 
|
|||||||||
              
|
City's recreation plans taking off
Sunday, September 09, 2001 By Gary Rotstein, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
They reach the Downtown end of the Eliza Furnace Trail within minutes of one another around 5:30 on a weekday, their T-shirts damp with sweat.
There's bicyclist Doug Luce of Shadyside, towing his toddler son in a buggy; Rollerblader Bob Sette of Regent Square, listening to headphones while doing a U-turn to head back out the 2.5-mile jail trail; and jogger Brian Schwadron of Manchester on his regular exercise kick between Downtown and Oakland.
They don't know one another, but they're linked by both their pleasure in the acceleration of outdoor recreation opportunities in and near the region's Downtown hub, and their disappointment in lingering shortcomings.
They're glad that walking-riding trails have been built over the past decade along the Golden Triangle's riverbanks and on the other side of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, but they want the gaps filled between them and with neighborhoods.
Others are delighted by increased use of the rivers by kayakers and canoeists in recent years, but wonder why there aren't more places in and around the Point to easily put those or motorboats in the water, or to rent equipment.
And there's widespread fancy with the idea of an ice skating rink Downtown, which The Hillman Co. plans to install this winter in the plaza of PPG Place, but some people dream of more ambitious Pittsburgh-signature ventures such as turning part of Mount Washington into a climbing wall with clear view from across the river.
Schwadron, 32, a materials engineer for U.S. Steel Corp., has found the jail trail convenient to use after work for the past two years. He believes that his friends in Boston and Washington, D.C., have better biking and running paths linked to their cities' centers, but sees Pittsburgh headed in the right direction.
"It's slowly moving up from nothing, which is where it was five years ago," the newlywed said after some loud, heart-pounding exercise a few feet away from the passing lane of the Parkway East near the Allegheny County Jail.
Schwadron and his sweaty ilk will get no argument from the city's most visible and influential outdoor recreation booster, who hopes election to a third term will allow him to continue improvements that began appearing in the mid-1990s.
"I think what we've done is just laid the foundation," Mayor Tom Murphy said. "The hardest part of anything is the first 10 percent, because you have so much skepticism. ... Other cities are further along, but we've gone from being dead last or close to the bottom" in trails and other outdoor amenities in and around Downtown.
The Murphy administration has been deservedly lauded for its trails development program by park and recreation advocates around the country, said Peter Harnik, director of the Green Cities Initiative for the national Trust for Public Land.
The improvements place Pittsburgh among the most active cities in a national trend to redevelop downtowns with parks and outdoor recreation in mind. Murphy acknowledged Pittsburgh's so active now, in part, because it had so little to begin with.
Chicago, Seattle and some other waterfront cities recognized long ago how helpful the connection between outdoor recreation and water could be to the vitality of their center cities. Even midsize and smaller cities such as Louisville, Ky.; Chattanooga, Tenn.; and Austin, Texas, have put major resources into such improvements in recent years.
Urban planners say recreation projects can justify their cost by serving multiple purposes -- improving the city as a tourist destination, keeping commuters around after work to enhance vitality and the city center's economy and re-creating Downtown as a place to live by adding valued neighborhood assets of greenery and accessible activities.
"The reality of center city business districts, of course, is by and large there's very little room to play with," Harnik said. "That's why a greenway for bicyclists and runners, making use of a relatively small portion of land, is the more likely solution for a downtown area."
The city-county Sports & Exhibition Authority will be completing within weeks the first phase of North Shore improvements that extend a riverfront trail toward the Carnegie Science Center from Washington's Landing at Herrs Island.
An extension of the South Side riverfront trail is near completion west of 18th Street, with more expansion planned around Station Square. Construction of the new convention center includes extension of the Allegheny Riverfront Park, with further plans to stretch into the Strip District. The Eliza Furnace Trail, which now runs from lower Greenfield to the Municipal Courts Building, Downtown, is supposed to reach Point State Park in two years after makeover of the Mon Wharf and Fort Pitt Boulevard.
The first stage of the $48 million North Shore project includes water steps as a children's activity area, piers and tie-ups for boating and fishing, and an area called the "great lawn" near Heinz Field that provides room for games. A bike ramp from the Fort Duquesne Bridge to the North Shore trail is to be reinstalled by spring. The former ramp was lost in the demolition of Three Rivers Stadium.
The project's planners initially left out plans for any wide, grassy area that could be used for Frisbee or tossing a football. They called an audible last year and decided to add 50,000 square feet of lawn space.
The decision was part of the historic debate over whether urban park space should be ornamental, for use by picnickers or strollers, or promote active pastimes. Increasingly, concessions are being made for the more active pursuits.
That's why the Riverlife Task Force, a privately funded advisory group, and the Allegheny Conference on Community Development have formed a committee studying possible changes in the use of Point State Park, which is primarily a congregation spot for special events.
Right now, no one is even permitted to ride a bicycle around the full length of the Point, which is reserved for pedestrians near the fountain. The Murphy administration and private groups want to determine whether the park, which is owned by the state and maintained by the city, could be more actively used.
"There's so much more we can do," not only with the Point but also with other Downtown and riverfront amenities, said Maxwell King, a kayaking-bicycling enthusiast who is executive director of the Heinz Endowments and co-chairman of the Riverlife Task Force.
He sees the potential for sailboats at the Point, climbers on a designated area of Mount Washington, a bike lane system linking Downtown to all of the major neighborhood parks.
"It's important for this community, for economic reasons, to focus on creating the right kind of very exciting, rich urban environment, which has to include an array of outdoor recreational opportunities," King said, pointing to Carnegie Mellon University studies that have highlighted the importance of outdoor amenities to workers in the high-tech fields.
People who use the rivers around the Point for nonmotorized boats talk of a boom in interest in that recreation, but also of difficult accessibility for the general public. There's no regular rental of such craft, and only Washington's Landing and a ramp into the Mon River at South 18th Street are useful for placing them in the water.
The Three Rivers Rowing Club, Sustainable Pittsburgh, Western Pennsylvania Field Institute and other groups have discussed establishing a one-stop river center to house offices for rentals, instructors and more, but it's a concept rather than a plan.
The field institute, a new group promoting regional outdoor activities, quickly sold out its first advertised kayaking trip for the public to take place on the Allegheny tomorrow, executive director Mike Schiller said.
He sees that as sign of a burgeoning outdoors interest to be nurtured and assisted by both public and private interests. Schiller said part of what's needed was bigger promotion of the trails, river possibilities and other amenities already here.
That point was echoed by Peggy Krall, a partner in Golden Triangle Bike Rental, which is based at the Downtown end of the jail trail. Aside from the fact that many people might be unaware the bike rentals are available, she said, many people still don't know how to access the trail.
"When I visit other cities, it is so easy and effortless to find everything, to make sure you can get around. I don't think we make it easy," said Stephanie Spence, publisher of Pennsylvania Health and Fitness Magazine, whose family joins a group of inline skaters on the Eliza Furnace Trail each Sunday.
The bike rental and concessions operation is moving from a trailer into a larger, permanent building this fall at the trail's end beneath the LRT bridge. The city and Port Authority have discussed installing beside the rental center a facility for bicycle storage with bathrooms and showers, to encourage more commuter use of the trail, but no funding has been identified for that.
Murphy said attention to such efforts gives him the most satisfaction as mayor, because he sees families and couples happily using the same trail space he jogged along alone when it was a rough railroad bed years ago.
And he credits The Hillman Co. for taking on the ice skating rink project, which the prior owner of the PPG property had no interest in. Murphy sees it generating "a buzz," supplementing all the public projects enhancing Downtown.
"The more you do, the more ambitious you get," Murphy said. "We needed to build an infrastructure, and that's by no means done; but you can get a sense of it now."
|
||||||||
