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Task force oversees riverfront developments
Wednesday, June 30, 1999 By Tom Barnes and Timothy McNulty, Post-Gazette Staff Writers
For too long, Pittsburghers have viewed the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio riverfronts in a piecemeal fashion, without focusing on how one section of the waterfront looked or how it related to all the others.
So say Mayor Murphy and leaders of a new riverfront oversight panel, who contend that it's time for that kind of shortsighted thinking to change.
"We have a once-in-a-century opportunity before us to design our riverfronts in a way that will capture people's imagination, a way that's as spectacular as any city in the world," Murphy said, in announcing formation of the Riverlife Task Force.
It's critical to set up such a task force now, he said, in light of the $2 billion worth of major developments being built along the rivers: the new Alcoa headquarters and the two new stadiums under way on the North Shore, an enlargement of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center due to start later this year, an expansion of Station Square, a possible expansion of the Carnegie Science Center, a new hotel west of the science center, new office buildings in the Strip District and other projects.
The new 33-member group is composed mostly of executives of private organizations and foundations, plus major owners of riverfront property in the Strip District, North Shore and Station Square, along with six public officials.
The panel will be led by Alcoa Chairman Paul O'Neill and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Editor John G. Craig Jr.
It will come up with a set of design standards to use in guiding development on both sides of the rivers, in an area bounded by the 16th Street Bridge over the Allegheny, the West End Bridge over the Ohio and the Liberty Bridge over the Mon.
"What you've got along the area, with a few exceptions, is just crap," Craig said.
O'Neill was heavily involved in the design of the new Alcoa headquarters along the Allegheny, which has won kudos for its striking all-glass design.
The panel's recommendations, which probably will come next spring, may also deal with what new buildings and uses are appropriate along the rivers, but the panel will not decide the specific sites for projects, such as where a new hockey arena should go, Murphy said.
He wants the Pittsburgh riverfronts to rival, if not surpass, the most notable waterfronts in the world, such as Paris; Sydney, Australia; Battery Park in lower Manhattan; and the Inner Harbor area of Baltimore.
"For too long, we have settled for an 'it'll do' attitude for our rivers," Murphy said. "We can either see riverfront development as a suburban strip mall where everyone is doing his own thing, or we can do it with a sense of style and excellence."
O'Neill said that what the city does with its riverfronts now "has carrying power into the next century."
Murphy said the task force's recommendations will be more specific than the general riverfront guidelines contained in a Riverfront Development Plan that the Planning Department released last year.
He said the new panel would oversee everything from the design of buildings and roads along the rivers to plans for water taxis and lighting of the bridges. It will ensure that developments built along the rivers aren't too similar but that they are integrated with and complement each other.
"Whether you're in Station Square or over by the convention center, we want you to feel like you're in the same city," he said.
Murphy said he wants city riverfronts to be user friendly and inviting so people feel encouraged to walk along them. A unified program of benches and signs for waterfront areas could be another product of the task force.
Craig stressed that the leadership and most of the funding for this new effort will come from the private, not the public, sector.
The task force includes such notables as Teresa Heinz and Elsie Hillman, whose families control large foundations; Ellsworth Brown of the Carnegie Science Center; Steelers Vice President Art Rooney II and Pirates owner Kevin McClatchy; businessman John Connelly, who wants to build a new hotel just west of the science center; Thomas Balestrieri, president of the Buncher Co., a major Strip District landowner; Carol Brown, president of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust; Albert Ratner of Forest City Enterprises, owner of Station Square; Dean George Werner of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership; James Rohr of PNC Bank; and others.
The public officials include county Commissioners Mike Dawida and Bob Cranmer, City Councilmen Sala Udin and Alan Hertzberg, county Controller Frank Lucchino and state Rep. Joseph Preston, D-East Liberty.
Murphy said he didn't have a budget for the task force yet. He said there could be up to $100,000 in city funds involved, but Craig said he expects the funds will primarily be from foundations.
"There will be significant private resources," he said. The task force "is a way for private people to help the public. Whatever the ultimate structure of this committee, it will be financed with private sources."
He said he doesn't consider his position as task force co-chairman to be a conflict with his job as editor of the newspaper.
Murphy expects that Alex Cooper, a Pittsburgh native and riverfront consultant who designed Battery Park City in lower Manhattan, would be employed by the commission. He wasn't sure how many other employees would be needed.
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