Various Things

HJ Heinz is buying Kraft Foods.  Or merging with them.  Dual headquarters of Chicago and Pittsburgh will be kept.  For now.  And so Pittsburghers are apprehensive as we smell the upcoming loss of another corporate name locally.  But really, we’re talking “old school” here. While Heinz is a venerable name, woven into the fabric of Pittsburgh and western PA, and is in fact a very relevant consumer products company, it is not an entity that will create economic wealth that Pittsburgh going forward needs.  So don’t sweat it.  Work toward the future.

A similar case is Mayor Peduto and the City Planning Commission prodding US Steel to revise their architecture plans for US Steel’s new headquarters building in the Lower Hill development.  I agreed with their assessment of its design from the first time I saw it – it looks like any ol’ suburban office building in any ol’ city in America.  But instead of tweaking the nose of a local corporate mainstay, that is downsizing their HQ office from 400K square feet to close to 250K, just celebrate the fact that US Steel is staying in Pittsburgh when Chicago was clearly an option.

 

Which leads us to this: recently Pitt and CMU announced [another] joint technology development effort, this one to focus on medical information and health care data.  An excellent 21^st century strategy.  Here’s hoping this one produces needed technology with attendant spin-off enterprises for western PA.  The reason this effort is more newsworthy and noteworthy than anything to do with Heinz or US Steel can be seen in a couple real estate deals in San Francisco, which are in fact an indication of employment numbers.  Within the last year, two Bay Area companies, Uber [who we should be proud to say just established a Pittsburgh robotics research center] and Salesforce.com announced new office leases in the heart of downtown San Francisco.  The square footage numbers are eye popping: Uber is taking 900K sq/ft and Salesforce.com taking 2.1M, that’s million, sq/ft.  Combined, that’s more than another 600 Grant Street building.  Pittsburgh could use some of that.

We should still be hopeful that when oil and gas prices rebound, and they surely will, both Shell Oil and Chevron Corp will be putting regional offices in or around Pittsburgh.  I’m not a “city snob” – anywhere in the metro area they want to establish those will be great for what we all call Pittsburgh.  But again, those enterprises only have so much airspace in which to grow.  The future is calling.  Let’s see if Pittsburgh’s movers and shakers can push the City to embrace it more fully.