Pittsburgh project raises tough questions

Market Place has pedestrian-oriented design elements, but critics argue that it will displace local merchants and diminish local character. Is Market Place going to create a new neighborhood or destroy one? Is it an example of forward thinking urban design or a throwback to the bad old days of urban renewal? Depending on who you ask, the answer is yes to all four possibilities. Market Place is a dramatic example of large-scale urban renewal at the start of the 21st Century. Its design is more sensitive and pedestrian-oriented than big urban renewal projects of the mid-20th Century, yet its impact on local property owners and tenants would be just as sweeping. The $480 million project would gut or raze 61 buildings, taking up part or all of eight contiguous city blocks in downtown Pittsburgh. Up to 125 existing businesses would be displaced. In their place, as described by the New York Times, would be “an ambitious cluster of trendy restaurants and upscale stores and underground parking for 1,000 cars to serve surrounding office towers.” The National Trust for Historic Preservation has another view. President Richard Moe calls Market Place “a reversion to the worst of urban renewal in the ‘60s and ‘70s.” Another Washington, DC, organization, the Institute for Justice, has vowed to fight the city in court over its use of eminent domain. Plan elements The Market Place plan by Urban Retail Properties, the Chicago developer, preserves 20-plus important historic facades and retains the two- to three-story character of the blocks. The street network will remain substantially the same. All streets will feature on-street parking and ground-floor retail, and benefit from major streetscape improvements. The original plan called for no housing, but as a result of public input Mayor Thomas Murphy has announced that 200 to 260 market rate apartments will be built above retail. The plan also has been altered to include two mid-block passageway arcades that will house local merchants and provide better pedestrian connectivity. Finally, developer Urban Retail Properties proposed closing Market Square — a major public space at the heart of the plan — to automobiles. The revised plan calls for Market Square to be kept open to traffic. Credit for these improvements largely goes to the Downtown Planning Collaborative, a group led by a councilman. Murphy argues that Market Place is the final, and essential, key to bringing back the downtown. He calls the current retail area “the hole in the doughnut,” and has pledged $26 million in direct public expenditures towards the project, plus $17 million in loans. The Times describes the area, currently, as a “tired mix of seedy novelty shops and respected longtime merchants.” Opponents to Market Place point out that the businesses are locally owned and profitable. They acknowledge that some of the current uses are undesirable, but favor an incremental revitalization along the lines of New York’s SoHo district. Competing plan The opposition has formed the Golden Triangle Community Development Corporation, and has offered a $256 million counterproposal to rehabilitate facades and modernize the area’s dilapidated upper floors for business and housing. It calls for $32 million in public financing — $11 million less than the Market Place plan. The proposal includes creative ideas for business incubation, the conversion of unusable office space to housing, and a year-round farmers market. “We believe the businesses can be left in place and the buildings can be left in place,” says urban planner Terry Necciai of Golden Triangle. “[The Market Place proponents] want to displace 125 solid businesses that are paying rent and bring in one company which owns the whole site.” The Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, however, is a group representing 300 merchants including some in the Market Place area, and does support the Market Place plan with some changes. The plan is expected to come to a vote before city council in July.