compatible in scale, but begins the transition to Downtown's larger scale. Down the hill from the housing, closer to town, are shops, restaurants and offices, with parking for 3,000 cars below (more than the arena site now holds) and a public park and overlook on the roof.

Inside the arena, the charrette suggests building an eight-story hotel and wintergarden, illuminated by removing the stainless steel panels from one of the dome's moveable sections and replacing them with glass -- or by building an interior glazed "storm window" while allowing the original dome to open and close. Photographs of the arena under construction show a beautiful lace work of steel before the exterior panels went on.

Thanks to Pfaffmann and others who gave up all or part of a blue-sky Saturday on June 29 to show how a remade arena, connected to the Hill's storied past and promising future, could have far more cultural, social and architectural value than just another generic development.

Planning Department director Susan Golomb and planners Bob Reppe and Angelique Bamberg attended, in two-hour shifts.

"If [the arena] is to be vacated -- and that's a huge if -- then I hope people would work together to find the best use for the site," Golomb said yesterday, adding that she was speaking for herself and not necessarily for the city. "I'd like to be able to look at all of the options," including the charrette designs and any other ideas people might have.

An empty arena "is a tremendous opportunity for the city," she said, "to reconnect the Hill District with Downtown. It's a site where we could do enough housing to make a huge difference, that would fill a niche. There's no other location Downtown at that scale."

Because Golomb attended the charrette early in the day, she hadn't seen the results and couldn't comment on them. She'll have a chance to review them today, when the arena comes before the Historic Review Commission at 2:50 p.m., in the first of the commission's two public hearings on its proposed designation as a city historic structure.

With the Penguins' development proposal for the site, the charrette drawings and the nomination all on the table, it's time for the city to take a leadership role in an open planning process, beginning perhaps with a larger, better-promoted charrette, a design competition or a request for proposals. This is the stage when no idea is a bad idea; let's blow up as many trial balloons as we can.

Fencing comes first

In an effort to end persistent vandalism, Pittsburgh's Public Works Department is installing an ornamental iron fence in upper Mellon Park, to allow sections of the park to be closed after dark.

The East End park, which borders Point Breeze, Shadyside and Squirrel Hill, comprises several former estates of the early 1900s, including that of Richard Beatty Mellon and his wife, Jennie King Mellon. The Mellons' formal gardens have been a prime target for vandals, who over the years have toppled urns, broken finials and removed Braille plant markers.

The perimeter fence project is the first step toward realizing the recommendations of the Mellon Park master plan, prepared by Vermont landscape architect Patricia O'Donnell and presented in May 2000. The plan was funded by the Richard King Mellon Foundation, which is covering a third of the $540,000 cost of the fence. The city and another foundation are picking up the rest.

The walkways, steps, fountain and other structural elements of the historic gardens also have suffered from lack of appropriate maintenance. The master plan addresses their restoration in a $4.6 million, seven-step program that will be achieved as funding allows, said Mike Gable, assistant director of Public Works.

The plan includes restoration of the park's walled Renaissance Garden and terraced gardens and re-creation of several of the Mellon estate's long-lost original landscape features, including an Oriental pond and other elements of the 1931 Olmsted Brothers plan.

As part of the perimeter project, the fence along the Beechwood Boulevard side of the park is being painted, and gates leading to pedestrian and vehicular paths have been refabricated. A new iron fence has been constructed just east of the original west boundary of the Mellon estate, perpendicular to Fifth Avenue. Handsome new gates also have been made for the Fifth and Shady avenue entrances. The low brick walls that marked the edge of the Frew and Darcie estates are being repaired; they will be topped with iron fencing to complete the enclosure.

Gable said the perimeter work should be completed by the end of the month.

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