2010 Pittsblog Predictions Revisited: Part 9

Last in a series:  I made a series of predictions a year ago about what 2010 would hold for Pittsburgh.  How did I do?  Today:

9. Media: A Pittsburgh-based newspaper will cease daily print publication in 2010. Blogs and other social media won’t fill the gap.

This was the "out on a limb" forecast, and I didn't come close.  Here's a story about the newspaper business in 2010 that explains in non-Pittsburgh specific terms why 2010 wasn't as catastrophic as a lot of people expected: advertising did not continue its precipitous rate decline.

What that story tells you is that the newspaper business isn't any healthier than it was a year ago; my failure to forecast the closure of the Post-Gazette does not mean that the PG's print future is bright. It's not. Somewhat sooner than later, print will be done, and you'll read the "paper" only your iPad or whatever.  The Trib may last a bit longer in print, because the Trib's economic premise is different, and in any case few people I know who know journalism regard the Trib as a real paper.  The City Paper is a tab -- interesting stuff, clever but uneven writing, but not really the news.

The PG's relentless churning of its offerings notwithstanding, the paper still has the same strengths (willingness to subsidize multi-part investigative reporting of the sort that only daily newspapers seem to do really well) and weaknesses (just about zero meaningful local coverage of the business community) that it has had for years.  The paper is playing around with Internet offerings, trying to monetize a substantial fan base, and playing around with some print offerings, too (coverage of the legal community on Mondays, which feeds to much at the wire trough and spends too little time talking about local happenings).

That's the last post for 2010.  Across the nine categories of my forecasts, I add them up and get 10 1/2 marks out of a possible 20.  Not too bad.

Stay safe tonight.  There's lots to come in 2011.

2010 Pittsblog Predictions Revisited: Part 8

Two to go on my updating of the Pittsblog 2010 predictions.  Today:

8. Community: The opening of the Consol Energy Center will anchor a revitalization of the Uptown neighborhood, but the Rivers Casino will continue to struggle to meet its revenue projections. Demand for housing will raise housing prices sufficiently that Pittsburgh loses its status as the nation’s most livable city. This will be a good thing.

Consol Energy Center and Uptown? Check. "Revitalization" may be too strong a word, and the durability of area's renewal is open to question. We're still in the honeymoon phase. But early returns on the arena and its environs are positive.

The Rivers Casino? Check again. (I'm two for two!) "Expectations were never rational." That's one of the better Pittsburgh-related quotations this year.

Housing? Check a third time. I'm three for three in this category. Pittsburgh's real estate market went up, up, up, while the rest of the country slid sideways or downwards.

And that most livable city rating? That's still in place. So I'll claim three marks out of four. But all good things must come to an end, and I have a feeling that some other shoes will be dropping in this category in 2011.

Tomorrow -- and just in time for the true end of the year -- the final category: Media.

2010 Pittsblog Predictions Revisited: Part 7

Into the home stretch with updates to my 2010 predictions.  Today:

7. Law and Order: The U.S. Justice Department will announce a major antitrust investigation aimed at a Pittsburgh institution. The homicide rate in Pittsburgh will increase in 2010.

Two pretty clear predictions there. On the first -- antitrust -- no dice, although the Obama Administration has stepped up the pace of antitrust enforcement generally. On the second -- the homicide rate -- it looks to me like the number went up, but after quite a bit of searching I couldn't find a year-to-date number for 2010. Of course, the number of homicides was strikingly low in 2009. At least as important than the overall numbers, however, are the patterns. Take a look at these helpful Google Maps mashups assembled by the Post-Gazette, displaying each Allegheny County homicide by race, gender, and location. Here's the map for 2009. Here's the map for 2010.  Pittsburgh is proud of its reputation as a city that is relatively free of violent crime. The maps confirm some continuing problems. 

One mark out of two in this category.

Tomorrow: Community.

The Parking Chairs Come Out

From the New York Times

The aftermath of last Sunday's blizzard in New England brings yet more parking chair commentary. 'Tis the season.

Last year, I wrote about "the parking chair thing." That post generated a ton of traffic and some interesting links. So I'm linking to it again.

2010 Pittsblog Predictions Revisited: Part 6

Are we there yet?  The review of my year-old Pittsblog predictions continues.  Today:

6. Demographics: The Pittsburgh media will search for good news in Pittsburgh’s modest but growing Latino and Indian and South Asian communities. More often than not, they will miss the story. New grocery stores are interesting and colorful and fun for shopping; new professionals migrating to Pittsburgh have a greater bearing on the region’s prosperity. 2010 will be Pittsburgh’s year of the woman (women?) in leadership, across politics, business, and the nonprofit sector.

Diversity initiatives, whether business-based on community-based, received some modest attention in 2010; the ACCD went to Puerto Rico; the Mayor went to China.  Pittsburgh's Hispanic Chamber of Commerce continued to plug away, but it started from a near-zero baseline.  Did I mention all of the Asian restaurants?  Some of the best news came toward the end of the year:  the hiring of a leader for Vibrant Pittsburgh, which will try to broaden the population of Pittsburgh professionals.  The August Wilson Center for African American Culture opened its new building in late 2009, but 2010 was the Center's first "real" year, and the building seemed to give Pittsburgh's somewhat disjointed African-American community a helpful -- and beautiful -- focal point.

What about the women?  I'm still waiting here; much too much of Pittsburgh remains in the hands of the usual (male) suspects.  But several leading Pittsburgh women took on new or renewed roles in 2010:  Dr. Patricia Beeson was appointed Provost at the University of Pittsburgh.  Dr. Linda Lane was named Superintendnet of the Pittsburgh Public Schools.  Eve Picker launched CityLab, a "do-tank" (rather than a "think-tank") for experiments on and with the urban fabric of the city.  Natalia Rudiak brought additional energy -- and youth -- to Pittsburgh City Council.  I still suspect that there are many impressive women leading transformation around the Pittsburgh region (the Executive Women's Council plugs away; the ACCD's "Athena Awards" lists a roster of women in leadership roles); word of their work and their impact hasn't yet reached the Post-Gazette or Pittsblog's South Hills bureau or both. 

I'll count this entry "Zero for Zero":  no measurable predictions; no meaningful data.  Here's hoping that 2011 brings more news.

Tomorrow:  Law and order.

2010 Pittsblog Predictions Revisited: Part 5

It's Christmas Eve, and many of us have other things to do, so let's get right to today's update on the Official Pittsblog Crystal Ball for 2010:

5. Politics: The Ravenstahl administration will experience a serious corruption scandal in 2010. Much of the city will yawn, and the Republican and progressive Democratic Party constituencies that have been trying to unseat the Democratic machine for years will gaze at their navels, still too disorganized to capitalize on their good fortune. Harrisburg will not bail out the city.

Well, um, no to the first, and yes (or no, if you prefer) to the second.  Much as some wholeheartedly wished it, and others expected it, the Ravenstahl administration did not find itself caught up in a corruption scandal.  I try not to get too tangled up in politics myself, at least online, so I won't comment further; I had a "Politics" category in the first place only because it seemed odd not to.  As for Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's state government hasn't bailed out anyone or anything.  2011 may be the year that this finally happens, though bailout is not such a good word; "takeover" will become the word .  The players in the pension crisis keep lurching along, hoping and perhaps expecting that someone else will ride to the rescue.  The Port Authority is on the precipice of collapse.  The Pirates are staring into the chasm of another losing season.

Did someone say "Renaissance 3"?

I'm one for two in this category.

I'll take a couple of days off; holiday weekends are no times for this sort of thing.  Enjoy Christmas, or your Festivus hangover!

Next Monday:  Demographics!

2010 Pittsblog Predictions Revisited: Part 4

Only four days into my updates on my 2010 crystal ball predictions, and already it's starting to feel something like a slog.  Good news!  I have several posts queued up for the new year, and of course a fresh batch of predictions will come along soon.  But first, le jeu continue:

4. Education: Pitt and CMU will continue their two decades-long journey to the upper echelons of the international higher education community. The dollar value of sponsored research at both Pitt and CMU will continue to increase; their respective endowments will begin slow recoveries. The tuition tax debate of 2009 will enable the emergence (or in some cases, re-emergence) of Pittsburgh’s “second tier” of colleges and universities as leading voices on the future of region’s economy and culture: Duquesne, Robert Morris, Chatham, Carlow, Point Park. Negotiations over nonprofit contributions to the city’s finances, in the wake of the tuition tax détente will reach another crisis point in 2010 before a deal is reached.

Helpfully for me, in that paragraph I threw out a series of "predictions" that are barely measurable, let alone quantifiable.  How did I do?

Have Pitt and CMU continued their onward and upward marches?  From the standpoint of academic reputation, prestige, scholarly accomplishment, impact on their communities, and quality of their incoming and outgoing students -- I think so, but at the margins there is certainly room for debate.  At Pitt, the problem is complicated each year by the fact that substantial portions of the Pittsburgh region -- and big chunks of the university itself -- think of Pitt primarily as the home of an outstanding men's basketball team and an underperforming football team.  The universities marked some impressive continuity and transition at the top:  Mark Nordenberg continues an impressively and succesfully long tenure as Chancellor at Pitt; long-serving Provost James Maher was succeeded by an internal candidate, Patricia Beeson.  (As a faculty member, I can report that the new Provost has her foot on the gas, which is a good thing.)  The Pitt Board's decision to top up compensation at the senior levels rankled, however, particularly in light of the university's protests over a tuition tax.  At CMU, Jared Cohon announced that his current term -- his third -- will continue through the middle of 2013.  Such long service by such successful leaders in higher education is nearly unprecedented and certainly contributes to both universities' progress -- and to the region's reputation for high quality research -- over the last 10/15 years.

On finances, I don't have figures at hand to quantify the amount of sponsored research or endowment gains (or losses) at either school as of the year-end.  A couple of mid-year snapshots help.  As of the end of November 2010, Pitt researchers had been awarded more than $200 million in federal stimulus money alone.  Pitt's reported sponsored research went from $672mm in FY09 to more than $750mm in FY10.  At CMU, the numbers were $268mm and $277mm, respectively.  Looking at that same link for information about CMU's endowment, and this report for information about Pitt, it looks like both schools had a bit of bounce in their step during FY2010.  Full marks to me on this score, I think, but this was something of a gimme.

What about the emergence or re-emergence of Pittsburgh's "other" colleges and universities?  Each of them, in  different respects, saw some big "wins" in 2010 -- I'm mostly interested in entrepreneurship and economic development efforts, both in curriculum and in programming -- though it's difficult to say that individually or as a group they've stepped up to compete with Pitt or CMU for mind-share in the region.  Zero marks here.

What about nonprofit contributions to the city's budget?  There wasn't a crisis over this in 2010, probably because the city's budget faced a different crisis -- pension funding, as to which parking revenues did and then did not supply a (partial) solution.  But that doesn't mean that the nonprofit contribution question is a dead letter.  Far from it.  The can was kicked down the road, as it were; expect this topic to make some news in 2011.  So zero marks here, too.  But stay tuned.

In total:  One mark here out of a possible three, but there's some fuzzy math involved.

Tomorrow:  Politics!

2010 Pittsblog Predictions Revisited: Part 3

Onward and, well, onward.  Today's installment of the crystal ball revisited:

3. Business: The number of tech spinoffs from Pitt, CMU, and UPMC will increase. Pittsburgh will emerge as an East Coast hub for Google, which will hire more staff and occupy more space in East Liberty/ Larimer than it currently forecasts. At least one long-time “name” Pittsburgh company will go out of business in 2010. Pittsburgh’s unemployment rate will trail the national unemployment rate for an additional 12 months.

This one isn't so tough to parse.

Did the number of tech spinoffs from Pitt, CMU, and UPMC increase?  I don't know about UPMC, but the numbers from Pitt and CMU come close to bearing me out.  CMU reports for FY 2010, which isn't calendar 2010:  10 companies in 2010 vs. 11 in 2009.  I couldn't quickly put my hands on numbers for Pitt, but its annual report for FY 2010 says "Start-up business activity picked up substantially in fiscal year 2010."  I'll give myself one mark out of two here.  My hope was that the trend line would be positive, and it appears to be, despite a challenging economy.

How about Google?  I wrote:  "Pittsburgh will emerge as an East Coast hub for Google, which will hire more staff and occupy more space in East Liberty/ Larimer than it currently forecasts."  I was right on with that one. 

Did at least one long-time “name” Pittsburgh company will go out of business in 2010?  I think that I whiffed on this one (readers can correct me here), but there were some signs of the changing times.  After UPMC appeared at the top of the US Steel building in 2008, the Mellon logo disappeared from the top of Mellon Center in 2010, replaced by BNY Mellon signs.  Mellon Arena closed; the last event was a spirited James Taylor/Carole King concert.  Local preservationists struggled hard but (so far) unsuccessfully to confirm that the building will not be torn down.

Finally, did Pittsburgh’s unemployment rate trail the national unemployment rate for an additional 12 months?  Yes!  Chris Briem has been tracking the details. 

Adding this up, I think that I did pretty well.  Let's call it two-and-a-half marks out of a possible four.

Tomorrow:  Education.

2010 Pittsblog Predictions Revisited: Part 2

Another update to the crystal ball predictions that I made about a year ago. From this point forward, things get cloudier.  Here is Part 2.

2. Arts: 2010 will be a breakout year for Pittsburgh’s emerging “young creatives,” especially the visual artists and musicians who have been quietly taking over the North Side and some northeastern neighborhoods for much of the last decade. Look for at least one Pittsburgh-based performer to take the national stage. The arts communities in Lawrenceville, Garfield, and the North Side will overtake the institutions of the Cultural District as the faces of Pittsburgh’s arts culture.

I have to break this paragraph down into some subsidiary parts in order to get something approximating an accounting.

First:  Was 2010 a breakout year for the "young creatives" of Pittsburgh?  It's a little difficult for me to get a handle on this, because I am hardly a "young creative" myself, don't travel in those circles, and can't expect to find much information about those worlds (plural) by reading the Post-Gazette.  Some of a sense comes through the blogosphere, but even then the Web yields only clues and traces, not the heart of the thing.

Still, what little I did pick up suggests that I was reading the tea leaves correctly.  This part of Pittsburgh exudes a palpable energy these days.  I'll give myself half a point on this.

Second:  Did at least one Pittsburgh-based performer take the national stage?  Yes!  Wiz Khalifa had a top 40 hit -- though it's hard to say that "top 40" means as much as it did back when Casey Kasem was sort of hip, or at least well known.  Full marks here.

Third:  Did the arts communities in Lawrenceville, Garfield, and the North Side overtake the institutions of the Cultural District as the faces of Pittsburgh’s arts culture?  Hard to say here; I'll claim half a point.  The bad news/good news is that this all depends on who the relevant audience is, and the relevant audience isn't neatly segregated into "those who hang in Garfield" and "those who hang at the Public."  And the arts scene isn't limited to those areas at all.  The Warhol and the Mattress Factory, for example, continue to knock them dead on the North Side, but there is always some fabulous stuff happening Downtown, too.  The arts scene in Bloomfield, Garfield, East Liberty, and Lawrenceville is booming.  The bottom line may be that Pittsburgh's arts scene no longer has a single public face, and that's great for everyone in Pittsburgh -- with the possible exception of the expanding community of artists who are competing for support.

Overall, I'll claim two marks out of a possible three in this category.  Quite a recovery after yesterday's disaster.

Tomorrow:  Business.

2010 Pittsblog Predictions Revisited: Part 1

Last week I promised to serialize my update to the crystal ball predictions that I made about a year ago.  So here goes.  Part 1.

I led off a year ago with what I thought was a no-brainer:

1. Sports: Pirates observers (few people today hold themselves out as fans any longer) will endure yet another losing season in 2010, but the team will fall short of 100 losses. This is hardly a prediction, of course; it’s all but a guarantee. The Pirates are well on their way to becoming this generation’s Washington Senators. (The team has a couple of options: Make a deal with the devil, and lure Tab Hunter out of retirement. Or execute a move similar to one made famous at the trial of Al Capone: Take the entire major league roster, coaches, managers, and all, and ship them to the Pirates’ Class AA affiliate, the Altoona Curve. Bring the entire Curve roster and staff to Pittsburgh. Put them in Pirates uniforms. A AA-grade franchise deserves AA-grade players. Play ball!)

I struck out.  Picking the Pirates to have a losing season hardly counts as gazing correctly into a crystal ball; my dog could have made that prediction, and my dog doesn't watch baseball.  But a guarantee that the Pirates would lose fewer than 100 games in 2010?  The word "guarantee" was the kiss of death. The Pirates lost 105 games in what was not their worst season ever, but perhaps the most demoralizing of the last 18.  It's the sheer indifference of the organization, off the field as much as on it, that kills the fans. 

So, 0-for-1.

Tomorrow:  the Arts.

Tech Task Force a Non-Starter

Criticizing Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's new tech task force before it has met twice might seem unfair.  Give it a chance, right?

The lede of the PG report about the task force says everything that you need to know:

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl has formed a task force to nurture high-tech businesses, an initiative that grew out of his recent Asia trip and a decision to more forcefully inject himself into a critical economic sector.

Mr. Ravenstahl hopes that bringing representatives of education, business and the nonprofit community together will yield a more unified approach to attracting and growing high-tech ventures.

Mr. Ravenstahl convened the first meeting in his office Dec. 6. The 40-person group included Audrey Russo, president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Technology Council; Carnegie Mellon University President Jared Cohon; and Dennis Yablonsky, CEO of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, who traveled with the mayor to Shanghai, China, and Seoul, South Korea, in October.

Bringing people together will lead to a unified approach?  Probably.  Will it lead to growth?  Who knows.  Actually, the headline is worse:  "Ravenstahl lures high-tech businesses."  But Ravenstahl hasn't done anything.  Zip!

Pittsburgh's struggle to attract and grow "high-tech ventures" has nothing to do with a lack of a "unified approach."  The PG didn't publish all 40 names on the task force, and I couldn't find a website that lists them.  But dollars to cupcakes, I'll bet you that these are 40 of the *same* people -- in many cases, smart and well-intentioned people, and probably some who I count as friends -- who have been associated with underachieving economic development efforts in Western PA for the last 10 years or so. 


Putting all of these separate C-level players on a single team won't change the fact that they're the wrong players for this effort.

Tech-based economic development is not something that can be conjured in  meetings of mayors and CEOs.   That's top-down, old-school, clear-the-skies, ACCD thinking.  In fact, I would guess that the more that the Downtown Duquesne Club crew gets in the middle of this process, the more the real entrepreneurs and innovators and risk-capital investors get turned off of Pittsburgh.  Someone starting a new company wants money, mentorship, management, customers -- and to be otherwise left alone. 

(It's a little unfair, I know, to label the group of 40 "the Downtown Duquesne Club crew."  But I would *love* to learn that the group is meeting somewhere other than Grant Street or Sixth Avenue.)

If the group of 40 really want to send a productive message to business and tech communities in Pittsburgh and elsewhere, that message should be this:  Un-coordinate yourselves.  Tech transfer offices and incubators and seed funds should stop picking winners before companies are out of the gate.  Blanket the landscape with small bets, encourage and reward risk-taking, and let the passions of entrepreneurs and the discipline of the market sort out who stays and grows and who leaves or fades.  Publicly encourage and financially reward entrepreneurs who help entrepreneurs.  Take something like Alpha Lab, for example, and multiply it across sectors and scale it -- and fund it via the tech-based entrepreneurial community itself, and the professional services community, rather than via Innovation Works.  Quick question:  Alpha Lab companies get access to legal services.  How much of those legal services are *donated* or supplied *below cost*?

In short, make Pittsburgh a place where entrepreneurs and professional services *want* to come and grow new businesses, and *want* to help others do the same.

Coming Next Week: Pittsblog Predictions Revisited

Last January, I posted a note with my predictions for Pittsburgh in 2010.  Starting next Monday, I'll review how I did.

Vibrant Pittsburgh is Not an Oxymoron

Vibrant Pittsburgh is not a bad idea. Not a bad idea at all. The organization has a new CEO, which is why it is in the news.  (As a side note:  I've complained before about title inflation, that is, the explosion in the number of CEOs in Pittsburgh.  Why does every organization have to have a CEO or president?  What is wrong with having an executive director?)

Let us hope that the effort to recruit and retain talent in Pittsburgh expands beyond the two sectors identified on VP's website -- energy and health care -- and beyond the for-profit part of the Pittsburgh region.

Cupcakes, Donuts, and Ho Hos

Because I'm a skeptic when it comes to the "Pittsburgh is Experiencing a Renaissance and Revitalization!" narrative, I generally don't care for the unapologetic boosterism of Pop City.  But give credit where credit is due:  once in a while, Pop City delivers something that I can sink my teeth into.

John Denny has a list of his favorite Pittsburgh lists, and at the very top is this gem:

Pittsburgh ranks #1 In Ho Ho consumption. That's right; Pittsburghers love our Hostess Ho Hos. According to the makers of this wonderful chocolate cake treat, Pittsburgh leads the nation in the shortest shelf life for Ho Ho's. We consume about 1.5 Ho Ho's per person, per day! Buffalo, Cincinnati and Cleveland follow right behind us.

Now John's data are a little out of date (the PG reports that the Ho Ho news came out in 2007), and I have to wonder -- wannabe pastry economist that I am -- how the post-2007 surge in cupcake consumption (not to mention the resurgence of Dunkin Donuts in the region) has affected Pittsburgh's Ho Ho affection.  Did the Cupcake Class emerge from the end of the Hostess Club?  Ho Hos were invented in San Francisco, after all, so perhaps there's a group that is grazing from one high-end pastry to another.  Or -- alternatively -- perhaps the Cupcake Class expanded the pie, as it were, building and filling a new market niche (and filling out some waistlines).  Does Pittsburgh have a pastry equilibrium, as I suggested earlier this Fall?  Or is the region still in transition?

If this is really a Renaissance, then we should expect cannoli to go mainstream.

The Heart of Pittsblog is Still Beating

After I got off of a plane last Friday, I looked at my calendar for 2010:  26 trips out of Pittsburgh, more or less.  Yikes.  No wonder blogging here has fallen off.  And 2011 is shaping up already to be just about as busy.

Once in a while, though, a ray of good news shines through the dirty skies of Pittsburgh (kudos to the PG, by the way, for being on top of this story).  A few weeks ago, I didn't do enough here to highlight a terrific $1mm grant that Innovation Works secured to bolster collaboration with tech transfer at CMU.  Today, I don't want to miss the chance to spotlight some good news for the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse:  a $500k grant from the Commonwealth to support a campus on the South Side, including a number of wet labs.  Much more money is needed to build out infrastructure for commercializable biotech and biomedicine in Pittsburgh, but every $500k helps.

Meanwhile, at my law school, we have hired a new Executive Director to lead Pitt's Innovation Practice Institute -- succeeding the founding ED, who is moving onward and upward (to Philly, unfortunately for us) -- and I will be stepping up as of Jan. 1 to become the IPI's Faculty Director.  In 2011, expect the IPI to participate even more fully in Pittsburgh's entrepreneurial space.