True or false:

The city needs money.

Parking in Oakland has always been difficult.

		Cleda Klingensmith is on the staff of city Councilman Jim Motznik, who voted against the Schenley Plaza lease transfer (Cleda.Klingensmith@city.pittsburgh.pa.us).

If the above statements are true, why did Pittsburgh City Council vote 7-1 this month to transfer the lease on the 238-spot Schenley Plaza parking lot -- which generates $700,000 annually -- to the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy for use as a park?

They were told that this park would become Oakland's town square with a great lawn and gardens, movable chairs, self-cleaning restrooms, food kiosks, cultural programming and maybe even a carousel. It was noted that various influential organizations have already spent a lot of money for studies and plans. On top of that, the city Planning Department and its director, Susan Golomb, have been actively championing this project; they also say that it won't cost the city a thing.

If City Council had any doubt, it was erased when Gov. Ed Rendell and Dennis Yablonsky, the head of the state Department of Community and Economic Development (and the man who declared the city economically distressed), came to Oakland with a $5 million check from the state's redevelopment capital assistance program. It's taxpayer money that will go elsewhere if the project were rejected.

How does a project which on the surface clearly appears to be ill-conceived become the next big thing and backed by all?

The real questions are: Should public policy be driven by what can be funded? Or should funding be found for what needs to be done?

It's been awhile since my grad school days in land-using planning at Eastern Michigan University. But I seem to recall that the first order of business when planning for a community's growth or managing its decline is to see what the community has ("inventory," as we called it) and what it needs ("needs analysis"). There have been endless studies and public hearings as a master plan addressing Oakland's unique and important role in the city has evolved. Solutions for the complex problems of transportation, traffic, student housing, building code violations, crumbling entrance routes are part of this very necessary process.

But how does something that could possibly be the cherry on the top of Oakland revitalization become a major capital project before basic problems are addressed? The "we need more green space" cry is specious at best.

Haven't we learned that our attempts to completely redesign portions of Pittsburgh while they are still working -- even if they are in decline -- don't work?

Allegheny Center Mall, the lower Hill and East Liberty represented state-of-the-art planning in their day -- and were colossal failures. The federal funding that made those projects happen will never be worth the ultimate cost.

Look at some recent successes: Summerset at Frick Park, built on a slag heap at Nine Mile Run, and Washington's Landing, built on a former rendering site. Furthermore, existing uses were not displaced and abandoned land was returned to the tax rolls. Crawford Square and PNC Park/North Shore rose on the ashes of earlier failed redevelopment attempts.

We are getting Schenley Plaza because it has funding. And it has funding because influential entities want it to happen. Too bad no corporations would benefit from a public washroom at Riverview Park.

The nonprofit Parks Conservancy, which established a public-private partnership with the city in 1998 to raise money for and guide the rehabilitation of our four regional parks, insists that it is simply fulfilling the terms of Mary Schenley's 1891 deed selling the 19-acre parcel to the city "for the purpose of providing a suitable entrance to Schenley Park."

By 1915 Honus Wagner could park there for home games. Photos from the 1930s show the "suitable entrance" given over to automobiles. The heirs of Mary Schenley, who did come to Pittsburgh from time to time in those days, never launched any legal action, but now it has been suggested that the city best get in compliance or risk the consequences.

For some experts, the design by Sasaki Associates of Boston doesn't satisfy the need for a monumental entrance to Schenley Park. Barry Hannegan, former director of Historic Landscape Preservation for Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, is quoted in the Oct. 2, 2003, Post-Gazette saying "It's a quite wonderful park. It simply is the wrong place for it. Historically, Schenley Plaza has been open and encouraged movement through it. This is the opposite of that. It's a closed hermetic design that doesn't give you a sense that you're entering Pittsburgh's great historic park."

Michael Stern, a well-regarded landscape architect, doesn't think it's historically appropriate either, running counter to the principles of the City Beautiful movement on which the 1915 design was based. So much for meeting the terms of the deed.

Ironically, these two gentlemen, along with Meg Cheever, head of the Parks Conservancy, were part of the winning design team in a 1999 competition sponsored by the PG's Benchmarks series for improving Oakland; ostensibly how this whole business got started.

With at least $20 million necessary for capital improvements, maintenance and restoration projects for the 1,700 acres of seriously neglected green space that are Schenley, Frick, Riverview and Highland Parks, it's hard to understand why the Parks Conservancy is determined to see $11 million spent on five new acres. Then again their ability to continue their wonderful projects -- the Schenley Visitor Center, restoration of the formal entrance gardens at Highland Park and a water filtration facility that's a glorious blending of a utilitarian function in its setting -- depends on the generosity of many of the same organizations.

In a time of decreased corporate and foundation giving, the Parks Conservancy and the Oakland Investment Committee didn't seem to have much problem finding willing donors for this little chunk of Paris on Forbes. Do you really need to ask who's on this committee? The University of Pittsburgh (they brought you the Petersen Events Center, so you can trust their project management skills), UPMC Health Systems (which really did tear down a landmark, Syria Mosque, for a parking lot), Carnegie Mellon University, the Carnegie Museums, the Carnegie Library (in the midst of a $2.8 million makeover that will feature its own outdoor reading room with refreshments), the R.K. Mellon Foundation and the Heinz Endowments (which just threw in $750,000 for infrastructure the city can't afford). Since these groups don't pay taxes, they probably have a bit more money to throw around.

Then there's the money. Until September 2003, the city was expected to chip in $750,000 to $1.2 million for road reconfiguration and traffic signals; plus $1.5 million for annual upkeep -- the same amount the city budgeted for all public works personnel in 2004. And make no mistake, the ongoing maintenance and security will eventually fall to the city, with the unforeseen extras that accompany public projects.

We've heard time and again that 40 percent of city land is tax-exempt; so why are we giving it away? This isn't an isolated case. As part of our schizophrenic approach to development, public money was used to fund the convention center, with the assurance that that investment would spur economic growth in the vicinity, thus raising property values and revenue for the city. Now the URA is attempting to buy and take through eminent domain property very near the convention center to give it to another non-profit organization (an African-American cultural center). These actions don't exactly shore up our argument to suburbanites that we can keep our fiscal house in order.

The folks on the fifth floor of the City-County Building, where I've worked for a year, may shake their heads, smile and tell me I just don't understand politics. Unfortunately, I do.