A Quick Newsflash

For all of you "reconnect the hill types" who wants to obliterate any trace of the Civic Arena, I have a couple things to chew on in your mind.

-The Igloo didn't separate your neighborhood, 579 did. It's a gigantic trench gouged out between downtown and the Hill. Look at a satellite image, it's a much clearer defining line than the big dot just to the east. No matter how many streets they re-build over the arena property, there's still one way into and two ways out of downtown (Centre in and Bigelow and Centre out), because of the aforementioned highway.

-The Igloo didn't prevent Giant Eagle and Kuhn's from either balking at or pulling out of deals to re-build a Super Market in the Hill. Blame Giant Eagle especially, a "neighborhood" company that won't lift a finger to support a hometown neighborhood. Kuhn's at least tried, but ran into financial trouble.

-Whatever development they put there isn't being put there to help residents of the Hill. It's going to be upscale to attract to young business types, not long time Hill residents. Best case scenario is that it will Gentrify the area, and that's not going to help the Hill at all!

-So you want the development? That's fine too. Look at a map, the parking takes up two city blocks! You could easily keep the arena and re-develop the parking lots. Those are MUCH more of an eyesore than the arena.

Going Down the Tubes…or maybe not.

There’s been a lot made of the tomfoolery that occurs weekendly (I know it’s not a word) in the Saaaaaath Side. There’s also an increasing effort to curtail it. See a couple of examples here and here.

Here’s my take. The South Side is the youngest “hippest” thing(like Pittsburgh has such a thing) going on in Pittsburgh. Does it have its problems, absolutely, but so does every other neighborhood.

In my extremely well informed opinion, the rub in the South Side comes because it is the youngest neighborhood in Pittsburgh. In a lot of other neighborhoods, the silvertop to 20-30 something ratio is much higher in favor of the silvertops. In the South Side, it’s totally different. The 20-30 somethings outnumber the silvertops by a lot. When the 20-30 somethings engage in things that 20-30 somethings do (get drunk, fight, screw), it leads to friction. The silvertops want a quiet peaceful neighborhood. The South Side is not that place.

At the risk of sounding like an ass, maybe it’s time for the silvertops to move on. A great thing about Pittsburgh is how stay put, and while I don’t think that should change, we need to move forward as a city, and to do that our neighborhoods need to be allowed to do the same. If you don't like it there, maybe you shouldn't be there. There are plenty of 20-30 somethings who would be glad to take your place.

What makes the South Side crazy with a lot of urinators and occasional fighting morons is also what gives it its eclectic feel. The South Side is the only neighborhood in the city to boast everything from corner bars, to dance clubs, high end retail, high end dining, and corporate headquarters (to name just a few of the diverse aspects of the neighborhood). Other neighborhoods can claim a few of those things but no other neighborhood can really claim the mix of all those things (and more) which the South Side does. It’s also the only neighborhood to really “complete” a transformation from its industrial past to a popular present day destination.
You want to crack down on a lot of the negative shit; then by all means, get more police, put up more cameras, whatever. However, don’t change its character. This city is a lot less of a city without the South Side.

What to Do with the Igloo?

I’ve often heard the phrase “You Americans have no sense of history”. This is usually spoken by non-Americans, and is usually directed at Americans with little sense of history.

It’s in this spirit that I write this post. Fifty-odd years ago, Pittsburgh destroyed a neighborhood in order to build what is now Mellon Arena. They destroyed a piece of our history. Now they threaten to destroy history again, although in a different way; by knocking down a piece of American Engineering AND Cultural history.

Two wrongs don’t make a right. Was obliterating that neighborhood bad in the first place? Absolutely. Does that make it ok to destroy this landmark which was the first EVER retractable dome and is a piece of Pittsburgh history? No way.

The common theme I hear is “we must connect the Hill back to Downtown”. The Radical Middle does a GREAT job of throwing this argument out the window. Check it out here. To roughly paraphrase, The Hill IS connected to downtown, and always has been. If you are worried about “restoring the street grid”, get rid of those damn parking lots and rebuild the street grid, complete with whatever type of development you would like, residential, commercial, WHATEVER.

What to do with old Lady Mellon?

The harder issue to tackle is the sheer fact that the old lady is old and broken. To continue to use it in something approaching its current capacity would require a lot of $$$$. You can’t just let it sit empty either, as it would continue to deteriorate, and eventually become a safety hazard. My favorite idea, pushed here, would be to gut the arena, leaving it’s signature feature, the roof intact. The roof would then be retracted (permanently, I think) and the shell of the arena could house an outdoor amphitheatre.

By using this approach, you are saving an engineering first, and avoiding many of the other problems, including continued maintenance. This would also would allow for more extensive development than by leaving the arena/parking lots fully intact.

The Civic Arena has somewhat of a sordid history, but that history is nonetheless extremely important to this city and Western Pennsylvania. The story of The Civic Arena/Igloo/Mellon Arena should be preserved, not just in pictures and thoughts, but in real concrete and steel.