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Introduction: A special report on Oakland By Douglas Heuck , Post-Gazette Business Editor Welcome to the final PG Benchmarks of 1999, a fascinating look at what Oakland could become. This edition includes 72 submissions in our competition to improve Pittsburgh’s university center, once referred to by a historian as Pittsburgh’s "shimmering alter ego." Directly below, you’ll find one of the two winners, an illustration that conveys in beautiful detail what many citizen contributors would like to see: a more beautiful and inspired use of Schenley Plaza, the land between the Carnegie and the Hillman Library. It is now a parking lot.
The other winning submission is an ambitious and well-conceived overall vision for a series of changes that would make Oakland more beautiful, prosperous and enjoyable. Both groups of winners will get an audience with Mayor Murphy to make their case for the transfer of their ideas from drawing board to groundbreaking. The move to improve Oakland, however, will not end there. Several groups already are at work. And PG Benchmarks will announce its further plans on the matter early next year. Included in this edition is a report by Dan Fitzpatrick walking through more than 100 years of Oakland dreams and developments, leading up to the city’s current plans for improvement. The leaders of Pittsburgh’s two most prominent universities, the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon, contribute their views. The rest of the section contains entries only slightly less compelling than the two winners. Several themes emerge. One is developing -- finally -- a transit link between Oakland and Downtown. Writers including Allegheny County Executive-elect Jim Roddey and Paul Skoutelas, Port Authority general manager and chief executive officer, argue on page 6 that such a link is overdue and should become a high priority. Another strong theme is creating an entrance to Oakland. One of grandeur and inspiration rather than one of rust and garbage. Many of those views appear on page 9. Making Oakland more friendly for pedestrians is the wish of many who would like to see Bigelow Boulevard closed next to the Cathedral of Learning and the elimination of the one-way, wrong-way bus lane on Fifth Avenue. An issue that evoked a passionate response from many writers is the need to simply clean up the trash, fix what’s broken, and generally dress up the gray and drab elements. The quality of the 72 submissions to follow are certainly a tribute to the civic spirit of this area’s citizens, but also to the conviction that Oakland is a tremendous asset that can be made better. This section also contains the final results for PG Benchmarks’ statistical comparison of metropolitan Pittsburgh and the 14 other, similar-sized regions in the most important indicators. The final tally nets a 7th place overall for Greater Pittsburgh, which for statistical purposes includes Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties. Finally, this is the 19th edition of PG Benchmarks and the end of the fourth full year of publication. It marks, perhaps, the figurative conference of an undergraduate degree of sorts for the newspaper in continuing civic measurement. And in that regard, it is also time for the matriculation into a new phase of the project. More details on that will follow next year.
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