The two-block distance from Heinz Hall to Market Square is a three-minute walk at a moderate pace, but culturally and economically, the two Downtown landmarks could scarcely be farther apart.

	Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette Vacant storefronts, like these at 321 and 323 Forbes Ave., litter the landscape of the Fifth-Forbes area of Downtown Pittsburgh. Click photo for larger image. Related coverage Task force faces frustration amid past Fifth-Forbes plans that have faltered

Heinz Hall, with its gated patio garden, sits in the midst of the Cultural District, where restaurants are springing up to serve the music and theater patrons who attend performances at the various venues there. Market Square, a public space shared by Downtown workers and the unemployed homeless, anchors the Fifth and Forbes corridor, where a small number of businesses struggle to survive in a sea of vacancy.

It is a picture of two Downtowns, one that appears to be thriving as an entertainment area, another that appears to be dying as a retail area. And whether the latter's decline can be stemmed anytime soon is very much on the mind of the businesses that still try to eke out a living there.

Tony Baverso, manager of the George Aiken's restaurant on Forbes Avenue, just off Market Square and across from the long closed G.C. Murphy store, has been there since it opened in 1966. He remembers that "at one time, you couldn't look up Fifth Avenue, there'd just be waves of people." Now, he says, "Everybody's out of the city after 3 o'clock" -- or at least out of his part of the city.

George Aiken's is a Pittsburgh institution. Specializing in roast chicken decades before there was a Boston Market, the chain was established in 1949 and once had a dozen locations around the city. Now the Downtown location is one of only two remaining -- the other is in Wilkinsburg.

Baverso said business at Aiken's has been off in the last year and a half, and he attributed the decline to businesses leaving Downtown. Most of the neighboring properties on Forbes, including the G.C. Murphy building that dominates the block, are owned by the Urban Redevelopment Authority and are vacant.

He also blamed the new $52 occupation tax levied by the city earlier this year, which he said was too abrupt a change from the previous $10 a year. "People don't like change that fast. Some people got mad about it. So they stop buying lunch," Baverso said.

But Baverso holds no ill will toward Mayor Tom Murphy or the city for the higher tax or for several failed Fifth and Forbes initiatives. "When I look back over the years, some of the stuff they were trying to do was a good idea," he said. "I think most of the people on Grant Street are good people, but they don't know how to talk to the little guy."

Midway between Fifth and Forbes on Wood Street sits Prime Gear, a clothing store that Eitan Solomon, 39, has owned since 1996. An Israeli, he lived in South Carolina for three years before coming to Pittsburgh and opening his Downtown store.

Solomon said that for the past five years, owning a Downtown business has been like "standing on top of a five- or six-hundred-foot hill, and rolling down, and down, and down."

Referring to the decline in Downtown shoppers, Solomon said, "It's not because people don't have money. People don't come Downtown because the city is being nasty to them."

Pointing out that his clientele are largely black working-class families, he said that the police are too quick to issue parking tickets and to have cars towed, a combination that can easily cost one of his customers $150.

Solomon also questioned the value of the stadiums for Downtown businesses. Pirates games? "As soon as they're finished, (fans) get in their car and run out of town." Steeler games? "That's eight Sundays a year."

He agreed with others who said that parking is too expensive Downtown, saying that he even tells his wife and mother-in-law to shop where parking is free -- "Why don't you take that $11 or $12 and buy an extra top?"

Gualberto and Lisa Carhuaslla had never owned a restaurant before opening G's Restaurant and Pizzeria in 2002. But Gualberto Carhuaslla's experience managing catering operations for both the Marriott and the Hilton hotels made them hopeful about their new venture, as did the history of the location.

Before G's, the building at 330 Forbes had been home to Mama Gina's restaurant for 25 years, and the Carhuasllas hoped to inherent its clientele, many of whom were workers at Kaufmann's, just yards away. But they opened for business in May 2002, the same month that May Department Stores announced it was preparing to lay off or transfer some 1,200 Kaufmann's employees.

The Carhuasllas said the resulting drop in business has only worsened over time, as more and more businesses, large and small, either reduce their Downtown presence or leave the district entirely.

"We've been affected a lot by folks leaving," Lisa Carhuaslla said. "Sometimes we'll get a call for a big order, and they'll say 'This is for a farewell party,' and it's customers that we've had for a long time."

Gualberto Carhuaslla said that in conversations with other merchants, "everyone has told me that their business has dropped 20 to 30 percent" in recent years.

Like Solomon, the couple said that the new stadiums on the North Shore have not benefited them and their fellow merchants in the Fifth-Forbes corridor.

"People who go to the games, they don't stop here," Gualberto Carhuaslla said. "They go straight there." And as for the Cultural District, "it's a little too far" for people attending shows and concerts there to walk over to Forbes Avenue afterward -- especially, he said, when the street is poorly lighted.

Lighting is not a problem in the Cultural District, a 14-block area bounded by Stanwix Street, Liberty Avenue, 10th Street and Fort Duquesne Boulevard. A major element of its ongoing transformation is new lampposts sporting 4-foot banners: "Cultural District -- Your Show Place."

The district's central thoroughfare, Penn Avenue, is lined with still-young trees. Like the 200 block of Forbes Avenue, the 900 block of Penn Avenue has large vacant buildings. But the buildings on Penn Avenue have construction crews at work inside or at least "For Sale or Lease" posters in the windows.

While businesses continue to leave the Fifth-Forbes corridor, the Cultural District has more businesses moving in. Billed as "a California wine bistro," the Sonoma Grill, at 947 Penn Ave., opened in December. Owner Yves Carreau considers the difference between different parts of Downtown to be the difference between night and day. Literally.

"Everything pertaining to daytime happens on that side of town, everything pertaining to nighttime happens on this side," he said.

He should know, as he also owns a restaurant on "that side" of Downtown -- Asiago's, in One Oxford Centre.

"There's no question there's a difference between the two sides," he said. While Asiago's serves the attorneys and other professionals on and near Grant Street and is never open past 9, the Sonoma Grill draws its clientele from conventioneers -- some of whom are guests at the Marriott Courtyard hotel next door, theater audiences and residents of nearby office buildings that have been converted into lofts. It is open until 11p.m., seven nights a week.

Being open on Sundays was not part of Carreau's original plan for the eatery. "I did it as a favor to the hotel," he said, not expecting to get much business on Sunday evenings. But experience has proven him wrong. "It's busy. It's great."

But he wouldn't attempt it at Asiago's. "If I were to open Asiago's on Sundays, I'd be dead," he said.

While the Sonoma Grill's success is surprising even Carreau, he said the business has declined at Asiago's since the city's parking tax was raised to 50 percent in February 2004. He's not alone -- the high cost of parking was the single most-mentioned item among merchants when they spoke about obstacles to their, and Downtown's, success.

The parking tax "really hit people's minds hard," Carreau said.

While the Sonoma Grill is less than a year old, Goldstock 715 has been selling fine jewelry from its storefront at 715 Liberty Ave. for 40 years. It is one of only two jewelers with a storefront in the Clark Building, which for decades has been home to a host of jewelers on its lower floors.

Marshall Goughneour has been a manager there for 15 years, and he reinforced the idea that different parts of Downtown function nearly independently of each other.

"Truthfully, town is sort of broken up, the way that it's laid out," he said. "(Fifth and Forbes) does not have much of an effect on us. If people are going to Kaufmann's, they're not coming to the Clark Building."

And since people typically do not make high-end jewelry purchases on impulse as they're walking down the street, Goldstock 715 is not as sensitive to changes in foot traffic as some other retailers might be. Even large events like the Regatta that draw thousands to Point State Park have little impact on Goldstock 715 or its neighbors, Goughneour said.

"People who go to those events, they're just going to those events," he said, echoing the plaint of Fifth-Forbes merchants. "They're not venturing into town."

Crime -- how much of it there is and how it is handled -- is a perennial concern for any commercial district.

In this regard, things may appear to be worse than they are. In June, a thief stole more than $16,000 worth of jewelry from Goldstock 715's next door neighbor, and earlier this month, a pair of Downtown banks were robbed within hours of each other.

But Pittsburgh Police Department statistics for the first five months of this year indicate that most types of crime are declining Downtown -- motor vehicle theft is the exception.

The Carhuasllas, robbed twice in their first year by thieves who stole money from their jukebox, said that the most persistent crime they've suffered since then has been graffiti.

Still, the perception remains that Downtown is unsafe.

Indeed, Solomon quoted a fellow merchant who said that being Downtown meant "doing good business between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., and spending the rest of the day chasing the people stealing from you."

All the merchants interviewed for this story offered suggestions for improving Downtown's prospects.

Solomon suggested that Pittsburgh take a cue from New York, where the city offers shoppers tax-free Sundays, by offering parking holidays. "On Mondays, a slow day, they could have free parking. That would bring people Downtown," he said.

With hundreds of new residential units under construction Downtown, Carreau said that the city needs to help bring a grocery or supermarket to the area.

"Nobody's going to open a grocery store in the city right now," he said. "From a business standpoint, it would be a losing proposition." But if the city were to subsidize such a venture, whether through tax breaks or some form of direct funding, Carreau believes it would pay off in the long run.

He also said that the city needs to "clean up" Market Square.

The Carhuasllas suggested that the city forget about creating a large-scale plan to bring a major retailer Downtown.

"I don't think bringing a big store in is suddenly going to bring people Downtown. I think they should work on retaining the people and businesses they already have Downtown," Lisa Carhuasllas said.

"It's been taken for granted that the businesses that are Downtown are going to stay Downtown, and that the people who work Downtown are going to keep working Downtown. And that just hasn't been the case."