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Places: Riverlife spreads out latest 'grand vision' for Pittsburghers' review
Saturday, November 11, 2000 By Patricia Lowry
On Monday afternoon and evening, the Pittsburgh Riverlife Task Force will hold its final public participation session before issuing its plan in the spring.
Patricia Lowry is the Post-Gazette architecture critic. Her e-mail address is plowry@post-gazette.com
They're calling it the Riverlife Engagement, and it's the last chance for Pittsburghers to see what its design consultants are proposing and the last formal opportunity to give feedback.
"Our whole public outreach process has sort of led up to this moment," said task force assistant director Rod Frantz. "What we would like to see happen is for all the people throughout the community, everywhere we've been conducting our public outreach, and the young people -- from PUMP, First Fridays, Pittsburgh's Next, Ground Zero -- to turn out and meet with the design team."
While participants are asked to identify issues that might have been overlooked, it's also a chance for the task force "to demonstrate that what we are hearing from the community is actually being folded into the 'Grand Vision Plan,' " Frantz said.
The design team -- Cambridge, Mass., architects and planners Chan Krieger & Associates and the Pittsburgh office of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, plus landscape architect Hargeaves Associates of Cambridge and San Francisco -- will present its latest drawings and analysis maps, beyond what the architects showed at September's presentation to the architecture and planning community. That session was surprisingly -- and disappointingly -- short on specifics, especially visuals, even though the plans were well along at that point and had been released to the media.
So before the big game, let's review, as space allows, what architect and urban designer Alex Krieger and his team are proposing. (For more details, see the Sept. 24 story)
Rather than coming up with a wild, radical vision -- say, driving the rivers into the neighborhoods by turning streets into canals -- much of Krieger's plan is about making the most of what we already have.
What we already have is a strong sense of place, as Paul Goldberger, then architecture critic for The New York Times and now for The New Yorker, reminded us in March 1988, in his address to the Remaking Cities conference here.
"This is a city with a real sense of itself," Goldberger said. "It looks like Pittsburgh, it feels like Pittsburgh, and in this age of homogenization, this age of McDonald's and Sheratons and freeways in which every place looks just like every place else ... this is no small triumph."
Pittsburghers are a hard-working, self-effacing lot, people who know who they are but sometimes don't know what they have. Sometimes it takes an outsider to point it out.
This has been one of Krieger's roles -- to find the city's strengths and ways to enhance them. His plan is practical; it doesn't overreach. It's achievable. Is it daring enough? Perhaps not, but it's a good start.
Krieger's one big, bold idea is establishing the Y -- the area bounded by the West End, Fort Pitt and Fort Duquesne bridges -- as a nautical Central Park, with new residential, commercial and river-related uses.
The Y would be defined by a series of illuminated structures with different designs and purposes, some built on the riverbanks and some floating along the edge. Massachusetts artist Wellington "Duke" Reiter, a member of Krieger's team, has made drawings to suggest that these structures would have both symbolism and movement. But ultimately they would be designed by one or more artists, perhaps chosen through a national competition.
I like the Y.
I like that it announces this is what Pittsburgh is about, this is its essence. It's about these two rivers coming together to make a third. It underlines -- or could be so interpreted -- that long before St. Louis, Pittsburgh was the gateway to the west.
I like that the Y is defined by functional sculptures that can communicate something about the city's history -- and its future.
I like that it's an idea that works from an airplane (or a Goodyear blimp) as well as from the ground and the water.
I like that it dovetails with artist Robert Wilson's light installations in the Cultural District and with the long-delayed plan to light the bridges, which Krieger endorses. Together, they could transform Pittsburgh into a city of light simply by illuminating what's already here.
Krieger sees the lights in the Y as beads on a necklace, with Point State Park as its centerpiece emerald brooch.
He also has plans for the tattered park itself, including establishing a new, more direct and ceremonial entrance from Gateway Center. It also recommends a long-range (and long overdue), joint city and state planning and program study for the park.
Much of the rest of the Chan Krieger plan is about making connections through water taxis and new pedestrian links, a necessity in a city divided by rivers and separated from its riverbanks by roads and train tracks.
The value of developing a consistent, reliable and affordable water taxi system can't be overestimated -- not just as a supplementary transit system but as a way of defining and understanding the city. Some of my most memorable experiences of cities, from San Francisco to Baltimore to tiny Palatka, Fla., to London, have been from their waters.
And on the water, size matters. Here in Pittsburgh, the experience of the city is vastly different from the top deck of the Gateway Clipper Majestic to a butt-in-the-water canoe or kayak that allows you to experience the riverbanks in a relaxed, intimate way. Extending the no-wake zone beyond the Y would encourage more of that.
The Riverlife Engagement will be from 3 to 9 p.m. Monday at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, with presentations at 3:30, 5:30 and 7:30 p.m., each followed by a Q&A session and opportunity for individual feedback.
As Frantz puts it, "The decision we make today and a week from today will have significance 100 years down the road."
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