Joseph Sabino Mistick: Don't mess with the Strip District

It is another wonderful Christmas in Pittsburgh’s Strip District, as thousands of daily shoppers pour into the mecca for ethnic food and sidewalk bargains. Whole families arrive together, as part of their holiday tradition.

It should be a time of celebration for the merchants, too, but instead they have been anguishing over city government’s constant interference with their livelihood and way of life, and trying to figure out how to save the Strip.

The latest big proposals, announced last week, include more egghead ideas that have no connection to the reality of how people shop and work there. You have to wonder if the people pondering these changes know anything about the Strip.

The core of the Strip District runs 20-some blocks on Penn Avenue and along the cross streets. The old produce and wholesale district grew organically over the decades. Now it is mostly family-owned businesses, many started from scratch.

The Strip that we all love exists because past city governments were smart and followed a simple rule: Don’t mess with the Strip. And they resisted urban planners’ pipe dreams.

In the 1980s, Mayor Richard Caliguiri rebuffed a national developer’s attempt to create a festival market in the Strip, declaring that we already have the real thing there.

But you couldn’t blame the merchants for wondering if Mayor Bill Peduto has a different approach. He has political stock in the Produce Terminal development just off Penn Avenue, and business is likely to shift there if the city makes it harder to visit the original Strip.

And the city has been making it harder. Street closings for parades and special events have cut into the busiest shopping days. And merchants have been tagged for parking at their own loading docks.

There was even a stupid attempt to put a bike lane in front of St. Stanislaus that would have blocked weddings and funerals and shuttered the church.

And the city is always floating ideas like a bike lane down Penn Avenue or a two-way traffic pattern, both of which would eliminate one-half of the neighborhood’s parking spots and gut the shopping district.

Some politicians think they know how you should live better than you do. As Ronald Reagan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

This is a chronic case of that. Real solutions can only come from the people of the neighborhood.

The merchants know that public safety comes first, and traffic-calming strategies and other improvements that are being used in other neighborhoods are welcome. No one has a bigger stake in the safety of the neighborhood than the merchants.

And they know that there must be room for the new Pittsburgh, too. But the best part of old Pittsburgh should not be crushed to do that.

David Lewis, the internationally renowned architect and Pittsburgher, played a major role in saving our city and still champions the voice of the community at age 97. And he has always had the right message.

“Our accountability as urban designers is always to the voices of citizens, and to their vision for the future of their communities.”