There's more to the story of Duquesne Light Co. and the Allegheny Commons Park than meets the eye.

What has met the eye so far is a false impression that the give-and-take between the electric utility and park stakeholders has been even-handed and reasonable. It has not.

The North Side's Allegheny Commons, the city's oldest park, is undergoing a 10-year, $17 million restoration to return it to its former glory, circa 1867, complete with tree-lined promenades, splashing fountains and ornamental flower beds.

The current phase devotes $2.2 million to the northeast quadrant, just across from the main entrance of Allegheny General Hospital. Under this magnificently tree-lined spot lies a Duquesne Light facility, built in the 1970s at the halfway point of an electrical line running between the Lawrenceville and Brunot's Island substations.

In May -- the same month the Pittsburgh Steelers announced a $300,000 donation to the park project -- Duquesne Light notified the Allegheny Commons Restoration Initiative of its need to add a cooling station to its underground facility.

As a utility spokesman recently described the process to the Post-Gazette: "We have made generous offers and have tried to work with them on the aesthetics, only to be turned down every time by the initiative."

This comment implies that Duquesne Light has made many, increasingly sensitive proposals and that the Restoration Initiative people are just impossible to please. From information gleaned at community meetings for my North Side neighborhood (Spring Garden), I was pretty sure this wasn't accurate. (I'm a board member of our community council, but we're not involved in this matter.) So I contacted Alida Baker, the restoration project manager. She diplomatically admitted to being "confused" by the utility's account of events.

"Early on, in May, they just came to us and talked about their needs," Ms. Baker said.

And the first design proposal -- the historically sensitive brick building located on a short street on the park's west side? "It was our steering committee that came up with that concept," Ms. Baker noted, "and it was Duquesne Light that rejected that solution in July."

As talks continued, she said, the cooling station "grew and grew and grew" and the site requirements changed "from 200 feet away, to 100 feet away, to right on top of the manhole."

Far from being impossible to please, then, the restoration people have been resisting increasingly intrusive proposals. Duquesne Light's counteroffer is for a large metal shed plunked down along Cedar Avenue. And that proposal understandably has North Side residents all riled up.

What they see is that building any utility structure in the park is simply erecting an ugly monument to a bad idea.

The 1960s and '70s are decades notorious for culturally and ecologically insensitive urban development. We're still imploding, bulldozing and otherwise undoing the terrible mistakes of that era -- Penn Circle Apartments, anyone? Allegheny Center Mall? -- that sucked the life out of viable city neighborhoods in the guise of "improving" them.

Duquesne Light obtained its license for the underground facility in 1976. You can divine its location by looking for the much-younger trees on top. These days, no city official in his right mind would allow such a thing.

And city officials are all over this one. Ms. Baker and others have nothing but praise for city Councilwoman Darlene Harris, whose district encompasses the section of the Commons now at risk. "She just immediately understood and hit the ground running," digging up historical materials and trying to untangle the utility's dense engineer-speak, Ms. Baker said.

The city Law Department is reviewing the matter, but City Council President Doug Shields has already said the city, as landowner, would have to apply to build the station in the park. Public sentiment isn't leaning in that direction.

That said, there's not total unity among cooling station opponents as to what a compromise should be. Some support a nearby structure with public restrooms as the utility's goodwill gesture, while others fear increased crime and vandalism.

Since the cooling station and equipment upgrades are necessary to deal with rising demand, particularly on the North Shore, some have suggested the utility look for two locations along its power line -- preferably in underdeveloped, industrial-zoned blocks -- to prepare for still-growing consumption.

Before asserting to me Friday that Duquesne Light had no comment, a spokesman said the utility is now five months behind schedule in construction. But if its first contact with the park restoration committee was in May, this means the utility expected to break ground immediately after unilaterally deciding what it would build and where -- as if it were the only entity with any investment in the park.

Mere citizens have proven otherwise. Here's hoping the proverbial light bulb goes on at Duquesne Light.

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