Strip District businesses can’t do business due to events

On a cool crisp fall morning, the street vendors are all set up with their wares. The businesses on Penn Avenue are ready to go: The coffee is hot, the croissants have just come out of the oven, the cheeses are all on display. It looks like it’s going to be a busy day. Except for one thing: All of the streets surrounding the Strip District are closed. There are no cars, no buses, no people — no business.

The EQT race was coming through the Strip. The streets were closed until the end of the morning, essentially ruining our business day.

It would be one thing if this were a once a year problem, but recently the Strip has seen street closures on a regular basis. The marathon, the Great Race, the EQT 10 Miler, holiday parades, condo construction closures, the Smallman Street development, bridge closures and more. Pittsburgh is loving my neighborhood to death.

Everyone wants to enjoy the Strip. That’s great, however, when the streets are closed for a “special event,” business must endure a real hardship. Saturdays are the busiest day for us here. It’s the day where we make the money that enables us to be here for the rest of the week. We need our Saturdays to buy our supplies, make our payroll and pay our taxes ... Are you listening, city of Pittsburgh?

There are so many challenges to having a business in the Strip. From parking, construction, the gentrification of the neighborhood, taxes, regulations, infrastructure and so much more, the Strip is in real danger of becoming a quaint old memory.

Let us have our one day of the week so that we can survive and bring new generations of people into our neighborhood. Take a walk in our shoes and see what happens to a district when the streets are closed. Otherwise, this special place will become just another tale of a great ethnic marketplace. The city will lose another one of the places that make Pittsburgh special. LARRY LAGATTUTA

Owner Enrico Biscotti

Strip District