It is not so much the dozen arts-related spaces beating at the heart of Downtown Pittsburgh, the $47 million budget, or the unusual use of arts and culture to drive the economic revitalization of the old city that makes the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust special. The Trust is the single greatest creative force in Pittsburgh because of its spirit of reinvention.

John Heller, Post-Gazette Kevin McMahon, president of the Cultural Trust, attends a black tie affair in the district last year. Click photo for larger image. Listen in During a conversation with Post-Gazette reporter Timothy McNulty, Kevin McMahon shared his insight on the organization he heads: The Trust is an unusual organization because it uses real estate as a tool to help support the arts Increasing the people count at non-theater times is a goal of the district A mix of housing opportunities should help attract people to live in the Cultural District Housing in the District will be designed specifically for the unique neighborhood

In the past 10 years that this newspaper has compiled lists of the Top 50 creative forces in Pittsburgh, the Cultural Trust has built the O'Reilly Theater, the adjacent Theater Square (with a 250-seat cabaret theater, bar, box office, parking garage, restaurant and radio studio), Katz Plaza and an arty riverfront park.

It created smaller performance spaces and galleries, forged a shared services and ticketing apparatus with other nonprofits and got into the promotional game, bringing world-class acts, such as the Globe Theater and the International Festival of Firsts, to town.

So it is no wonder that the Post-Gazette has named the leaders of the Trust either the No. 1 influence or among the city's top five cultural influences almost every year its arts and entertainment staff has put the list together. (Only in 2001, after the Trust's legendary president Carol Brown retired, did it drop. Even then, Brown was No. 10.)

This year, with the newspaper looking back on the greatest creative forces and events in Pittsburgh across a decade, the Trust had to be No. 1 again. What makes the pick notable is the promise the 22-year-old nonprofit holds for the next 10 years.

Already having a hand in the renewal of Downtown Pittsburgh -- which is remarkable for a nonprofit arts institution -- the Cultural Trust is about to reinvent a part of itself and its proven formula for promoting arts and culture in the city by ... building condos?

"It's the capstone to everything else we're doing," said the Trust's president, Kevin McMahon, who was the Top 50's No. 1 in 2005. "The Cultural Trust is all about bringing more people to live, work and play here. And the live part has been lacking."

Any week now, the Trust is supposed to unfurl redevelopment plans for a nearly 6-acre chunk of riverfront land along Fort Duquesne Boulevard between Seventh and Ninth streets, across the Allegheny River from Alcoa's headquarters. It is the last major development spot in the Golden Triangle and would be one of the biggest Downtown projects in decades.

It plans roughly 700-900 housing units, anchored with street-level shops and other amenities -- all green-certified, using renewable and recycled resources, like the nearby David L. Lawrence Convention Center -- and likely including some small arts components. The rental and for-sale units are expected to include pricey riverfront models and more affordable ones for artists and Cultural District workers. Construction, which is planned in phases, is expected to continue for several years before the entire project is finished.

The past few years, the Trust has been focused largely on smaller-scale cultural projects (such as the opening of the SPACE and Future Tenant galleries), the come-one-come-all free gallery tours it has hosted since 2004 and the business of programming events into its performance spaces.

Even one of the Trust's major building projects, 2004's Theater Square, was a pragmatic, street-level move. Its box office serves as a host for cultural groups, its cabaret targets a broad audience and its garage makes money. Diving headfirst into the residential construction market -- on a site directly between the Cultural District and the river -- is another thing entirely.

"It's very clear that the building phase -- which, perhaps, some thought was over -- is not over at all," McMahon said. "In fact, the footprint of the Cultural District continues to grow, in small ways and very grand ways."

But this is not a list of Pittsburgh's Top 50 Real Estate Developers. What does this arts group think it's doing?

Think back to how Pittsburgh's Cultural District, and later the Trust, started.

H.J. Heinz II, president of the Heinz Co., led the renovation of a vacant movie theater into the swanky home for the Pittsburgh Symphony, Heinz Hall, in 1971. More properties were collected in the shoddy Penn-Liberty corridor nearby, including the Stanley Theatre, which a $43 million remodeling turned into the Benedum. Reclamation of the Byham and Harris theaters followed.

All along, Jack Heinz's theory was that arts and culture would help boost real estate, and vice versa. A 1979 urban design study called for the corridor to be turned into an arts district and led to the creation of the (then) Pittsburgh Trust for Cultural Resources in 1984.

Since then, the Cultural Trust has succeeded in drawing people and money to town, even as the city lost population and flirted with fiscal ruin. In the past five years, it generated an estimated $9 million in amusement and parking taxes, and last year, nearly 1 million people attended Trust-affiliated events.

The Trust could play a quasi-governmental role. Led by Brown, it would be instrumental in helping create the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership (which uses a 1996 building tax to fund Downtown cleanup and promotion) and in pushing the "Plan B" drive for the two new sports stadiums and expanded convention center, approved in 1999.

The efforts helped, slowly, to make at least a part of Downtown and its surrounding neighborhoods bubbling hot. Right now, up to 2,000 new housing units are on the drawing board, worth up to an estimated $1.2 billion.

The leaders of the Cultural Trust "were, more than any other organization, responsible for the continued revitalization of Downtown. ... They have created a level of activity, night after night after night, that central business districts need," said Steve Leeper, who led the Plan B construction drive and served as Mayor Tom Murphy's development director from 1994-98.

"It's not something new," Brown said last week of the Trust's taste for big projects that have an impact on both Pittsburgh and its arts.

"From the beginning the Trust was conceived of as a cultural institution engaged in the development of its own area. ... One of the things Jack Heinz and I talked often about was having some control over the adjacent real estate so we could control what happened to our own theaters and cultural institutions, and at the same time potentially turn our real estate holdings not only into improvements for the community, but potential revenue streams for the arts."

So in turning its attention to housing, the Trust is tapping into the same entrepreneurial spirit Heinz had 40 years ago, with his plans to leverage a decrepit movie theater into the slow revitalization of the city. That spirit is now reinventing the Trust itself and the ways that arts and culture, of all things, are changing Pittsburgh.