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Mayor rolls out riverfront vision
Thursday, May 25, 2000 By Patricia Lowry, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
"This represents hundreds of acres of opportunity for us to redevelop," Mayor Murphy said, gesturing at the river banks last night from the upper deck of the Gateway Clipper Party Liner as it left the dock and headed up the Monongahela.
Under darkening skies, the mayor began to present his vision for the riverfront to about 250 members of Pittsburgh's architecture and art communities. The boat had just passed the Hot Metal Bridge when the clouds let go, sending everyone below deck -- including Massachusetts architect and planner Alex Krieger, charged by the Pittsburgh Riverlife Task Force with shaping a bold vision for the riverfronts.
As a rainbow arced over the 10th Street Bridge, the mayor told the group how construction will begin this summer on a riverfront trail from the bridge to Sandcastle, on the Mon's south shore.
He spoke of past opportunities lost and new ones waiting to be found.
"Twenty thousand people come here each year to board the Delta Queen and what do we make them do? Walk through the cars and litter of the Mon Wharf."
Krieger, who spoke briefly at the end of the mayor's presentation, invited the group to "tell us how we might transform" the area from the West End Bridge to Point State Park, the area on which his team is beginning to focus.
Talking to newspaper reporters earlier in the day, Krieger suggested illuminating the riverbanks there with lights set on tall towers or piers, something that would become as symbolic of Pittsburgh as the Art Nouveau subway entrances are of Paris.
"We're still in the phase where we're trying to learn where the opportunities are," he said last night.
"For two centuries the rivers were essential to your livelihood. That's no longer true. The challenge now is to make the rivers essential to your soul."
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