I saw empty sidewalks, vacated storefronts, scores of forlorn-looking souls where I'd never expected to see them.
This was London. Just this past summer.
I saw an entire street blanketed with makeshift tents, an urban encampment amid, of all things, a long line of parked police cars.
This was Manhattan. Same summer.
I saw a once-bustling shopping district reduced to -- wow, I still can't shake this one -- endless rows of people lying down anywhere they could, silently begging via cardboard signs amid the acrid stench of pot, defecation and human urine.
This was Denver. Same summer.
They didn't call it a global pandemic for nothing. It was global in every sense of the term. There's scarcely a slice of life on our planet that went untouched. And when it came to urban centers, that applied many times over and for so many reasons, most of them obvious.
Downtown Pittsburgh wasn't an exception, even if the damage to our own region's core was far, far less than the examples above and, to my eye, examples most everywhere else. We actually did OK. All our major corporations stayed put, albeit with fewer in-person workers. Our businesses and storefronts, while currently having exactly 50 vacancies in too small a space for a number that high, also include a brand new Target on Smithfield Street that's blown away their own sales projections. Our residential demand is so high that the office conversions can't happen quickly enough.
And crime, which seems to be Topic A with how every incident now gets blown up on local TV news, is at a data-verified two-decade low:
CITY OF PITTSBURGH
Maybe we weathered this mess better than most because Downtown had such upward momentum in 2019 -- seriously, it was never better in any of the above categories -- that even a pandemic wasn't going to crush us.
But I'd like to think it's a lot more.
For as much as we still love to romanticize the 1970s around here, the reality is that was the worst of times in our city's history, Steelers and Pirates notwithstanding. The steel mills and related industry that'd accounted for roughly half the economy all but collapsed. We witnessed an exodus of people akin to Chernobyl. And once the grime and filth and soot had cleared -- the only positive -- what was left was a city on the precipice of becoming another Rust Belt catastrophe like Detroit.
Richard Caliguiri, the mayor at the time and a man taken from us far too soon, had the answer: Make Downtown stand taller than ever.
He rounded up CEOs, heads of trust funds and other community leaders, and inspired a building boom that remains unrivaled to this day. A half-dozen sparkling new skyscrapers, a shiny new subway system and a general commitment that we'd make this work.
Short version: We did.
Short version of the current situation: We will again. In part because this is nothing by comparison.
I'm not resurrecting this feature to sugarcoat anything. That's not exactly my style, I'm guessing you've noticed over the years. What I'm here to do every Tuesday is to share stories, scenes and anecdotes of this magnificent, historic place where I was born (we were living in an apartment at 625 Stanwix Street), where I work, and where I now proudly live once again. My family and I will snap the pics -- Marko got some great ones today of the Union Trust Building's unrivaled lobby -- and I'll handle all the words.
We aren't perfect. No urban center can be. We're still at about 60% of our usual capacity for actual humans, per the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership. We've got crime, and even one shooting is too much for full comfort. We've got homeless, even if that's been hugely mitigated the past couple months by the opening of a new $10 million shelter. We've got businesses that are struggling, even if ours isn't. All of that's real.
But so is the wholly authentic new momentum that's amassing here, and my feeling, based on the news coverage most people absorb, is that you'd never hear about these things, much less appreciate or applaud them, if I didn't write about them.
If you're not interested or you're one of those peculiar people who hates Downtown and wants it to fail -- I only hear from those all the time -- by all means, read something else on the site. But also, if you hate Downtown or want it to fail, don't dare to call yourself a Pittsburgher in any sense. Because this mile-and-a-quarter from the Fountain to Grant Street, my friends ... this is Pittsburgh. This is where it was created in the form of a couple forts. This is where all roads lead in our beltway-free existence. This remains the throbbing, vital heartbeat of the entire Tri-State Area.
As it goes, we all go.
So, as we've long loved to say regarding the local football franchise, here we go.
Next week: The majestic re-rise of the Kauffman's building
