Given a City Council Defeat, Then What?

Given a City Council Defeat, Then What?

Should City Council vote to NOT sell the land from the URA to UPMC for the football compound, what might happen next?

Back to the Drawing Boards

1. UPMC, Oxford Developers the Steelers, and the URA would do well to go back to the drawing boards and re-tool a facility plan that fits and is fair.

2. Or, UPMC might opt to turn up the political heat, with or without the Mayor's office help. Then the site plan can be better crafted in its presentation, and re-submitted.

3. Or, UPMC might try to tip the scale in its favor with a better suite of buy-outs to the community groups. A $30K offer went to $75K, and the amount might need to go much higher. Everything has a price.

4. Or, UPMC might opt to move to a suburban site. Fine. UPMC can't take the land with them. UPMC is not going to move to Florida, to North Carolina, to Columbus, Ohio. And, Pitt athletes are not going to go far from Oakland.

Watch for Pitt's Rounds of Settlement Overtures

Pitt should settle this mess. The problem comes as to who is going step up and attempt to broker the deal to settle.

Pitt could have tried to settled various concerns months ago. But Pitt was too arrogant to admit any wrongdoing or pig-headed thinking and planning. Pitt is too deep into its 'we are innovators, top job-providers, know-what's-best' posturing to backtrack.

As much as the citizens of the South Side and the region want to get this over and move beyond Plan B, we can't. We won't be able to avoid another long string of embarrassing rounds of blunders. Developments in the past months don't offer much hope.

Settlement from Pitt are described as "minimalist" and "nowhere near" acceptable. Those scraps don't sound like the makings of a settlement to us.

Best Interests Should Not Be Egos

Fighting against SUN Corporation and a coke oven is one type of foe. The corporations have the foregone conclusions that actions are geared to the shareholders best interests.

Pitt has no shareholders. UPMC is not a corporation that trades stock on the big boards. Pitt's top shareholders are students, faculty and the academic ethics of knowledge discovery and sharing.

Pitt has its pride on the line. UPMC is not driven by the share-holders interest, rather by the interest of its management.

Will UPMC and the Pitt AD come up with settlement terms that are acceptable to all? Or, has the Pitt PR ploy worked?

Pitt's Athletic Department, its students and our communities will fare better when Pitt's leadership gets in sync with the community, its roots and its vision of what sports are.

Pitt's arrogance is taking a back seat to that of UPMC's.