Hill District redevelopment plan shows great promise

Pittsburgh has had a number of urban-planning disappointments and a few outright disasters over the years.

But it's good to report that the recently released Pittsburgh Penguins' plans to redevelop the Lower Hill District are a clear winner. The Penguins' group has come up with a highly sophisticated preliminary plan that incorporates values that can be important to all of us.

The plans cover a 28-acre tract of empty land next to Consol Energy Center that used to be occupied by the demolished Civic Arena and its seemingly endless parking lots. They take an appropriately conservative approach to a redevelopment that will likely stretch out over a decade or more and will require participation by what may well turn out to be a large number of private developers.

The plans create, in effect, a concept that will guide what the planners are calling the form, the density and the character of what developers may do in the Lower Hill, without specifying precisely who will do exactly what or exactly where.

Areas are specified as to the height of buildings, how they will relate to the streets and other factors, but, within those allowances, developers will have considerable flexibility. The development is likely to contain a mix of high-rise and low-rise office and apartment buildings, shops, restaurants, hotels and townhouses.

There are still issues of concern to the nearby communities in the Hill and Uptown such as the proportion of low-cost housing to be provided, the use of minority contractors and exactly what the height allowances might be for certain important parcels. But after those are settled, the city should move ahead with this plan and resolve to scrupulously maintain it over the years as development proceeds.

Provisions for the buildings themselves, for traffic management and parking, for street and sidewalk design, pedestrian spaces, public amenities and parks all are exemplary.

The plan even takes into account the views the vista that residents, pedestrians and motorists will encounter as they look from the Hill toward Downtown. This is no small matter. Think of how the experience of a baseball game at PNC Park is enhanced by the view of Downtown. There's an even more dramatic view from the streets of the Hill. To preserve it, the plan envisions clustering high-rise buildings to two sides of the funnel-shaped development and low-rise to the middle streets.

Another key feature of the plan is a re-creation of the urban street grid on the site. It provides for reconnection to the streets of the upper Hill at the top of the plan and to the Golden Triangle at the bottom, integrating people and businesses. The plan recommends building a broad park that will bridge-over part of the Crosstown Expressway (Interstate 579). This may well be an expensive undertaking, but it should not be slighted.

Reconnecting to the Downtown will improve development prospects for offices and stores considerably at the new site, and reconnecting to the existing upper Hill grid should have positive spin-off effects for that long-beleaguered neighborhood, too.

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Hill District redevelopment plan shows great promise