Onorato trumpets Pittsburgh success tale
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Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato leads a tour of officials through the Motor Control Lab at IBEW Local No. 5 Hall and Training Center on the South Side.
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Standing on a fifth-floor balcony of the Bridgeside Point Building in Hazelwood with an expansive view of the Pittsburgh skyline, the South Side and the Mon Valley, Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato explained how "the greening of Pittsburgh" happened.
"It all started right here in this valley," Mr. Onorato said yesterday as he gave a tour of the Pittsburgh area, showing off the economic redevelopment that partly explains why Pittsburgh was chosen to host the G-20 summit, to a group of county government officials from across the country.
From the top of the glass-covered building on the campus of the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, Mr. Onorato pointed to the extensive Mon Valley where Pittsburgh's once famous steel industry collapsed and a new economic paradigm based on education, hi-tech startups and medical research emerged.
What were once the grounds of the former Homestead Works of U.S. Steel, the former LTV mill on the South Side and the Jones & Laughlin steel mill, now house an open-air shopping and entertainment complex at The Waterfront, a retail and entertainment district at SouthSide Works and a hi-tech business incubator in the life sciences greenhouse, he said.
"This is the new Pittsburgh," Mr. Onorato told the group of 12 county officials who visited Pittsburgh as part of a delegation of the National Association of Counties.
"What is happening here is amazing. I've always thought of Pittsburgh as a city still stuck with the effects of steel, like smoke and pollution, but that is clearly not the case anymore," said B. Glen Whitley, a county judge from Tarrant County, Texas, which encompasses the city of Fort Worth.
He was "very impressed" by his first visit to Pittsburgh he said, "because of the way you have managed to reclaim an essential part of your history to develop the businesses of the future."
The bus tour of officials from Arizona, Maryland, Florida, New Jersey, Georgia and Ohio started on Grant Street and cut across the East Busway to enter the Mon Valley where the officials got a chance to see the former Carrie Furnace site in Rankin and Swissvale and the Edgar Thompson Works in Braddock.
At the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 5 Hall & Training Center on the South Side, the group toured the facility, which injects about 100 new electrical workers into the region's economy every year.
"This is the side of a union that you never see. How they create good-paying jobs that are the basis of what makes a middle class," said Edwin Rosado, legislative director of the National Association of Counties.
Eldrin Bell, chairman of the board of commissioners in Clayton County, Ga., in the Atlanta metropolitan area, said he was particularly impressed by "the multi-dimensional approach to economic redevelopment in Pittsburgh."
"We have seen how this city went from a steel-based economy to technology and medical research, and yet unions are still a big part of the culture," Mr. Bell said.
"It's an inspiring story," he added.
First Published September 19, 2009 12:06 am
