Piatt Companies — formerly Millcraft Investments — has proposed a dreamlike $600-million development for Pittsburgh’s Chateau neighborhood, an ambitious mixed-use project that could revitalize the riverfront.
Anchored by an enormous Ferris wheel, the project, called Esplanade, would rest on the Ohio riverfront, north of the West End Bridge. The addition of $20 million in state money for pipes, roads and other infrastructure compels the developer and local authorities to ensure the project benefits the adjacent Manchester neighborhood.
Route 65 severed Manchester from Chateau and the riverfront in the 1970s and 1980s. It’s time to consider a radical option for righting that wrong by removing the current limited-access Ohio River Boulevard and replacing it with an at-grade urban boulevard, including sidewalks, bike lanes and a green median.
Manchester began in the mid-19th century as a riverfront town. Today, its western extent is Chateau Street about 1,000 feet from the Ohio River. If you stand on Chateau Street and face the river, all you see is a 30-foot wall of concrete and brick: Route 65.
Piatt has shown sensitivity to this problem. Three years ago, it worked with the Manchester Citizens Corporation, a community development organization, to acquire land on the neighborhood side of Route 65 that could be used to create a pedestrian crossing, either over or under the highway. That’s the bare minimum to make Esplanade a true neighborhood amenity, as opposed to merely a destination for outsiders.
But the development along this long-ignored riverfront is an opportunity to think bigger. Freeway removal might seem impractical, but other cities have shown that urban boulevards improve quality-of-life and promote economic development, with minimal costs in traffic.
Milwaukee, another mid-sized, blue-collar city, provides a successful example of freeway removal. The Park East Freeway connected downtown to another urban expressway, I-43. But a planned western expansion never materialized. After 30 years, the state replaced the freeway with a boulevard, healing a gash in the urban fabric and reconnecting severed neighborhoods. New developments have sprouted along the corridor.
In Manchester/Chateau, the at-most seven-lane-wide Ohio River Boulevard rarely carries the kind of traffic for which it was built. So the costs to drivers of replacing it with an at-grade boulevard would be minimal. But the benefits would be enormous: reconnecting a historic neighborhood to its riverfront, which is soon to be revitalized by a major development. It would also ensure that Esplanade is an accessible as possible to all forms of transportation.
This would be an expensive and complicated project, but Piatt Companies should work with the City of Pittsburgh and PennDOT to commission a cost and feasibility study to determine the options. It would be shame to squander this opportunity to heal a gash in Pittsburgh’s urban fabric.
First Published: November 12, 2022, 11:00 a.m.
