Duquesne’s Uptown expansion highlights arena development failures
Duquesne University is taking the lead in revitalizing the Fifth and Forbes corridor in the blocks of Uptown nearest Downtown. This is welcome, to be sure, but it’s not how the district was supposed to take shape when PPG Paints Arena opened more than a decade ago.
Much attention has been paid to the Penguins’ struggles to develop the Civic Arena’s footprint north of PPG Paints, but the south side of the arena is a similar example of broken promises — at least the implicit promise that building a state-of-the-art arena between Centre and Fifth would generate investment along the Fifth/Forbes corridor. It never happened.
Today, more than a dozen years after the first faceoff at the arena, vacant and derelict storefronts directly across Fifth Avenue still stand. It’s downright embarrassing, especially for hockey and music fans bringing out-of-town friends and family to the arena. They have to try to explain why buildings directly across the street look like they were bombed.
Sports facilities are not magical economic engines. That’s the hard lesson for policymakers and the public, who too often get carried away by lofty dreams and lavish promises. Forty-one regular season hockey games a year, plus a few dozen playoff contests, concerts and other events, were not enough to keep even one or two new restaurants afloat. What will really revitalize Uptown is the slow, strategic work of neighborhood building — including the careful expansion of its biggest institution, Duquesne University.
With the construction of its new School of Osteopathic Medicine and 550-room dormitory along Forbes Avenue, Duquesne is making a bigger impact in the neighborhood than PPG Paints Arena ever has. The new structures will shift the center of gravity of student life a little down the hill from the Bluff, and toward the city streets that will benefit from more consistent foot traffic, providing opportunities for further development: cafes, convenience stores and so on. Uptown needs people who live there, not just visit or pass through.
At some point — hopefully a very long time from now — PPG Paints Arena will approach the end of its useful life. Technological and social changes will make it seem dated, and the Penguins will once again come, hat in hand, to city and state governments for help replacing it. Before deciding, they should remember how little this new arena has done for the neighborhoods it was supposed to revitalize.
Arenas, stadiums and all other major destinations are not silver bullets for neighborhood development. They must be part of a broader strategy. No one had a plan for Uptown — except now Duquesne University — and it shows.