The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust has invited about 75 architects, urban planners and environmental designers to gather here later this month to do what design devotees do best -- dream, draw and debate.

		Graphic: Cultural District Development

This group's mission is to envision how the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust can best develop a large block of Downtown property that lies at the center of the 14-block Cultural District.

The Cultural Trust owns 13 Downtown properties, some of which are in the Penn-Liberty Historic District. The two largest properties overlook the Allegheny River, giving planners a rare opportunity to create a riverfront gateway to the district.

In 2000, the Urban Land Institute, a highly regarded think tank in Washington, D.C., prepared a report for the Cultural Trust and described this large block:

"These large parcels of prime real estate -- located on the downtown waterfront and within walking distance of major cultural attractions, the central business district, the convention center; and billions of dollars of new investment -- are an asset nearly without equal in the United States today."

The block of property described in the Urban Land Institute report fronts on Fort Duquesne Boulevard and is bounded by Eighth and Ninth streets. Anchoring the back end of the block is the Pittsburgh Opera building at 801 Penn Ave., another property owned by the Trust.

The participants invited to the private forum, to be held June 27 and 28 at the Renaissance Pittsburgh Hotel, received a copy of the Urban Land Institute's report. The Cultural Trust is paying the expenses of out-of-town guests.

J. Kevin McMahon, president and chief executive officer of the Cultural Trust, said the organization will hold many more such forums before any decision is made on what to do with the property.

"We are focusing principally on the center of the Cultural District," McMahon said, adding that, "It's not exclusively focused on a particular set of narrowly defined properties. It's a broader discussion."

In its report, the Urban Land Institute proposed building a development called Theatre Towers that consisted of "a total of 1.5 million square feet in a series of new buildings serving a mix of uses and designed to integrate with the area's existing historic fabric."

As proposed, the Theatre Towers project included 590 housing units, a 220-room luxury hotel, 50,000 square feet of specialty retail and restaurant space, a 1,500-car parking garage, and 55,000 square feet of outdoor plaza and sculpture garden space.

The report's authors called for a pedestrian bridge over Fort Duquesne Boulevard with an observation deck connecting an outdoor plaza to the new riverfront parks. They also recommended that Allegheny Riverfront Park, a narrow strip of land, be extended on the upper level to cover the Tenth Street Bypass.

The panel also suggested building a 40-slip marina on the Allegheny River at the point where the pedestrian bridge connects to the lower riverfront park, with water taxi service from the marina.

On the first night of the forum, the keynote speaker will be management consultant B. Joseph Pine, who will urge designers to think far beyond the boundaries of any blueprint and look for ways to create a unique urban and cultural experience.

The co-founder of Aurora, Ohio-based Strategic Horizons, a think tank, Pine is co-author of "The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage," published by Harvard Business School Press.

Jim Rohr, president of the Cultural Trust board, said in a recent interview that the organization is interested in building more Downtown housing.

"There's no Downtown that I know of that doesn't have people living there. If you think of it, we have nobody that just says, 'I think I'll walk over to the theater tonight and buy a ticket,' " Rohr said.

Paul Organisak, vice president of programming for the Trust, said one of the challenges is to turn cultural events into experiences.

"You can't just program an event, put it in a theater and expect people to come. People go to destinations for a reason. People go to SouthSide Works because they can have dinner, they can go to a movie, they can shop and then they go to the South Side for a drink," he said.

David Lewis, founder of the local architectural firm Urban Design Associates, said planners should not fall into the trap of looking at models that have worked in other cities.

"Downtown is in a real state of transition. The big question is, what does Downtown want to be? ... We can't approach planning Downtown by looking for an external formula, something that has worked somewhere else and that we can apply top downwards," he said.

"We have to say, what have we got? ... What do we do with this place? What are its great values? What are the things about it that represent its heritage? What are its finest buildings?"

Ultimately, Lewis said, the conversation must focus on the compact Golden Triangle.

"Is it really trying to be the center of a region? We have to really examine that. Is it really trying to be a corporate center? Is it really trying to be a university center? Is it really trying to be a cultural center? Maybe it's all of these things.

"Do each of those things occupy a territory or do they all interweave with one another to create a total place that is, in a way, unique? It's the answer to those questions that leads to an urban design."