Business as Usual: Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership

Transcription: 

Good afternoon, everyone, it is Friday. I am not sure of the exact date. But I know that it's Friday. And welcome to business as usual. I'm Audrey Russo, President, CEO of the Pittsburgh Technology Council. And Jonathan Kersting is with us. He's vice president of all things, media and marketing. And we have been doing a lot of fun things lately, I'm pretty excited about if you don't know anything about it, PGH. And some of the stories that we're telling, Jonathan has been very busy along with our partners at the machine. So I want to thank Huntington bank for being our partners just through thick and thin on so many different things that we've done experiments. And if you don't know them, and you don't use them, you really should get to know them. They're just been incredible partners for our business community. In addition, 40 by 80, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the tech Council, and the longitude and latitude of Pittsburgh, which is part of the tech Council is also joining us today being sponsor, they're doing incredible things in terms of entrepreneurship and talent development. So if you don't know anything about 40, by 80, go look it up. And you'll see that we are working feverishly to make sure that we're not leaving people behind and connecting the business community with the people who live here and are very interested in tech and innovation but might not have access. So on that note, I do want to tell everyone, as I introduce Jeremy Waldron, you can see that we have a QR code. If you want to connect with him, just use that. And you can connect with him directly on LinkedIn. And I think we're in for a treat this Friday afternoon, Jeremy is joining us. And we're really going to talk about all things about Jeremy in the end the Pittsburgh downtown partnership and what they're doing, it's really important in terms of this times of COVID. I apologize, Jeremy, that we haven't gotten to you earlier, but we are your champions, we actually are, you know, concerned, supportive, and care deeply about, you know, the city itself, even though we represent the region. So thank you so much for taking the time with us. And welcome. So you let's just talk about Jeremy the person like who is Jeremy, you've been in this role a decade, where you know, you came here from where, you know, what do you think, how are you holding up, etc. I just want to sort of set the table that way. And thank you again for joining us.

Sure. And thanks, Audrey and your team for having me today. Um, yeah, how am I holding up? I think that's probably a question I had to ask myself daily and kind of check in and see if target. But all things considered, I'm doing well. I live in friendship. Over in the East End. I have three kids, a high school, middle school and elementary school student. And so that's a been a challenge. They've been, you know, virtual since March. My wife is a psychotherapist full time. So when she's with clients, she's with clients and she, her business is booming. Everybody needs somebody to talk to you

on the show.

She would be great. Everybody needs to talk to someone. Um, so yeah, you know, I personally, I can't complain about much. But you know, we're bored. My kids are constantly like, Yeah, what are we gonna do today? I'm like the same thing we did yesterday. But you know, pre COVID, Pittsburgh and even Bosko. It's been a great place to be, as you mentioned, I've been here 10 years. I moved here from Brooklyn, New York, having worked in the Bloomberg administration, in economic development. I was in New York City for about 10 years. I started there in the South Bronx working for a Community Development Corporation, then moved over into city government. And that's where I got to work with business improvement districts, which is an organization like the Pittsburgh downtown partnership. You know, just a quick overview of what we are. We're made up of property owners, government and business leaders to support the economic health and vibrancy of downtown Pittsburgh. We operate a taxing district so requires a government, we're legislatively authorized every five years to provide this service on behalf of the property owners in downtown. And those funds that we generate through that taxing assessment are about 45% of our budget and they go specific to some very specific services, which is probably what we're most known for, to downtown residents and and, and office workers, our cleaning outreach team, so have men and women in yellow that are online. In the streets, sweeping the sidewalks, our outreach team is working with folks experiencing homelessness, trying to connect them with resources and services, to make sure that they're safe. And those services haven't stopped at all during the pandemic. So we've been very busy with that respect, but clearly downtown is a completely different place than it was. In early March, we are used to seeing 110 hundred and 15,000 people in downtown every day. Now we're probably seeing 10 to 18,000 people. And you know, we were starting to inch back up with respect to Office occupancy, late summer, early fall. And of course, with the stay at home advisories, those numbers are starting to dwindle down. rightly so I mean, everybody's, you know, very concerned about safety and public health. And we all are trying to do the right thing. But it's had a devastating impact on the core. Because we're a neighborhood that's built for density. We're all about bringing people together, be it in their offices, in the theaters, the convention center, sporting events, all those things are what make our economy hum and what we're built for we have 16,000 residents in the greater downtown neighborhood. And there's no way that those 16,000 folks, if they went out and shop local every day, and did everything they could to support the downtown economy can support just a mass of businesses that we have down here. So it's an interesting time. You know, I think everybody's very excited about the progress has been made on the vaccine. But for neighborhoods like ours, and I talked to my colleagues, I serve on the board of the International downtown Association, which is, you know, our trade association, I just had a board meeting earlier this week, 50 of us on the call representing some of the largest cities in the world and talking about and what we're experiencing, and and everybody's in the same boat. But, you know, we do expect a full recovery. It's just the timing of all that no one none of us know,

any of these places. I am glad you brought that up about I was gonna ask you about your affiliation with other cities and other associations, is there any sign of light in any of the cities that have been on the call, or that you're a part of? Are you seeing any trends that open up a little bit of light, um,

I mean, everybody's kind of dealt with it in their own ways. And it seems like everybody's on this roller coaster of spikes in cases. You know, I'd say the warmer weather cities have fared better. When you look at, you know, Houston and places like that, they're now starting to get in more of a difficult spot. But they've, they were able to kind of take advantage of their weather early on. And then they had to deal with a very hot summer. So it kind of changed there too, because everything's kind of moved outside. And if you've been downtown, you may have seen how we've transformed a few streets and market squares and half of its been close to vehicular traffic, trying to allow restaurants to safely expand outside the 900 block of Penn Avenue, Sixth Street between Fort Duquesne Boulevard and liberty. In the cultural district, we've moved bike lanes, we've taken lanes of traffic and allow these restaurants to expand out. And that's been a lifeline to restaurants. And so you've seen that in cities around the country, and we've really worked with them, and with transportation officials around the country to kind of create safe practices for that. So that's probably been the biggest thing is, is this innovation that's occurred in public space. And when you have, you know, very limited sidewalks, you can't just allow restaurants to to expand willy nilly, it has to be thought through and safety, of course of pedestrians and vehicles. So that's that's been an interesting component. But everybody is in the same boat. And frankly, we're all looking at a pretty hard winter. Because we have, you know, been very fortunate to have a great summer from a weather perspective into the fall, you know, I still had flowers blooming on the porch with snow falling on them this week, and like, This is crazy. So that's been really great to see that kind of sidewalk season expanded. But you know, I don't think it's gonna be rough until March. That's kind of what we're looking at now.

So you know, when you came here, 10 years ago, you've been here. So obviously, you have some tentacles. Now planted in Pittsburgh, he came. What were your thoughts? 10 years ago, and you were working in Brooklyn, and you mentioned South Bronx. So what were your thoughts? And what do you think? What's your view over these 10 years if we can sort of just sweep COVID to the side for a moment?

Sure. Yeah. I mean, one thing that struck me I had been to Pittsburgh one time before I interviewed for this position, and it was just for one night, it was kind of a stopover we were headed to see some family on a road trip. And so we came through and I was kind of struck by a the beauty of the city and you know, I'm This urbanist guy I love downtown's. I love the built environment in Pittsburgh, it was surprising to me I was not expecting how beautiful it was and how much it felt like a little Manhattan, you know, with the bridges and the rivers and, and the charm and the walkability. And I just saw nothing but potential when I got here 10 years ago. I mean, think about downtown Pittsburgh, in 2011. That was the year that and for folks who have been in Pittsburgh for a while, meat potatoes open that year. And that was a restaurant that really started to show that people would pay a premium to have an excellent experience in downtown. There were kind of great restaurants downtown prior to that. But that was for me kind of created this chef inspired. And again, I don't want to offend anybody who was here before that in the restaurant industry. But but that, to me was a pretty special thing. And it started this chain of events. We've seen $4.5 billion in investment in downtown Pittsburgh over the last decade, with a B, you know, that's a significant amount of money in every corridor. And downtown has changed as a result of that. There's still a ton of work to do. But, you know, that's what I saw was this potential. And, and, you know, I'm really excited about, frankly, the innovation that we're going to see coming out of COVID and the opportunities that are going to be created for entrepreneurs, because that's one thing that you know, I love about Pittsburgh, there's just really smart people here in just about every industry, who are going to jump at these opportunities. And while it sucks to be in restaurant and retail and hospitality right now. There is definitely bright lights at the end of the tunnel. I can't see them fight yet, but I know they're there. Right?

So you're so I can't believe it. meat and potatoes probably wasn't inflection point. But a great example. I remember how vacant Market Square was and then how vibrant, you know. So talking about the you know, you you've actually done some innovative things and had, you know, created some initiatives like pre coding. So what would be great is for you to just give us a few of them some that you're proud of some that you think people, you know, might be really interested in.

Yeah, I mean, so for for us when I got here, we needed to change the face of downtown from being this nine to five place that you came to work to. And the cultural district is a place where you go to the theater. PNC Park, it was like there were these very specific things that we did very, very well, you know, PNC Park, best baseball field in the country, in my opinion, the cultural district, an amazing asset, the convention center, all these things. So how do we start to infill the core of downtown with the vibrancy that you experience in these pockets? And that was something that that we were charged with, as an organization early on, and particularly kind of nights and weekends? What are we doing to bring folks down here to support these restaurants, these retailers? You mentioned markets where that had come online just before I arrived. So we started programming the heck out of that space. You know, we had been doing a farmers market successfully for a decade. How do we build off of that we started with partnerships with a cultural trust, leveraging their insights, and the fact that they had a core group of regional stakeholders that would listen to them and respond to events that they were doing. So we started doing night markets in the gallery crawls. And if anybody remembers, but we would close down parking lots and just have these huge events. And then when we felt like that got legs, we started expanding those from kind of seasonal events that we were doing in conjunction with the gallery crawls to weekly things, and we were bringing them into Market Square, we started working with more minority owned businesses, to really help to show them that downtown was a successful marketplace. So like kind of transformation of programming was critical part of our role. We looked at public art, how do we create temporary public art installations that get folks down here? In February, one of the most proud moments I had we brought this artists collective from London over to do this interactive digital light base art project and Market Square in February. And it was called congregation I want to say it was like 2013 2014. It was an amazing experience. And we saw thousands of people come through. And that's when it started clicking with our property owners, our restaurants have like, oh, people will come down if we give them unique experiences. They're looking for this stuff, and that's what we're banking on kind of post COVID as well is. Look. You can't find a more beautiful layer. in Pittsburgh, you know, the diversity of architecture, just the density of restaurants and retail people think that there aren't a lot of things going on down here. But there's 200 small businesses, the innovation that they bring is is like no other neighborhood can compete with it's our job to tell that story to kind of trumpet their innovation and products and, and make a safe and welcoming experience for folks when they get down here.

Yeah, you've got those are great examples. And I know that there's a holiday market as well. Right. So before Yeah, before we jump to that, you know, let's let's just talk now, right, like, coming up, what kinds of things are coming up right now that you could that we should be cognizant of, and take advantage of, um, a market obviously, could be yes.

So the holiday market opened up this past Friday, a very different experience for us. Usually, we have light up night that kicks off all the holidays, it's the week before Thanksgiving, of course, it's not safe to do something like that we don't need to bring 200,000 people down to the core for a night of celebrations, unfortunately. But we did over the holiday market. It's a much bigger footprint this year. Santa is not in its outside market square this year. So we have a Santa zoom experience that you can bring your family down to it's it's very safe. And, and provides the kind of outdoor recreation that I think we all need. So that is in its ninth year, the market itself and it really has become an anchor attraction. And that's why we we did that we wanted to create a retail attraction that folks would get down to here, and then expand their shopping experience to other downtown retailers go out and dine, come down before the theater. Those are the reasons that we think things like that are important. This year. We've also I mean, given everybody's focus on on black lives and black owned businesses. We have this really cool thing. It happened this past weekend. And it's happening today, tomorrow and Sunday. It's called black market. It's at 623 Smithfield, we partnered with Shayla Hawkins events, and we're bringing a market of 30 black entrepreneurs into the heart of downtown, it's a great opportunity to get out these businesses, a lot of them are event based businesses, they do craft shows and fairs and street Carnival or street festivals that you know has not been around at all this year. That's a great opportunity to get out and support black owned businesses and learn about what they're doing in our community. We see this as as again, another place for us to tell these entrepreneurs, we want you to be a part of this community, we've created this kind of low barrier to entry opportunity. And we want you down here full time. And so this is how we kind of create those relationships in the establishments tomorrow, and Sunday. And then next weekend on Saturday and Sunday. We have a Mary market. It's also outdoors. We partnered with handmade arcade, which I'm sure folks have have heard about those guys know, you know, the makers and artisans and crafters in our region have also been severely disrupted. So this is a small event 12 local makers, we have a stage thanks to att. with local musicians, it's on the 900 block of Penn Avenue. So there's outdoor dining with Bakersfield and Santa Mercado and bridges and bourbon, the standard all those restaurants. So there's a ton going on in downtown. We have small mall, which many folks may have heard they have a pop up down here associated artists of Pittsburgh, artists image resources, we've collaborated with them and and funded them to pop up in downtown Pittsburgh, because we know how difficult it's been for our local artists community. And for me, and our stakeholders, we realize how transformative arts event as I mentioned, and we want to make sure a lot of these are up and coming artists. And if they don't see opportunities here in Pittsburgh, they're gonna have to move elsewhere or they're going to change career paths and, and we need them to be here for the vibrancy and health of our city not just next year, but for the next you know, 20 years.

You so right. So right, I see that. Brian share the link in terms of downtown Pittsburgh holidays. Thank you for that. And then Jonathan, there's a great question from Colby out there.

Yes, more. So says says I've heard many people say that companies will not want as much office space post COVID. While there are positives about working from home, what are you hearing from business leaders about the business negatives of employees working from home in which they just pay? They'll start moving back in when you think your occupancy will look like

oh geez, that's that's a lot of a question right there. So Let me let me break that apart a little bit. Um, the when folks will return is a question that I don't have a great answer to. I know that agent and Highmark just announced that their offices are not going to come back until we was June of 2021. at the earliest. I know that, you know, companies have continued to kind of kick the can, because everybody wants to make sure that that, that we that we are safe, I was going to say, feel safe, because I've been feel safe, that we are safe. And so, if things go as planned with respect to what we're hearing from the vaccine, you know, we could expect to see folks start to come back into the office in the spring. But depending on, you know, how widespread the vaccine is, I'm not sure for me, it's going to be you know, can my kids go back to school? Can they go to summer camps? What are those things that are going to help me be apparent, and I know, that's a challenge that many, many people are facing right now. So those are all a lot of unknowns. But I do think that the office market has been transformed in ways that we're not even sure about yet. But I have heard loud and clear. And I've experienced this, you know, running a small business, a small organization that, you know, it's really tough to create culture, and connections with my staff, on zoom, you know, I like it, it's fine. It's fun. Sometimes I like race into the call and be like, Oh, I made a just next time I worked out, took a shower. And I'm sitting here in my zoom call. And that took, you know, in the last hour, that all happened, that's great. And I made my kids and breakfast really quick. So those are great things to do. But I don't, I don't know, I don't want to live like that I miss, going out to lunch with folks, I missed that connectivity. And that's why cities exist. You know, I mean, it's not like this is some newfangled thing they've been around since we've been around. And so that's important to remember. And when you look at the assets that are downtown, you know, the convention center, the cultural venues, the sporting venues, all those things are still going to continue to read folks down here. And I do think, you know, businesses are going to rethink their spaces, and maybe work from home policies are going to be severely modified, to allow folks to do a lot more from home, which is probably a good thing. And that will create more opportunities for businesses who maybe couldn't get into downtown because of price. To look at the downtown market, we are seeing a softening in the office market. But we're also seeing a surprising number of new deals that are coming through our offices moving in two weeks to new office space, flew by a few blocks away, and we're starting to hear more of that, you know. And so I'm excited about the opportunity. When I got here, the office market was really kind of on its way up. And people were talking about what is your business attraction strategy. It's like, Look, we don't have anything to show anybody, we're tight, we're at 95 96%. And you couldn't even look at a big occupancy, you know, a big user coming into downtown, that's changed now. And a lot of those things were in the works. Pre COVID, you had the NY Mellon, shrinking their footprint while still keeping the same headcount. So that's created, you know, a whole building that was essentially in the those forces are exciting challenges, I think, for the office market to look at and kind of how do we innovate, we're continuing to see living, just go through the roof downtown. We've grown our downtown population by 36% in the last decade, which is pretty phenomenal. And we have an additional 4000 units in the pipeline. So over the next three to five years, we expect that population to grow by an additional 20%. That's transformative. And that's what I think we'll see more and more of in downtown, there's beautiful office buildings that were built at the turn of the century that also make amazing apartments. And if you haven't seen those, you know, check it out, get online, come down here for COVID friendly tour, there's some amazing studio spaces that you think you're in the middle of Manhattan or San Francisco, you know, there. So I think that's going to be a trend that we continue to see and even maybe accelerated a bit by this.

So thank you, thank you for that. Get that, you know, restaurants. Let's talk about restaurants. Go back a little bit. You talked about inflection point in 2011. And our county executives given you know, praise to many of the small restaurants, you know, that are following rules and keeping cuffs you know, keeping customers safe and encouraging. You know, the engagement So can you talk about some of the innovative things that you've seen, and that you know of, other than I wish I would have invested in The heater business. Yeah, no kidding. I knew it. I knew it. And but talk about what you've, you know, what are some of the innovative things that you've seen? I mean, I like the expansion on the sidewalks. I know that that affects people with disabilities sometimes. And you have to think about the impact of traffic flow excetera. But what are the things that you can talk about?

Yeah, so

being it investing in the heater business and the igloo business now, because we have seen a ton of those pop up. If you haven't been downtown in the last two weeks, I was just walking down Penn Avenue and Sixth Street last night. And now there's a ton of igloos that have popped up. So we're seeing the winterization of an outdoor patio space, we provided a grant about six weeks ago to 24 downtown restaurants to help winterize their their patio spaces. They have their own Alexa in there. So you can play your own playlist or, or ask for music while you're sitting there dining with your pod, you know, it's great. I can't wait to get my kids in one of these. And Greg, you're you're going down, we're going to sit outside, you're not going to take your coat off. So those are some of the things and it's funny because now we're looking to our neighbors to the north. It's like what's Montreal doing? what they've been doing in Europe for generations to really create this outdoor winter culture? Because, I mean, I missed that I miss my communities. Oh, yeah, here you go. Brian just shared. This is Miracle on Sixth Street so you can rent the igloos and, and have your own little holiday party with your people in a pod. Those are add bridges and bourbon, they're a taco. We have a number of places that have had tents. We have a holiday cocktail trail going on right now. We have 17 businesses downtown that are doing holiday inspired drinks, with food pairings all available for to go options. One of the things I don't want to leave is this flexibility with the Liquor Control Board and the ability to take drinks to go. And to expand these the sidewalk dining things were not allowed pre coven, you wouldn't have seen them before, because legally they were not allowed, even if they were on the sidewalk down the street. So how do we work with legislators to really kind of innovate in that space. I mean, we don't need it to turn into Bourbon Street. But But you know, we can allow folks to be creative and think about new ways to support these innovative chefs. The other thing is the take home food program that's ramping up, we are very excited. And we can have her so we're going to be announcing a restaurant initiative with foreign to Food Rescue to help tackle food insecurity with downtown restaurants. So stay tuned for details on that. So we're going to continue to see that that the take home cold plates and warm up at home, I think it's going to be really hot this winter. All the chefs are thinking about that Rick dish and restaurant group, which is taco meat potatoes, those guys, they do. They sell meat and fish from their sources, direct to consumers, which is amazing. The product is stuff that you're not going to find at our local grocery stores. We love them. But it's very hard to find this quality of meat. So if you I know at least early on in code and this kind of stuff for the winter, we were becoming quite chef inspired home practitioners looking for recipes my kids are getting into this. I got to think that's going to come back when we're trapped in the house. I'm looking for stuff to do. So

where can we find out information about that? Is there any link to the information so that

yeah, these are all on our website. JOHN comm Pittsburgh comm we have a weekly e newsletter that also just tells you about these fun things that are happening in downtown. It's you know, geared towards supporting the restaurants and retailers and the programming that's happening down here. I'd encourage folks to sign up for that we promise not to spam you too much. At downtown Pitt on Twitter is also you can find everything there too. So, you know, I think for us, if I could leave folks with one important message is we've made so much progress in downtown over the last 15 years. We have so many great independently owned restaurants and retailers. And it really is up to us as a community to support those guys. If we want them to be here. When this is over. We need to continue to support them. today, tomorrow, March, February, January, these are going to be really challenging times for folks. So think about that. I know it's super easy for me to be like, oh, there's so many great restaurants around me in the East End. But no, I'm going to schlep down town on a Saturday night. Grab my to go drinks, grab the food, take it back. We have to do this people. It's super, super important.

That's great. That's great. So we're gonna encourage people to do that this weekend. So there there is one more question that Ben town was asked. Just about. Gloves in general, you know, does that create the cross? You know that you know that the airflow?

Um, my understanding is, you have your own space. So if I go in with my family, there's nobody else in that pod. Yes. If if there are other people in your igloo that you don't know, I wouldn't sit in there. Because you it is kind of I mean, it gets steamy in there, it's definitely it's would be gross to share that air, but someone else created this.

So are there any Is there anything else you've asked us to come downtown, use the restaurants to go to take out? You know, remember, you know, downtown is your neighborhood just as much as it is no matter where else you live? What else do you want to say to this community right now that you think that maybe we overlooked.

I mean, I want to see tech businesses where downtown makes sense for them consider relocating into downtown, there are going to be some great opportunities for folks looking for commercial office space. If you want to kick the tires, if you want to do a COVID friendly, you know, six week distant mask on tour, I'm your guy will walk you around, you know, show you some spaces that you've probably had never thought existed in downtown. You know, it's the largest office market in the region, it's the second largest in the state. So give us a shot. We know that this industry is so critically important to our regional economy. And we want to support those efforts. We want you guys to feel welcome. In this community, we want to hear why you wouldn't. So if there are things that you don't like about it, that you need to make this place work for you or your business. Give us a shout we are definitely the most connected community. From a transportation perspective, it's super easy to get down here in just about every mode. And the access to all the amenities that we have is you know, there's no comparison, in my opinion.

And the ice skating rink is open.

It is yes, it opened up a week and a half ago. It is time slotted. So you have to make a reservation, there's you can do that online, is crowd controlled. So it never really feels that packed, people are masked up, it feels very safe. While you're down there. You can visit Santa zoom, we have for the first time and I hope there's no kids on the call, I'm assuming there's not we have the families opportunity to choose a black or white science, Santa. So anybody who's looking to create a new experience and talk to their kids about the importance of inclusivity this is a great opportunity to do that during the holiday season. And so you know, get down here. Most everything I've talked about outside, so it does feel really good to get some fresh air. So yeah, thanks again for the time, Andre,

really? No, I can't thank you, thank you for just your passion. And we all need to help you. We're all in this together. And the urban core is critical to our region. And I really, really want to make sure that we're taking advantage of that. And we're supporting you and your work. So thanks for taking the time, Jeremy. I know what are you going to do this weekend? What do you have plans.

I am going to the black market this afternoon. And tomorrow I'll be downtown for the Mary market. Handmade arcade vendors, maybe grab a margarita and some nachos from Bakersfield. If the weather looks a little iffy, then that may happen on Sunday. I think we're still kind of battling with that. But yeah, that's that's on my agenda. I need to find some, some some things for my wife for Christmas. And I don't know what that's going to be. But it's going to be something handmade from a locally from a local artist. So we'll see what that what that entails.

That's great. We are so thankful for your work. And you're not alone. We're all in this together. So thanks for taking the time. If there's anything that you want to reach out to about Jeremy, you know where to find them. We put this QR code out there on LinkedIn. And it's the weekend. So there's lots of things to do downtown and there's gifts to buy and people to support. And you made an excellent point. So thank you, Jeremy. Jonathan, what do we have coming up next week?

Next week's gonna be a ton of fun cuz we're kicking it off with Giant Eagle can't wait to learn how technology is being deployed there. Okay.

All right. Well, thank you, Jeremy. Thanks. And thank you, everyone. Have a safe weekend and take advantage of any outside amenities just like Jerry Jeremy talked about y'all on Monday.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai