A million dollars. Even in this age of trillion-dollar deficits, that figure blows my hair back. So when I read that a local group planned a $1.3 million advertising campaign to sell the idea of living Downtown, I nearly did a Danny Thomas spit-take with my coffee.
The Downtown Living Initiative intends to finance its marketing campaign with donations from Downtown corporations and others trying to recruit talent here. So this would not be my money nor yours. But I'm so tired of all the bluster about this town, of all the talk, all the spin. I've heard from a neutral party that this ad campaign is terrific, but so what? Downtown doesn't need more hot air about Downtown living; it needs more Downtown residents emitting hot air.
We don't need to increase the demand for Downtown apartments. We need to increase the supply. The problem is not so much finding people who will buy or rent Downtown. It's providing them the apartments they desire.
The past decade's successes on the fringes of Downtown, Washington's Landing on Herrs Island, Crawford Square on the Lower Hill, Lincoln at the North Shore and other less prominent projects, have shown people will buy an urban lifestyle. None required a mega-marketing campaign.
Mark Schneider, president of the Rubinoff Co., developed 88 homes on the bones of an old slaughterhouse and is building 700 more on an old slag heap south of the Squirrel Hill Tunnels. The extraordinary obstacles overcome by Washington's Landing and Summerset at Frick Park brought extraordinary publicity, but needed no marketing beyond Mayor Tom Murphy's incessant plugging.
"When we closed out [Washington's Landing] we got him a green jacket," Schneider said of the mayor's salesmanship.
So I asked Patty Burk, program director of the Downtown Living Initiative, why it sought to spend so much to increase demand.
Burk said a handful of developers plan more than 1,200 new housing units for the Golden Triangle, North Shore, Strip District and Uptown in the next three to five years. This three-year publicity campaign is designed to float six to nine months ahead of the openings. A recent survey indicated there are about 80,000 people in our metro area of 2.3 million who would consider Downtown living, but Burk says they may never have had that idea until the survey put it in their heads.
The ads, coupled with a Web site with links to available apartments, are designed to keep Downtown living in people's heads. Increase demand -- even if the supply is not ready -- and she believes the supply will improve, too. There is no problem interesting developers, Burk said, but the insurance companies and pension funds that fund big projects need to see the demand.
I hope my skepticism is misplaced. I hope if this media blitz comes, it goes over bigger than fries on a steak salad. But commercials and Web sites take you only so far. When prospective buyers come Downtown, the apartments themselves --not the hype -- will determine sales. From what I hear, those Downtown apartments that have sold more slowly haven't been as well conceived as the ones that have sold quickly.
Downtown is a tough place to build affordable housing, and the absence of convenient parking is a huge hurdle. People might easily warm to the idea of keeping their lawn in Point State Park, but Americans' attachment to their cars should not be underestimated.
Those big, successful developments on the fringes of Downtown all provide nearby parking. Schneider recalled what an amazon.com executive once told a roomful of developers: "The only thing people want closer to their desks than their laptop is their car. You may think techies are really cool green people, but they love their cars."
How will developers overcome that within the Golden Triangle? We may soon see. But my guess is that the transformation of Downtown into a real neighborhood will work much the way it has in places such as the Mexican War Streets, Friendship and the South Side.
New arrivals will talk it up. Word of mouth will grow into a buzz. It undoubtedly will take many years, maybe even decades, but it will eventually happen because it makes too much sense not to happen.
If the commercials even merit a footnote, I'll be surprised.
Brian O'Neill can be reached at boneill@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1947.
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