True story.
At a party in 2000 I ran into Tom Murphy, mayor of Pittsburgh, who was casting around at the time for ways to revive downtown Pittsburgh. The city itself was doing fine; the problem was (and is) that most people commute downtown from suburbs where they pay less taxes, but they use city services all day so city dwellers pay even more taxes to cover roads and police and EMTs for the commuters. Downtown was and remains mostly a dead space. Want a coffee? Need a prescription refill? A pint of milk and a bag of carrots? Fetch your car and drive ten minutes to the Foodland (or whatever they call it now) on Liberty in Bloomfield. Downtown and the fun services that go with being where people live dries up as soon as commuters leave at five.
I told him that downtown downtown needs a couple of grocery store/pharmacies and a coffeehouse or two. Nobody wants to move downtown if they need a car to get the most basic life amenities, and abundant cheap lofts won’t fix that.
Ignoring me, Murphy instead spent millions recruiting a Nordstrom’s high-end department store on the theory that a lot of people driving downtown to park at the Nordstrom’s parking lot to shop and then leave would sort of look like revitalization (to be fair I think I was criticizing him after the fact). Predictably Nordstrom’s passed for a cheaper site in a suburban mall.
Where did I get the idea? When I volunteered for Jim Roddey’s (successful) 1999 run for County Executive in Allegheny County, the campaign manager spelled spelled it out for me (to get Roddey, think of the John McCain Republica who only exists in David Broder’s fevered imagination). The Democrat, Cyril Wecht, makes Jack Murtha look upright. K., a profane, high-strung veteran who only manages Republicans, stayed downtown for the race. He told me, at some point or another, that Pittsburgh had one of the worst downtowns he had ever seen. The reasons he gave helped me realize how we could wake the city up again. How much would it cost for the city to subsidize a few grocery stores and late night coffee? Certainly less than the tax breaks that Nordstrom demanded.
Anyhow, I’m glad to see that the idea has caught on a little.
***Update***
Another true story: Murphy narrowly beat me in Pittsburgh’s first Race for the Cure. Over and over I would pass him on the straights and then he would catch me on the uphills. Pittsburgh isn’t that big a town.
Carol
The same thing here in Cincy. Plenty of remodeled lofts, restaurants, and the nearest Krogers are in neighborhoods where a lot of downtown dwellers don’t want to go at night, the drug stores close too early, and the dry cleaners have moved. While the condos are selling, the name of the game is retention, especially of people who can easily afford to live elsewhere.
And here’s something to think about. Condo living is a U-shaped phenomenon. Young and very affluent singles stay for a few years until they need more kid-oriented housing, and older empty nesters come to get away from yards. But the most important part of the u is actually seniors who will come to stay-and how do you keep seniors and empty nesters if you don’t provide amenities? The younger folks also need amenities since they work late and may not have the time to drive all over town. Somebody just isn’t thinking.
Keith G
I live and work in a CBD adjacent neighborhood in Houston. Draw a circle with a 1/2 mile radius from my 1950s apt, and everything I need, including my job (and two large groc stores), is within that circle.
My only worry is that some day my very nice landlord will get an offer he will be stupid to refuse and my wonderful piece of heaven will be replaced by a row of 4 story red brick (or now grey stucco) things.
And that is a major problem with the growing”liveableness” of Houston’s central city – the destruction of very affordable middle class (and lower) housing.
Annie
What you say is true. Even with great theater, ballet, etc., the area is empty and uninviting. Why live there? Without a car, you cannot get food, have places to meet friends, etc. I grew up in Squirrel Hill and lived in Shadyside in graduate school and rarely went downtown. Now I hear that people go to the new shopping area in Homestead. Downtown has been abandoned. It is sad, because the area could be fantastic (why did they ever put that prison with a river view???) It is quite beautiful with the rivers, etc. I even heard from a friend recently that the Strip District is no longer thriving. Damn, we used to go there on Thursday nights for Salsa dancing….
Nylund
I moved to Dallas after living in SF, LA, Toronto, and NYC. Dallas’ downtown is horrific.
Its not only deserted after 5pm, but pretty much constantly. Besides the nightclubs on a weekend night, I doubt you’d ever see anyone on the sidewalks. Its an absolute ghosttown.
Not that the rest of the city is all that much better. The whole city is just a giant suburb. Its just chain restaurants and parking lots. Outside of a couple stretches of a block or two here or there, there is no where one would actually want to walk around and do things, and there are probably never more than 100 pedestrians out on sidewalks at any given time in the entire city (unless you count people walking to and from their car).
PeakVT
What cities really need is activity both day and night so all of the little stores and restaurants and whatnot that make cities interest have two sets of customers. Cities can help some by subsidizing stores that wouldn’t otherwise locate in a urban area. But the most important thing cities need to do is change their zoning laws so there are a mixture of uses – office, retail, and residential – in most neighborhoods. In the CBD they could require all three in the same building once it was over a certain height.
Sleeping Dog
Funny when I lived in Minneapolis they recruited both Saks and Neiman Marcus to open stores in downtown. Both have been dismal failures and today function as outlet stores for the chains. Business had me calling on Neiman’s corporate HQ in Dallas, where some one joked that Mpls was the only store in the group that was capable of a negative sales day if someone returned an expensive item.
Finally the city got smart and bribed Target to open a store downtown and got a decent grocery. But they still screw it up in trying to appeal to suburbanites and the fiasco of what is Block E is a totem to that.
Mojotron
The Democrat, Cyril Wecht, makes Jack Murtha look upright.
the forensic pathologist?!?
kommrade reproductive vigor
@Nylund: Sounds like Rockville (and now Gaithersburg), Maryland. Hell, it sounds like College Park when the students aren’t around.
Why did I leave Bloomington? Oh yeah, I wanted a real job with a salary to match. [Sigh]
HRA
1982 was the last time I was in downtown Pittsburgh. There was some construction going on. We went to this then mega mall in or near Monroeville.
In Buffalo, NY they decided to put the subway on Main Street. I am referring to the length of the downtown district having the rails on the street. All of the businesses began to close. Some of the department stores wnet to the malls and plazas. Yet never really made it there and soon they were gone, too. Now there is this rumor of having the rails removed from Main Street. It’s too late. Nobody wants to go downtown and nobody wants to be there when it’s dark.
terry chay
I lived in two places in San Francisco, both had a Safeway and Walgreen’s less than a block away. San Francisco is definitely a city you’d like to live in but hate to drive into. In any case, being walking distance to things (any time of day) is absolutely essential for in a city as owning a car is even a great hassle.
I’m curious though if any of that would work in Pittsburgh. The Downtown has been dead since before Rennaissance (mid-80’s) and the infrastructure is really bad—not just grocery stories, there was no transportation, no living space, no downtown nightlife, few restaurants of note, etc.
As for the Sleeping Dog’s Target story, it sounds like a bad idea. The same would be true of a Walmart. While I like Target (and won’t even shop at Walmart), both require a lot of space and ever since Sears moved out to the ‘burbs post WW2, it’s better to build things like that where its cheaper anyway. They’ve tried that to revitalize the small malls in “cities” in Silicon Valley and the only thing that happened is you have an empty mall and a single Target or a single Macy’s—so depressing.
The simple reality is: going into the city for anything other than work is a chore for people who live outside the city, to get them to come in you have to give them something they can’t get in Monroeville. Unfortunately, that no longer means Kaufmann’s or Gimbel’s (or Nordstrom), in the case of San Francisco it means a unique foodie culture, strange events (Bay to Breakers, two gay parades, and a zillion zany events), and a nichey night life.
In Pittsburgh, you be hard pressed to find a person who doesn’t have an opinion about Bruce Arians (offensive coordinator of the Steelers). Out here, you rarely find people who will root for the Raiders or 49ers. And Giants fans are outnumbered by SoMa (area South of Market where AT&T Park is located) residents who schedule their commute around the games. The culture is variegated in a manner that I question will work in the Midwest at all (outside of Chicago).
It’s a shame because Oakland-Squirrel Hill-Shady Side makes a great almost-burb with beautiful architecture where they could have created a nice startup vibe around the colleges, but like the entire region, it is geographically completely cut off from the downtown.
terry chay
@Mojotron: Yes, I believe Tim F is talking about 1998 or 1999 when Jim Roddey beat out the Cyril Wecht (yes, THAT Cyril Wecht) for the position of County Executive (sort of like a mayor of the county, IIRC).
Different times.
Today, Jim Roddey would be forced to sign a purity pledge.
terry chay
@HRA: Monroeville Mall, which has been there since the 70’s. I think Zach and Miri Make a Porno was set there—I grew up nextdoor in Mckeesport.
Mojotron
I knew that Wecht had flirted with politics previously, my surprise was at the “makes Jack Murtha look upright” part; hadn’t heard any knocks against him except for the Mary Beth Buchanan stuff and that seemed like thin gruel.
Annie
Cyril Wecht??????? I haven’t heard that name in awhile.
Downtown Pittsburgh could be fantastic, if they would develop along the river. Why can’t they have cafes, bars, outdoor restaurants, walking places, shopping areas, etc. along the river. Pittsburgh has a lot to offer, but always had poor city/county planning. The cost of living is great, schools excellent, etc….But, again, nobody goes downtown in the evenings…
Rob in Denver
Saturday night in Pittsburgh, P.A. is like being nowhere at all.
All through the day how the hours rush by,
You sit in the park and you watch the grass die.
Ah, but after the sunset, the dusk and the twilight,
When shadows of night start to fall.
They roll back the sidewalks precisely at ten
And people who live there are not seen again.
Just two lonely truckers from Great Falls, Montana
And a salesman from places unknown,
All huddled together in downtown Pittsburgh
To spend their big night all alone.
—-
Cleveland’s the same as Pittsburgh. So’s Indianapolis and St. Louis (at least they were when I last lived in those cities).
Much better here in Denver. From my quiet neighborhood, I can walk 10 minutes, in different directions, to Invesco Field, Pepsi Center and Downtown. I can walk another 10 minutes from the heart of Downtown to see a baseball game. I’ve got a supermarket as well as a commuter college just two blocks away, plus a couple dozen local establishments — from pubs to restaurants to art galleries to tattoo joints to coffee shops — within a one mile radius of my front porch.
Tim F.
@Mojotron: I don’t know whether or not Mary Beth Buchanan had all the goods, but Cyril Wecht is seriously bent. There hadn’t been a County Executive for a long time before 1999 because County Council eliminated the office after the last guy to hold it (Cyril Wecht) resigned in an embezzlement scandal.
Tim F.
@Annie: Development downtown along the river is tough because that land still floods all the time. That is why we have several often cordoned-off parking lots, some industrial sites and a prison.
Kevin
I’m from Toronto. I was in Cleveland last spring. There for a weekend wedding. We were staying downtown, right beside the Rock and Roll Hall of fame. We kept asking each other, “Where are all the people?” The city was dead. Friday, Saturday, didn’t matter what time, the streets were empty. Such a difference from Toronto (or even the Toronto suburbs like Mississauga). It really shocked us. Used to seeing a bustling, busy city, regardless of the time or day.
Keith G
@Rob in Denver: Hey, I’m from Toledo. Dont mess with our only (almost recent) claim to cultural interest.
Of course, I moved to Houston in 1982.
Nellcote
@terry chay:
San Francisco has always been a bunch of small villages/distinct neighborhoods, many of them ethnic based so that every neighborhood had grocery/hardware/bank/restaurants etc. The thing that has always united them into a city is the availablity of public transportation. Well, that and being a peninsula but between Muni and BART you can get pretty much anywhere. And with the rise of short term/hourly rental cars (ZipCar etc.) there’s less need for residents to actually own a car and less incentive for civic planners to make the city car-centric.
Annie
@Tim F.:
I take your point. I remember as a kid driving to the airport and having the Parkway closed due to flooding. However, I believe that are points along the river that could be developed (3 Rivers Park — is that the name, I forget, where the fountain is), as well as the Strip district that could have shopping areas. Opportunities for development in downtown are there…Pittsburgh has lots of untapped potential…
Nellcote
@terry chay:
As a native San Franciscan I was absolutly shocked to discover that the rest of the country is so weird!
bago
Dallas is pretty much a ghost town. I can rock Seattle, New York, and San Francisco. Everywhere else is too primitive. I know that saying this makes me sound like some coastal elite, but it’s true.I don’t want to be off of the grid.
Yutsano
@bago: You can add Vancouver to that list. Man that was a fun town to get stuck in for a night!
RPh
Look, I live here too. Everyone keeps begging fo a “better downtown”.
Na-ga-happin.
The truth is that Pittsburgh is just like every other American city outside of the North-East Corridor (with a few exceptions … hello Chicago!)
Most downtowns are business districts first and finally. It is really hard in a car based culture to have a viable downtown. Not enough easy parking, and too many other options.
The thing most people who complain about Pittsburgh miss is that JUST OFF of downtown, there is plenty of nightlife, stores, sundries, etc.
The Strip, E. Carson St., Station Sq., and now the North Shore all hum in the evening. ‘Sliberty has a plethora of grocery stores. Homestead is all built up. Further out you have urban areas such as Shadyside, Squirell Hill, Mt. Lebanon, and (coming to life now) Bloomfield & Lawrenceville.
All in all I do not worry about the lack of urban options in the city. The tax base and spending, on the other hand ARE giant worries, which is why the city is now under the auspices of TWO state sanctioned review boards regarding its finances (and NOT coming out from under them any time soon).
Pittsburgh is what it is … a mid sized city far from the sea with an older population. 55% eastern, 35% mid-western, & 10 % southern. All is not well, but downtown not being alive after five (but for the light-up nights or first night) is far down on the list of things to tackle.
OriGuy
San Jose used to be a ghost town at night. There was a small nightclub district, but people parked, went where they were going, and left. Now there are restaurants and clubs all over the place with upscale condos within walking distance. The city subsidized a high-end grocery, Zanotto’s, that’s been there for a couple of years. Just recently a Safeway moved in a block away. Zanotto’s is having trouble competing, but Safeway wouldn’t have come in if they hadn’t shown that there was demand.
Downtown businesses can’t survive on weekday lunches and weekend dinners alone. You need someone around who’ll come in on Tuesday night when the suburbanites are at home.
Luthe
To begin with, I advise anyone who wants to talk about cities and downtowns to read The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Some bits are a little dated, but the underlying ideas are timeless.
Most downtowns are business districts first and finally. It is really hard in a car based culture to have a viable downtown. Not enough easy parking, and too many other options.
Ahem. The High Cost of Free Parking It’s not about parking. It’s about transit. And making it easier for people to live downtown. For most of history, downtowns were where people lived. Suburbanization is a relatively new phenomenon, driven by the increasing ease of travel. Downtowns didn’t become “business districts” until the 1940s.
All in all I do not worry about the lack of urban options in the city. The tax base and spending, on the other hand ARE giant worries
Urban options *are* the tax base. Residential taxes do not pay for the services that the residents use. Commercial real estate is where the tax money is. Without a mix of businesses, cities can’t sustain themselves and wind up in an increasing spiral of higher taxes, reduced services, and a shrinking population. (N.B. I think suburbs should contribute tax revenue to the cities they surround, in exchange for the services the cities provide to the suburbanites who spend 10+ hours of their day there, but that’s just me.)
The problem with urban planning is that everyone thinks they’re a planner but only a few of us have degrees in it.
Rob in Denver
@Keith G: Toledo’s just fine by me… been there several times. I’ve watched the 4th of July fireworks from the banks of the Maumee. I’ve had Packo’s in East Toledo more times than I can count. I’ve watched the MudHens play baseball and the Rockets play football. I’ve even unfolded the Peach back when it was still printed on peach-colored paper. My wife’s from the Glass City and we visit at least once a year. ;-)
YankeeApologist
@Nylund:
I play in a band in Texas, so I’ve done my time in Deep Ellum in Dallas, and in the five years I’ve been here, that place has gone from bad to dead.
Even in DE, down the whole stretch of nightclubs, a lot of nights we’d pull up to the club and have to fight off the homeless, who were the ONLY people on the street.
I frankly don’t know how those places in Dallas stay open.
Wile E. Quixote
@Luthe
Another great book to read is Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. Jane Jacobs got her start opposing one of Moses’ projects and was one of his most insightful critics. If you want to know why American cities are fucked up the way they are Caro and Jacobs’ books are the one’s to read. The Power Broker is long, it weighs in at around 1,200 pages but Caro is a masterful writer and once you start you can’t put it down (and you’ll get a great workout from hauling it around while you’re reading it).
Nylund
I actually just spent my Saturday night at a bar in Deep Ellum. For every bar / music venue there are now about 5 empty boarded up places with “For Lease” signs. Every week the local papers talk about the coming revival, and every week a two places close for every one that opens.
Dallas is absolutely terrible in so many ways. I lived in SF, NYC, and Toronto before coming here. I knew it’d be worse than those, but I didn’t expect it to be as dead and without culture as it is. Its truly depressing. It is the worst city I have ever lived in. Someone earlier ragged on St. Louis, but I’d take it over Dallas any day.
YankeeApologist
@Nylund:
I just don’t understand how a city the size of Dallas has such an utter lack of culture.
I’m just south of you, down in Austin, and there are days here when I forget I’m not in New York City anymore. This place is absolutely teeming with art, music, politics – this town is ALIVE.
Dallas is, pardon the metaphor, a dead hooker cooling in a dumpster somewhere.
Wile E. Quixote
@bago
Downtown Seattle is a ghost town after 5PM. All of the fun stuff is happening up on Capitol Hill. I wish I still lived up there.
ScottRock
Not to make too many comparisons between Ohio river cities, but Cincinnati has precisely the same problem. Only our idea of revitalization is to put a casino between downtown and OTR. Downtown itself remains a dead zone at night. I thought it was just an artifact of the riots, because i’ve never seen any large city’s downtown area as flaccid as Cincy’s. Judging by the comments it’s quite a bit more common than i thought.
Rent-retention, as Carol pointed out, is a big issue. But the fundamental problem is that tons of white people are afraid of black people in Cincy. Sooo many people adopt this Spartan-Helot mentality when talking about race in the area.
Basilisc
All this discussion of revitalizing downtowns is interesting enough, but if you actually click on the link in the Atrios post that Tim links to, you’ll see that the article isn’t about revitalizing downtowns at all.
It’s about how a large new supermarket can help revitalize a very poor, virtually bombed out “urban” (codeword for black) area. A lot of these areas lost their supermarkets in the aftermath of the 1960s riots, the opening up of previously “redlined” neighborhoods, and the associated decay. The remaining residents had no alternative to shopping at tiny, overpriced corner stores, many owned by Jews and Asians (cue violent racist resentment).
I’d guess a clean, bright, well-stocked supermarket, maybe with a pharmacy or bank branch in the store or nearby, can do more to improve the business climate and quality of life in one of these neighborhoods than even the most outlandishly generous “enterprise zone” scheme.
Ol'Froth
FOr the record, Wecht was a County Commissioner in the 1980’s, and the scandal he was involved with had nothing to do with his term as a commissioner, but with allegations of him selling body parts out of the County Mourge when he was coroner.
The county ditched the 3-commissioner government system in the 1990’s for the executive/council system after Commissioners Larry Dunn and Bob Cramner royally screwed up Allegheny County through sheer incompetence.
geg6
Tim, I gotta be contrarian here. You act as if center city is the boundary of the city and it is simply not true. The Golden Triangle is the business dstrict. But Oakland, Shadyside, South Side, Bloomfield, the North Side, Squirrel Hill, and East Liberty are city neighborhoods and are vibrant, lively places where people live well and happily. Yeah, the Fifth Avenue corridor still sucks and Murphy’s Nordstom plan for it was a stupid joke (see the Lord and Taylor’s that lasted about five minutes), but to say Pittsburgh is a huge failure as a “livable” city based on the business district shutting down at night is ridiculous. And even that business district has a rather vibrant couple of blocks after dark if you are in the Cultural District. I will, however, agree that more groceries and better public transportation would change things immensely for the entire city. My biggest beef right now is the idiocy of expanding our mini subway under the river to the North Side, which is already easily acessible by walking the bridges. Should have made a connector to Bloomfield and/or Oakland. That would have been a much better choice, if more disruptive in the short term.
Carol
Yes, tons of white people are afraid of black people in Cincy. But a lot of black middle-class people have also fled for the suburbs where you can have a yard and a pool, keep dogs and cats, and lawns. So what do you do to attract people downtown and into the city?
First of all, recognize that short of enormous rises in gasoline prices, a lot of suburbanites won’t be coming back. Secondly, high-end retail is not the answer. Reading about Saks and other department stores being touted as a way to get people to come downtown-we did that too, and the stores are only packed during certain times of the year and day-and that’s because there are thankfully still communities within bus and even walking distance. And retail is going through its own deconstruction like the music industry: more and more stuff is being sold online from someone’s warehouse or back shed. Overhead is thereby pretty low in comparison-and it makes it hard for even suburban mall shops to compete these days. And shoppers don’t then decide to stay and live and become a taxpaying member of the community.
What I would do is turn the development model on its head: look for low-cost ways to attract students, work on retaining the low-income people who need mass transit along with seniors who need a place to live where they can walk to their needs instead of driving, immigrants, artists and others who need enclaves where they can feel at home.
I would allow apartments as well as condos, urban homesteading, and even some adverse possession of long-standing empty buildings for housing. Empty storefronts I would sell for minimum amounts to entrepreneurs who are willing to commit to staying around and providing services. I would move (or build) amenities such as hospitals (why don’t we see an abandoned skyscraper become Downtown Medical) and schools. I would also make it possible for working class people to live downtown as well by loosening up credit and housing rules so that people can hold a steady job and buy one of those soon-to-be abandoned because they cost too much condos.
Then we could actually have a community that would stay long enough to pay taxes and invest in upkeep.
SMR
Thanks for the timely post — we are transferring to Pittsburgh (from Calgary) next summer. We live in a great area of Calgary, in the summers I drive once a week for my daughter’s horse-riding lessons. Everything else — Starbucks, groceries, shopping of every kind — is done walking or taking the c-train.
I’ve been looking around the internet trying to find out if there’s a similar area in Pittsburgh to move to (don’t care how hubby gets to work, I just want to be able to walk walk walk most everywhere and have some parks & pools nearby), saw something about South Side? Not all it’s cracked up to be?
Calgary has the same dynamic — the “core” (downtown) is abandoned after everyone leaves their offices. But just outside of the core, as in our area, Kensington, it is lively all of the time.
I also have to consider schools since we have a daughter starting next fall.
Sounds like I will have my work cut out for me finding a Pittsburgh utopia as I’ve found here in Calgary.
Frank
@SMR: Live in Shadyside, Highland Park (where the zoo is), or the Southside. Pittsburgh has tons of things to do. Downtown stinks but downtown will do better again in about two years.
geg6
@SMR:
Bloomfield, Friendship, Shadyside are wonderful places. I am especially enamored with Bloomfield. Highland Park is nice. And people discount what a wonderful place to live the North Side can be. The Mexican War Streets, Troy Hill, Observatory Hill…lovely.
Here’s some pix from the North Side:
http://activerain.com/blogsview/1360945/pittsburgh-s-beautiful-northside-neighborhood
And another site that gives you virtual tours and photos of both Bloomfield and the North Side (along with other neighborhoods):
http://www.pittsburghneighborhoodtours.com/pr13/neighborhoods/default.asp?nHood=1
MarkJ
I agree with others who have stated that downtown business districts are not really where the action is at nights and on weekends. I live in DC and it is something of a poster child for how to turn a city from a place with a bad reputation into one that people enjoy living in.
Unless you tear down the office buildings (and that assumes they are empty) no one is going to live downtown because there is nowhere for them to live that is pleasant. Go a few blocks outside the central business district and you start getting into the neighborhoods where people live, and those neighborhoods are where most of the interesting dining and night life is. They are very vibrant neighborhoods. Downtown just isn’t built to be vibrant – it’s built to house employers – and only a redesign would entice people to live there. As long as the office space is filled downtown, I wouldn’t worry about it being a ghost town after 5 PM.
It’s the commercial strips in the residential areas of the city that are where the action is – if those fall apart like they have in a lot of midwestern cities it’s a downhill path to oblivion. Those are the areas that turned around in DC – the central business district has not change much. One thing that might help Pittsburg is a commuter tax – it forces commuters to help pay for the infrastructure and public services they use every day. DC has been trying to get one for decades but since Congress (a political body we have no voting representation in) has veto power over everything the city does, we’ve never been able to implement one. VA and MD have reaped untold fortunes from being in close proximity to the nation’s capital, but ask them to chip in and you get no-where.
SMR
@geg6
Many thanks for the info. I’ll be checking out the links and doing a bit more research on those areas you mentioned.
Calgary seems to have worked out some sort of balance between downtown business needs and residential areas. The downtown business core is almost totally deserted after work hours, excepting a pedestrian street that has shops, hockey, theatre, dining, etc.
It’s possible that Pittsburgh will see a profound change in the near future as the Appalachian gas fortunes converge in the area.