Saturday, January 30, 1999

Reinstate a Market House Experience into the South Side

Turn Back the Clocks to a Past Era

The Market House of the past buzzed of a real Market House. Butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers with push-carts, fruit stands and a fluid array of shops made for a special place. The Market House was a mall before surburban sprawl and suburban malls. The Market House was a super market before supermarkets.

Pittsburgh has Market Square too, sans the market part. Pittsburgh's Market Square does get a weekly visits from a few local growers in the summer for an open-air farmers market.

To some degree, one of the visions makes a Market House Reinstatement to be much like a farmers market. Rather than the selling and buying of food-stuff, the new Market House can be built for idea transactions and building releationships.

Re-Set the Clock to Today's Era
We can re-create a Market House for the next century within this region, within these plans, and with your help so as to share the visions and possibilities. The Market House can succeed because of today's digital economy, struggling retail sector, outsourcing of production, specialized workforce, wired internet, booming lunch and dinner crowd, virtual corporations and need for community connections to schools and young people.

The Market House Concept Map

Be sure to scroll around, left to right, as this is a wide map. It might take a moment to load into the browser window below if you are using a slow net connection.

 

We Need a Convention Center for Everyday People

The David L. Lawrence Convention Center is a huge place for Fortune 500 Companies to showcase in mega-costly exhibits. Meanwhile, the Market House Concept creates a place for the small, young, activitist, artistic, grass-roots, casual to find nurture and flourish. Pittsburgh can capitalize in many ways with the opening of a convention site for the rest of us. This fits the South Side.

Build Upon the Past!

The South Side has a "historic designation." An interesting approach to a re-launch of a slice of our history in the Market House will be the reactions from the Historical advocates. Can a new age Market House be built to embrace the good-old days of the past glory of the Market House?

Start-Up Heap

Pittsburgh is near the bottom of the heap when it comes to turning ideas into companies and startups, as mentioned on the front page of the Sunday Post-Gazette, March 7, 1999. The new Market House aims to battle against that problem and perception.

Entice Cultural Tourists

Pittsburgh overriding aim of increasing tourism fits into the proposed Market House relaunch. The cultural tourists, as described in the P-G are affluent, usually college -educated and often middle-aged who enjoy traveling on weekends and can afford to satisfy their discriminating tastes.

Cultural tourists spend $190 more per visit than the average tourists. Distinctive draws to museum exhibits, theater and music. Pittsburgh has a new Office of Cultural Tourism as part of the Greater Pgh Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Cultural, arts and heritage experiences. Put Perigie Cookoffs into the list of events for the Market House.

Blockbuster events are to be developed. These are world-renowned international afairs, getting high expenses. The Andy Warhol Museum, Fallingwater, Symphony, Opera, Pgh Cultural Trust, Nationality Rooms, Heinz History Center, Tamburitzans, Ethnic neighborhoods,

Monday, January 18, 1999

Citiparks Pool Fees

Some Points:
The no-charge options should be part of an overall policy
No-charge admissions reasons can be for income or policy.
The City needs the revenue
No-Charge admission to young people has some support
The swim pools can become splendid opportunities for young people and others.
The City leaders, staff and citizens need to systematically sit down and begin collaboration to come to some findings and understood policies for swim pools.
Let's explore and find ways to make the pools more meaningful,
More programs cost, and the participants or other revenue streams need to be paid for. How is the city to pay for overhead of the new or expended programs.
New programs need to be created with the expectation that extra funds not going to be forthcoming out of the existing budget.

One of the suggested ideas is to close some city facilities. This suggestion could become a reality if the closing decisions are not made in a vacuum. The closings need to be augmented by better run facilities as an outcome of the closing. The point of engage community beef up more regional pools distorting figures... amendment..