We would like to see central Oakland transformed into Pittsburgh’s campus.

Forbes Avenue, in particular, offers an artery that should reinforce the kinship between the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University with Carnegie Library, Carnegie Museum of Natural History and Carnegie Museum of Art as both a symbolic and real connector.

Richard Armstrong, The Henry J. Heinz II director, Carnegie Museum of Art

This is a vision of what the Oakland of the future will have, building on the wonders that are already here.

Glorious Gateways: The Boulevard of the Allies will be a grand boulevard. There will be a park on the Boulevard at Bates Street. Bates will be landscaped below the Boulevard.

The gateway at Forbes and Craft avenues will benefit from redevelopment on Forbes west of Craft.

On the corners of Centre Avenue and North Craig Street new, mid-rise buildings will be home to residents, particularly senior citizens.

A garden on the Schenley Park side of Joncaire Street will beautify the Panther Hollow gateway.

As the gateway to the Carnegie Museums and Library, South Bellefield Avenue between Fifth and Forbes will be two-way or one-way southbound in order to take advantage of the visual impact of the Carnegie buildings.

Housing for Everyone: Former single-family houses in Central and North Oakland that have been converted to multi-family apartment units will be converted back to single-family, owner-occupied homes. Meyran Avenue and Oakland Square, for example, will once again be home to families with young children.

Most of the apartment buildings in Central and North Oakland will be rehabilitated and converted from off-campus student housing to rental housing for faculty, staff and graduate students of the universities.

Students will no longer be scattered in rental housing throughout Oakland and will reside in university-built housing as in Bouquet Gardens and the proposed units on the site of Pitt Stadium.

Renovations of houses in the Craig/Neville Street residential neighborhood will be completed. New housing will be built.

Junction Hollow will have a European-style village nestled into the hillside.

Thriving Businesses and Great Shopping and Eating Experiences: High-tech companies will see Oakland as the place to be because new office space has been developed, and older buildings have been redeveloped. Oakland’s restaurants and bars will attract high-tech employees whose working hours are irregular.

A vibrant retail corridor will exist on Forbes and Fifth avenues. The Centre Avenue Giant Eagle will be expanded and remodeled.

Fewer Cars, More Public Transit, Happier Pedestrians: There will be fewer cars and parking lots. A subway will connect Oakland, as a transportation hub, to the region. Parking lots outside the business districts will be converted to lots for new housing or returned to the landscaped lots they once were. Fifth Avenue will have traffic calming devices, including wider sidewalks on its south side.

More Green Space: Schenley Plaza will be green again. There will be a green median strip down the center of Bigelow Boulevard between Forbes and Fifth avenues. There will be a beautifully landscaped overlook on Lawn Street.

The Most Wonderful Park in the World: Schenley Park will be restored to its original splendor through the joint efforts of the city of Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy and Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens.

Panther Hollow will be landscaped, and the lake will once again be the center of activity summer and winter, with miniature boats, ice skating, and picnics. Access will be improved from both Oakland and Squirrel Hill.

Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens will have completed their master plan and will draw visitors from across the nation. And other treasures will make Oakland the place to be. Atwood Street will be home to retail establishments, professional offices and residences. Ethnic restaurants and offbeat boutiques will draw people from around the region.

Oakland will have space for playgrounds and a community center for our youth and adults. Oakland will have a public elementary school.

Oakland will, as always, gain strength from its diversity, from people from other lands and people from other cities, from academics, from students, from high-tech workers, from low-tech workers, from long-term residents rich and poor, from newly urban-minded families and from unreconstructed city dwellers.

Martha Garvey, president, Oakland Planning and Development Corp.
Kathy Boykowycz, president, Oakland Community Council
Susan Golomb, executive director, Oakland Planning and Development Corp.

Through the combined work of the Oakland Planning and Development Corporation, University of Pittsburgh, UPMC, Children’s Hospital, Magee-Womens Hospital and business and property owners, the Oakland Business Improvement District (OBID) was incorporated in March. In addition to the 15.5 mill property tax on land and buildings, the institutions in the area provide voluntary contributions to the OBID.

The OBID is dedicated to improving cleanliness and the perception of safety, bringing about revitalization and undertaking marketing and development to make Oakland a vibrant destination for visitors, residents, owners, employees and students. The OBID was established to clean sidewalks, advocate for additional security presence, encourage streetscape enhancements and beautification projects, and to work with city services to enhance and better coordinate service delivery.

The OBID contracts with Central Property Services to clean the sidewalks. The six- to eight-person cleaning crew wear bright green uniforms and began their cleaning efforts in June. Oakland’s sidewalks were littered and stained, and the perception of safety was poor due to graffiti and panhandling. The cleaning crew sweeps the sidewalks, removes illegal fliers from utility poles, disinfects public telephones, wipes dirt and debris off trash receptacles and newspaper racks, and provides friendly assistance to pedestrians.

The cleaning crew also added another member in August. With financial support from the city of Pittsburgh, the OBID purchased a Tennant Litter Hawk, a state-of-the-art sidewalk sweeper. It keeps the OBID litter free and reminds pedestrians to keep the sidewalks clean with a tape-recorded message with the voice of Mr. McFeely from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

The OBID works closely with the Pittsburgh police to increase the perception of safety in the district. The OBID successfully advocated for a beat cop in 1999 and will continue to urge the city to provide a beat cop. The OBID has been working with the Community Oriented Police to educate businesses and property owners on crime prevention information.

In 2000, the OBID intends to provide seminars to deter shoplifting and panhandling and increase personal safety. The OBID and the Community Oriented Police are also working together to establish "office hours" for the C.O.P. officers at the OBID office. This will provide an opportunity for property and business owners to voice their concerns with the police regarding safety issues.

The OBID with the University of Pittsburgh Volunteer Pool, UPMC Health System, and Sestili’s Nursery planted a flower garden at the corner of Forbes and Craft avenues, which is located at the entrance of Oakland, welcoming people to the community.

The OBID is also working with Sestili’s Nursery to beautify the district with trees and flowers. On December 11, they placed 45 concrete planters on Forbes Avenue. The planters will be filled with evergreen trees during the winter months and flowers for the remainder of the year.

The OBID relies on the partnerships with the community and most especially with the city of Pittsburgh. The Department of Public Works, Bureau of Building Inspection, Department of City Planning and the mayor’s office work with the OBID to improve Oakland’s image. Walking tours and incident reports from the OBID provide the city with a "heads up" for problems and items that require attention, such as litter-filled catch basins, overflowing trash cans and graffiti. Through meetings with the city, the OBID obtained 11 more litter cans in the district. The OBID and DPW also coordinated an enhanced plan to emptying the litter cans.

Looking ahead, the OBID with the support of the Oakland Task Force is looking to spearhead the implementation of elements in the Oakland Improvement Strategy that relate to the business district published by the city of Pittsburgh Department of Planning. These elements include the implementation of a retail strategy and action plan. However, before this can take place, the OBID is dedicated to working with the City of Pittsburgh to implement a streetscape standard that will clearly identify the business district. With this effort to implement standards such as vendor signage, street lighting and beautification, it is also hopeful that these elements will produce a more traffic-calming environment appropriate for a business district.

Lori Kumar, The Oakland Business Improvement District

What can be done to fulfill the promise of Oakland? PG Benchmarks’ question, while outstanding, is one not often heard in a city that talks far more about Downtown, the North Shore, and the Strip District.

Yet it strikes a chord with anyone who has lived, worked, or played in the section of the city synonymous with Clemente, Mazeroski, and Marino. Simply put, we feel Oakland has the capability to be a major, nationally renowned urban neighborhood, one that is a destination by itself.

The closest parallels are the close-in Boston suburb of Cambridge or the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

Like these areas, Oakland can be a self-generator of its own vitality, with its academic base and colorful heritage feeding an upward spiral of cutting-edge enterprise and world-class entertainment. The promise of Oakland is also the promise of Pittsburgh.

Pursuing development in areas other than the central business district "stretches" the city by emphasizing its breadth and wealth of opportunity.

The current unipolar, Downtown-only model dangerously assumes that Pittsburgh consists of only the land visible from the portal of the Fort Pitt Tunnel.

The strength of any major city is not one jealously subsidized area but multiple freestanding, vital districts.

We advocate not a renaissance but a regeneration, combining Oakland’s existing strengths with its rich heritage. To that end, we propose a four-point plan.

Oakland must develop into more than just a place to work in order to thrive; it has to be a place with a major feature -- an anchor project -- that draws people in and that makes them want to not only work there but also to live and to play there.

That attraction, a new Duquesne Gardens, will be a state-of-the-art, "old-time" hockey arena for the Pittsburgh Penguins and will help bridge Oakland’s past with Oakland’s future.

A relatively little known fact is that Oakland served as the home to Pittsburgh hockey for more than 50 years prior to the establishment of the Civic Arena.

Duquesne Gardens, originally built in the late 1800’s as a trolley barn, became the preeminent hockey building in America and had something that few others in North America had at that time, effective and large-scale artificial ice-making.

The concept of another Duquesne Gardens is to capitalize on the rich history that exists in Pittsburgh with both hockey and with the old Duquesne Gardens structure.

It is our belief that this historical perspective and link (as well as the French name of the facility) will be attractive to Mario Lemieux and to his ownership group.

Reestablishing the Duquesne Gardens as a modern day NHL facility will put Oakland and the Penguins into the national spotlight.

Building an "old-time" hockey arena, if done properly, will have the same effect as Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore and as Jacobs Field in Cleveland had on baseball stadiums.

This proposal to establish an "anchor" project in Oakland is just what is needed to drive development. The benefits and spin-off businesses associated with sports facilities are well documented and, as such, areas of major restaurant and bar developments will appear in the region of Oakland that is adjacent to the new Duquesne Gardens.

This ties into our second point: Growing the business base in Oakland.

This has several benefits.

It increases recurring traffic.

An increased stream of people coming into or moving through the area every day represents growth and stability for existing businesses.

Spurs supporting development. Significant new business represents enough increased demand to induce new entrants of all types into the market.

This means new restaurants, bars, stores, and service providers -- each one adding to the neighborhood’s vitality.

It attracts new residents.

At least some of those individuals filling new jobs will choose to live in Oakland, and certainly many will choose to live in the city. In our view, population growth is an important factor in the success of any area.

It increases the tax base.

From the standpoint of regional government, more income from increased business activity means more flexibility. Government can take the long overdue step of increasing the area’s competitiveness by lowering taxes, investing in infrastructure repair or doing some combination.

We advise pursuing new business by building on Oakland’s existing strengths.

The industries we will advocate building upon, high tech and biotechnology, promise above average returns in the medium-term future. This approach does not necessarily expose the region to significant damage from a downturn in these industries.

Our third point: Quality of life is a central driver to both revival and to growth in Oakland.

To be straightforward, people want to work, live, and play in an area where they enjoy being.

Specifically, the key components to any overall quality of life initiative are as follows:

Build upon the roots of Oakland.

One of the amazing things about Oakland is that there are so many unique things that have arisen out of the city’s colorful past.

These include items such as the beloved Forbes Field, the first amateur hockey team in the United States, the start and proliferation of the Isaly’s stores, the Luna Park amusement park and major cultural and recreational institutions, including the Carnegie Library and Museum, the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh and Schenley Park.

On the other hand, there is something disheartening about the fact that, almost systematically, some of the most important and vital attractions in Oakland have been destroyed over time:

One of the aspects that will add to "fulfilling the promise" of Oakland is to attract new residents into the area.

Although in some ways it is similar to the old "chicken or the egg" riddle, an attractive quality of life will draw in more permanent residents.

Likewise, having more residents relocate to Oakland will draw in more activities, commerce, and events.

The addition of new residents and marquee events will represent enough increased demand to induce new entrants of all types immediately into the market.

Also, it is important to create unique areas of Oakland where commerce will be attracted.

The above means new restaurants, bars, stores, and service providers will come to Oakland -- all continuing the almost domino effect growth in the neighborhood.

All efforts towards improving the quality of life in Oakland will be done with the purpose of adding to the neighborhood’s vitality. Having more exciting things to do and more places to go will energize the area of Oakland and will make it a place known to Pittsburgh and the nation as "a place to be"

How to do this?

Improve upon and increase the restaurant, shopping, and night life opportunities within Oakland.

Build upon the natural beauty and location of Schenley Park.

Restore the University of Pittsburgh’s campus atmosphere within Oakland.

Establish green space areas within Oakland and restore historic areas to encourage residential growth.

There are some unusual places and scenes of Oakland’s past that make the prospect of adding unique shops, restaurants and bars to the neighborhood landscape an exciting one.

In particular, we propose to encourage these types of facilities to develop at the fringe of Schenley Park and, of all places, in a deep and wooded ravine somewhere within Oakland.

The goal would be to have a Schenley Park section of Oakland that would be a magnet to everyone in the Greater Pittsburgh area who wants to go to a place that has a rural feel but that is located within the reach of the urban center.

Another approach that we propose is the development of a "ravine" or "arroyo," to be located in a wooded ravine, that can be built up in a similar fashion to the Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas.

This, again, is not a forced or contrived idea but rather a reinvention of a piece of Oakland’s colorful history.

Our final point deals with infrastructure.

Rather than extending subway trains to the North Shore stadiums (which, let’s face it, are a ten-minute walk from downtown), the logical extension is through the East End corridor.

Why? There are probably more city residents that work downtown living in Oakland, Shadyside and Squirrel Hill than in other parts of Pittsburgh.

Also, the added convenience of rail will attract more residents, which we consider vital.

Street improvements will be necessary.

With the addition of Duquesne Gardens and the other growth initiatives contained in this proposal, Bates Street and the Boulevard of Allies will quickly choke.

PennDOT should be engaged to brainstorm creative ideas for new, rapid, well-placed exits off the Parkway East.

The city should also funnel commuters from the south and west into downtown parking areas and onto Port Authority trains to gain event access to Oakland.

Daniel R. King, Philip R. King, Export