Buzz

Pittsburgh as one of 15 U.S. emerging downtowns

Forbes Wednesday, April 03, 2013

"The northeastern industrial hub's downtown, which by the late 1980s had succumbed to an exodus of businesses and people, has slowly begun to turn around. Class A office space as of the third quarter of 2012 was 94.5% leased, compared to 85% a decade earlier. PNC Financial opened a $170 million-plus office tower in 2009, with a $400 million second tower under construction now. The area's population was about 8,000, according to the U.S. Census, up 21% from 2000. Since 2009, 219 new housing units have come to market, with another 346 under construction, according to the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership. To put this in perspective, the number of residential developments has more than doubled in the past 30 years, the majority of new projects erected in the past seven."

See Pittsburgh and the other cities listed here.

Pittsburgh with kids: an education in fun

Travelingmamas.com Wednesday, January 30, 2013

How much fun is Kidsburgh for kids?

Read the story here.

Pittsburgh seeks to expand riverfront access to the public

New York Times Wednesday, January 23, 2013

"Pittsburgh exists for three reasons: the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio," writes Pittsburgh-based writer Christine O'Toole in the New York Times. "In the 20th century, the banks of those rivers were controlled by industrial behemoths. They largely lost that identity after the waning of the steel industry in the 1980s. Over the last two decades, however, the city’s progress in clearing and cleaning its waterfront has created 12 miles of recreational trails, three professional sports stadiums, several boat landings and an influx of nearly 2,000 new downtown residents.

"The city has managed to leverage a $124 million investment in publicly accessible riverfront into $4 billion in corporate, public, nonprofit and entertainment development downtown.

"That success has renewed a debate that would have been unthinkable in Pittsburgh’s polluted industrial heyday: how best to expand public access to the shorelines of the three rivers. Projects proposed for two of the largest tracts left to be developed on the downtown fringe illustrate the opportunities and limits of public-private partnerships..."

Read the full story here.

Pittsburgh holiday news in series of blogs

Imagine Pittsburgh Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Want to keep up with holiday traditions and learn more about cool things to do over the holidays, as well as the history behind them? Look no further: read the blog series on Imagine Pittsburgh website.

A family's three day visit to Pittsburgh

Pandora's Deals Wednesday, December 12, 2012

"Pittsburgh is a really cool city, unlike any I’ve ever been in before," writes the author who brought her family to town for a three day visit." Read what she has to say about everything from our bridges, which her kids deemed very cool, to the clean and well-lit downtown and the thriving street scene.

Read the full story here.

Pittsburgh one of three cities to come back after recession

Reuters Wednesday, December 05, 2012

Three and a half years since the 2007-09 economic recession ended, only three major U.S. metropolitan areas are experiencing an economic recovery, according to the Brookings Institution, reports Reuters.

"The Washington-based research group has also deemed Dallas and Pittsburgh in recovery after analyzing their employment levels and gross domestic product per capita.

The United States has the most major metropolitan economies of all countries - 76 - according to an annual report on the 300 largest metropolitan economies worldwide that Brookings released on Friday.

"It was still better than last year when the U.S. had no metro recoveries," Brookings Associate Fellow Emilia Istrate said.
Istrate said the three cities had two features in common: strong local services such as healthcare, and business and financial services that cater to specific industries."

Read the full story here.

PNC earns perfect score in top place to work for gays and lesbians

Human Rights Coalition Wednesday, December 05, 2012

PNC was just named one of the 2013 Best Places to Work for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Equality in the Human Rights Campaign’s annual Corporate Equality Index, scoring a perfect 100 points.

Over the past 11 years, the CEI has become the gold standard for corporate policies and practices related to LGBT employees and their families. The CEI rates companies on 40 such policies and practices. A total of 889 businesses have been rated in the 2013 CEI, including the entire Fortune 500. This year a record 293 of the Fortune 500-ranked businesses have an official CEI rating, with the other 201 rated based upon publicly-available data.

Read the full report here.

MAYA designers on their new book, Trillions

Huffington Post Wednesday, December 05, 2012

In this excerpt from "Trillions: Thriving in the Emerging Information Ecology" by Peter Lucas,
Joe Ballay and Mickey McManus (Wiley, 2012), the principals at MAYA present the challenges we face in this information age.

"There are already many more computing devices in the world than there are people. In a few more years, their number will climb into the trillions. Moreover, we are quickly figuring out how to make those processors communicate with each other, and with us. We are about to be faced with -- not a trillion isolated devices -- but a trillion-node network: a network whose scale and complexity will dwarf that of today's Internet. And, unlike the Internet, this will be a network not of computation that we use, but of computation that we live in..."

Read the excerpt here in the Huffington Post.

Pittsburgh named as Under the Radar Cultural Destination

Departures.com Wednesday, November 28, 2012

The Scene: Struggling industrial center turned cultural breeding ground.

The Signature: Museums. Visit the iconic Andy Warhol Museum (117 Sandusky St.; warhol.org) for an infusion of pop art, the Carnegie Museum of Art (4400 Forbes Ave.; cmoa.org) for an upcoming exhibit on modern decorative arts and the Mattress Factory (500 Sampsonia Way; mattress.org) for “room-sized” installations of contemporary art.

Insider Knowledge: While Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater (fallingwater.org) is the city’s most famous architectural landmark, H. H. Richardson’s Emmanuel Episcopal Church (emmanuelpgh.org) is worth a visit. The building features Tiffany windows and a wood interior reminiscent of an inverted ship’s hull.

Don’t Miss: The Pittsburgh Glass Center (5472 Penn Ave.; pittsburghglasscenter.org), where visitors can tour galleries of ornate glasswork or take a glassblowing class themselves.

Read the Pittsburgh and other blurbs here.

Tower at PNC Plaza wins green award before it's even built

eco-structure.com Wednesday, November 14, 2012

"PNC's new tower at Fifth and Wood just won the 2012 Evergreen On the Boards award. "A request to build the greenest high-rise in the world is a tall order. But that’s precisely what Gary Saulson, executive vice president and director of corporate real estate for PNC Financial Services Group, asked of the design team behind the company’s new headquarters, the 33-story Tower at PNC Plaza in Pittsburgh, which will exceed LEED Platinum standards when it opens in 2015.

"The design team, including Gensler and sustainability consultants Paladino & Co., established three pillars that guided each design decision: community building, workplace innovator, and climate responder. The tower’s passive and active features encourage employees to take ownership of their workspaces. The breathing building is wrapped by a double-skin façade with a motorized outer layer and manually operable inner layer. Outdoor spaces interspersed throughout the building include a semi-conditioned atrium, dubbed the “community porch,” as well as green terraces at setbacks, providing a diverse array of collaborative workspaces."

Read the full story here.

Grant St. named one of 10 best in America

Pittsburgh Post Gazette Wednesday, October 03, 2012

"Grant Street, arguably the most prestigious thoroughfare in southwestern Pennsylvania, has been named one of America's 10 Great Streets for 2012," reports the Post Gazette.

"The seat of financial, governmental and legal power for the region and home to some of its most striking architecture, Grant Street will be honored by the American Planning Association in an announcement scheduled for today.

It has some lofty company in the association's top 10, including Fifth Avenue in New York City, Duval Street in Key West, Fla., and Broad Street in Charleston, S.C."

Read the story here.

Five reasons to visit Pittsburgh

Newsday.com Wednesday, August 01, 2012

Blogger Polly Higgins writes: "Because it's my hometown, Pittsburgh is a required destination on the annual itinerary. Still, every time I visit, as I did last weekend, I am reminded how much there is to do in the under-the-radar town.

Though far west in the Keystone State, a trip to Pittsburgh via the Pennsylvania Turnpike clocks under seven hours from Brooklyn. This is a good enough distance to wash off the workweek, but not so cumbersome as to require more than a long weekend."

Here are her recommendations, from the Carnegie Museum to the Strip District.

Read the story here.

Downtown & The Cultural District : Buzz