Pittsburgh Makes Me Want to Live

There’s simply too much – well, there’s never TOO much – good news in Pittsburgh’s economic and community scene these days.  There’s always much more to accomplish but the recent news of growing companies and big money funded start-ups and a healthy real estate sector and the seemingly endless creativity in the restaurant and bar scene that changes almost daily, it seems Pittsburgh has hit its stride on a path to sustainable growth.  And it seems to be a growth that will benefit all residents in the metro and Tri-State area.  After all, even though it’s a platitude it’s still true: a rising tide floats all ships.

I’ve been around through a lot of the bad economic times for western Pennsylvania – and the northern Appalachian region in general – and I always knew what a wonderful place it was and is.  This new energy and optimism and excitement makes me, well, want to live forever [or at least a very, very, very long time] simply to see how much greater a city and region greater Pittsburgh will become.  I trust many others feel the same.

Happy holidays to all.

Back to Everyday Reality

Now that Anthony Bourdain has done his usual hatchet job, or insightful tour depending on your perspective, of Pittsburgh and our dining scene, let’s take a step back from the always fraught and fleeting waters of celebrity and return to the topic that originally spurred me years back to start blogging about Pittsburgh: the need for more jobs and higher incomes in this great city.

In the midst of Pittsburgh’s frenzy over “Parts Unknown”, a second frenzy was afoot both in the Burgh and across the country: Amazon’s HQ2 competition.  I believe HQ2 is simply one of the world’s wealthiest corporations looking to find out what government body will pay them the most amount of money.  Period.  This is not even a “pay money in exchange for jobs” scheme.  If a company is growing profitably, the jobs are a foregone conclusion – no one needs to chip in.  In addition, the location of those jobs will develop organically from what makes the most sense for the organization.  No, I believe our reportedly civic-minded CEO Mr. Bezos [recall it was he who “saved” the Washington “Post” by purchasing it] is rubbing his hands with anticipation to find out which governments [State, local] will pay how much to Amazon in order to “win” this competition.

And that disgusts me.

Therefore, at the risk of being considered a false prophet when I highlight continued growth in the Pittsburgh economy, or not sufficiently chauvinistic to champion an economic PR win for the City, let me say I hope Pittsburgh [and any other city one cares about] is not selected for HQ2.  My bets are on two cities that seem to have most of what Amazon is seeking: Atlanta and Dallas.   They are large even by international standards and thus have a workforce of sufficient size that 50,000 jobs would only produce a minor blip in employment statistics.  Both have true international airports with connections to all six inhabited continents.  And while Atlanta has a more developed mass transit system, Dallas [and the State of Texas] has the deep pockets to come up with many hundreds of millions if not a billion dollars in corporate welfare [or extortion].

What I hope for is an expansion of Amazon’s current Pittsburgh offices.  A thousand?  Two thousand?  Even five thousand highly paid, highly technical Amazon employees in Pittsburgh would be a boon to the City.  In my humble opinion, fifty thousand of those [too often entitled, elitist and gentrifying] techies would be a burden, especially in a metro area of Pittsburgh’s modest size.

Finally getting back to Mr. Bourdain, let us talk TV programming and what he sells.  Pittsburgh’s newfound sheen is merely Pittsburgh catching up to other well-regarded American cities.  There’s nothing new to report here.  It’s being done all over the country from Providence to Salt Lake, Milwaukee to Nashville.  “Parts Unknown” producers need to come up with some sort of “hook” to keep the show from sounding like a travelogue puff piece.  The best travel writing does that; think Paul Theroux as the curmudgeonly observer.  So yes, there is a true culinary renaissance in Pittsburgh exhibited by some generally acknowledged groundbreaking restaurants.  But heck: go to San Francisco and New York and Miami for REAL glitz and glamour.   No friends, Mr. Bourdain had to find something different about Pittsburgh that would keep him and his show in viewers’ minds until the next episode.  So wrestling and grunge bands and old steel mills as backdrops filled the bill. Are the decaying neighborhoods and the people left behind in a new economy a bit of lazy journalism on CNN’s part?  Well it’s not journalism; it’s an entertainment show.

One other thing Pittsburghers should come to grips with is the City’s history.  That history is as heavily industrial as it gets – maybe as it ever will get. It was dirty, sooty and smelly as well as dangerous and life threatening or at least life-shortening at times. It resulted in areas of the City that still have little to no charm. New and clean and pretty will always beat dirty and smelly and nasty.  Pittsburgh will never be the California coast or the picturesque parts of the Deep South. So don’t expect every report on the City to be a glowingly enticing travel piece.  It can’t be.

All of this comes with the price of fame, Pittsburgh.  Get used to it.

Some Hard Truths

President Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord and stated his intention to renegotiate the terms.  For anyone in business who has ever dealt with a tough negotiator, this approach should not surprise.

But as someone who literally happened to be within earshot of an office television at the moment he mentioned “Pittsburgh, not Paris” and then later on when he spoke of “Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Youngstown, Ohio and Detroit, Michigan” in the same context, I figured then and there some poo-poo was gonna hit someone’s fan.  Don’t get me wrong; this kerfuffle [only in Pittsburgh] over Pittsburgh being mentioned by the President who, for many, is making a colossal mistake in this Climate agreement pull-out is "mouse nuts" in the larger scheme of the world’s current issues.  But it has some relevance to how Pittsburgh perceives itself as well as how it’s perceived by the larger world.

I myself was not happy to have our burgeoning high tech hub described alongside Youngstown and Detroit [though full disclosure makes me admit there are many lovely parts of and fun activities in both those metro areas] as that typecasts Pittsburgh as one of the stereotypical dead and dying cities.  Well so be it.  Our President is from New York with all the prejudices that encompasses.

What I am dismayed with is the attitude, again, of Mayor Peduto who was “offended” that Pittsburgh was mentioned in the context of pulling out of the Climate agreement.  Or was it that the Left’s latest “evil one”, the anti-Christ to Peduto’s political party, simply uttered the term “Pittsburgh” from his lips?  Your call.

Here’s the thing: Peduto needs to admit to and then face up to the hard truth – as our friends in AA would have him do – that the popular perception of Pittsburgh as an economic backwater compared to more successful cities is, well, true.  Unemployment rate?  We have been consistently one percentage point higher than the national average during this anemic recovery period.  And let’s not talk about that rate compared with other second tier cities in our so-called “cohort group”.  We have an unemployment rate fully two-plus percentage point higher than cities like Charlotte, Columbus, and Nashville.   And don’t get me started about income levels.  It’s ALL ABOUT income, and Pittsburgh is a historical laggard when it comes to per capita income. What good is inexpensive housing when you don’t have income to afford a lifestyle you really want?

Lastly, while I’m on this rant, let’s talk about how the Pittsburgh region is still a net exporter of young and talented people to other parts of the country.  This is personal for me today.  Just this week my cousin’s daughter who was married last year to a great guy, both having jobs they enjoyed and a new house in Bellevue, announced they are moving to Atlanta for better jobs.  I lived in Atlanta and I know the god, bad and ugly and believe me there’s a lot of that.  But jobs?  Those it has in spades.  Something a young couple looking to make their mark on the world have a much harder time finding in metro Pittsburgh.

I realize Peduto isn’t the mayor of the metropolitan area.  But he’s the most visible spokesperson.  Maybe when he admits Pittsburgh still suffers from a century long economic malaise that shows little signs of going away will we finally see some concrete [tax cuts? more economic incentives for relocating companies?] actions to help stimulate the local economy.

Ending this screed on a positive note, I see that Milllcraft Investments has decided that the downtown Pittsburgh market is ripe again for condo development and is returning to a plan that puts condominiums on the former Saks Fifth Avenue site on Smithfield Street.  Millcraft believes there is demand for owner-occupied apartments as opposed to rental units.  This is great news for downtown.  Homeowners, even high rise homeowners, bring a level of social and economic stability to an area that can only translate into even more development. 

Kudos and Cranks

Kudos for the planned new Oaklander Hotel on the Pittsburgh Athletic Association property. Being managed under the Marriott Autograph Collection marque is a real coup for the neighborhood.  The architecture is pleasing and the brand is sufficiently high end to complement the development progress in the gem that is Pittsburgh’s university district.

Cranks on Mayor Bill Peduto’s smear campaign on Uber.  First he accuses Uber of being the reason Pittsburgh did not win the Smart Cities Challenge competition.  [Full disclosure: a friend of mine works for a global engineering construction firm that has been hired to assist Columbus with their winning projects and he tells me Columbus’ approach was more in line with what the feds wanted for this initiative.]  Then he launches a public relations campaign accusing Uber of not using its resources to benefit more Pittsburghers.  Huh?  Seems to me Uber is providing a lot of benefit to Pittsburgh and the region by locating a major research effort in the City and providing hundreds of jobs that may grow into the thousands.  And high paying jobs at that.  Being blunt, let’s face facts:  beggars can’t be choosers.  In my DNA I know, and in my bones I feel Pittsburgh is truly one of the most special places on the global map.  However, it’s certainly not a hot spot for economic success by most current definitions.  Companies like Uber are the way to make up for a period of economic stagnation tracing back to WWII.

Kudos to Ford Motor Company and Argo AI for bringing $1B in investment “to Pittsburgh”.  I qualified that statement as I will wait to see how many jobs are actually created in Pittsburgh given Ford’s plans to also spread research across Detroit and the Bay Area. Still it’s a nice public relations win for us.

Cranks again on Peduto’s Administration for somehow screwing up the Penn Plaza redevelopment.  Now there are lawsuits and counter lawsuits.  WTF?  OK, I know I will be lambasted for saying this but I’ve lived in gentrifying cities all my life – from Boston in the 70s to a New York back from bankruptcy’s brink in the 80s to the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta when its total metro area was [believe this or not] still smaller than Pittsburgh’s.  Gentrification happens.  You cannot stop it if a city is to grow and prosper.  Stopping development is not the way to make impoverished citizens’ lives better nor encourage the arrival of new citizens who can create wealth for a larger community. Pandering to the overly progressive crowd may score political points for a politician who is seeking future offices but it has never been shown to make citizens lives better.  I would hate Pittsburgh to become another… Caracas.

Kudos to Angelique Bamberg and Jason Roth of the Pittsburgh “City Paper” for their always well-reasoned and well-explained restaurant reviews.  Particular props for a recent review that complimented a restaurant’s restrained use of the “industrial look” in their fixtures.  Bamberg and Roth noted that it may be time Pittsburgh broke out of its adulation of its industrial past and went for interior architecture that provides more light and air. Bravo!  Less brick and more glass please, interiors and exteriors!

Kudos to Pitt, CMU and UPMC for their April 18^th conference, The Next Big [Data] Thing.  Let’s finally get some momentum on Pittsburgh putting together the obvious pieces of high tech know-how, software engineering, medical and bio-engineering expertise, and a good quality of life environment to start a world class, world ranked, world beating digital health industry.  The Pittsburgh Health Data Alliance is thinking the right way when UPMC’s Program Director notes that Pittsburgh has all the components present to become as dominant in digital health as coastal university centers.  Bravo!  Let’s get competitive here, economically speaking.

Lastly, I have to quote HM Queen Elizabeth who famously referred to a bad year in the Royal Family’s life as her “annus horribilis”.  Well over the last few months, Pittsburgh has suffered the same with the deaths of Thomas Starzl, Arnold Palmer, Dan Rooney and Henry Hillman.  Great cities always find new blood to carry on the vision and work of their best leaders.  Let’s support those who can fill the shoes of those Steel City heroes.