CEO Note
GETTING OUR REGION GROWING AGAIN: AN ALLEGHENY CONFERENCE PRIORITY
Stefani Pashman, CEO
In leading the Conference, I am mindful that 80 years of visionary leaders have brought ideas, passions and inspiration to our tables. I often imagine the conversation at the first meeting faced with flooding rivers and unbreathable air. And the moment when they faced a complete economic collapse that triggered a mass exodus. In these seemingly hopeless moments, it was the ability of the collective leadership to filter through the many divergent viewpoints, agree on a viable direction, remain steadfast in focus, and commit to navigate a long and winding path that would ultimately define a new and better Pittsburgh.
Those leaders did not realize they were living through a renaissance or two. What they knew was they had an obligation to tackle a challenge to leave the region better than they found it.
In this moment, we similarly face two seemingly overwhelming challenges that threaten the future of our region, a stagnant economy in need of growth and reimagining downtown Pittsburgh for the future.
A stagnant economy forces us to confront our challenges from a place of scarcity rather than strength. Limited resources mean we are faced with choices on where to invest, which park to build, which road to fix, and which neighborhood we prioritize. We must shift our economic engine to one that fuels growth and prosperity for all.
According to our latest Quarterly Vitals Report, although payroll employment increased year over year in May by 1.5%, we lagged the nation’s 1.7% increase. While 0.2% may not sound like much, over time, it will make a material difference in our region’s ability to compete. Without growth, we can’t invest in our future and our neighbors have more of an incentive to look elsewhere for opportunity.
Imagine if we could, once and for all, shift Pittsburgh’s economy to one that is growing and expanding with sufficient resources to accommodate greater investment and opportunity.
Through our advocacy efforts, we have played a significant part in turning this around to create a more competitive business climate, and the recently passed state budget will continue this progress. The bipartisan legislation includes items critical to achieving our goals: robust investment in commercial and industrial sites to encourage business attraction and expansion, streamlined state permitting practices, significant improvement to Pennsylvania’s tax competitiveness, and establishing a framework for carbon capture and sequestration. We’re pleased with this recent progress, but there is more to be done. We are grateful that we have willing partners in the Shapiro administration and on both sides of the aisle in the legislature who want to find ways to improve Pennsylvania’s and our region’s competitiveness.
We are also hard at work with dozens of partners to transform downtown Pittsburgh from a neighborhood at risk of an economic and social collapse to one that is future-forward and relevant to the needs of today … and of tomorrow.
Because of our collective efforts, monthly downtown and cultural district visitors have improved to 80 percent of their levels in May 2019, which is encouraging. The weak demand for office space, however, is alarming, with rent down 1.7% year over year, negative office absorption, and a 28.5% decrease in office construction.
It’s imperative that we reimagine and reshape a downtown that becomes relevant and vibrant for generations to come. We’ve laid out a vision for what it can be, and this summer, we began the hard yet creative and rewarding work of bringing together stakeholders to move the neighborhood forward. We are listening and learning from these conversations, and they will continue to shape the vision to produce a downtown for the future, one that will be welcoming, relevant, vibrant, clean, and safe.
It’s in moments like this that we can decide to take a cue from those that preceded us: to tackle the moment, accepting the uncomfortable responsibility of navigating the uncertainty we face but ultimately agreeing to carve a direction forward.
And together, we are doing just that. By bringing together our region’s largest private sector employers to work with the public sector and numerous nonprofit partners, we can bring to bear resources and expertise to transform our vision for the region into a reality.
Our strategies and plans will never be “just right.” We have no choice right now but to take the risk, plot a course, and hope that one day future generations look back and say we got things right.