I was coming home from my uncle’s last night and was day-dreaming and ended up missing my exit and wound up on the North Shore.  I decided to take this as an opportunity to check out all the development going on over there.  The casino garage looks just about done and the casino itself seems to have all the walls up from the outside.  there’s at least 1 hotel in the works by PNC park, and I think another building in construction as well.  They razed the sportsworks complex to make way for the northshore T connector already.  One thing I couldnt explain, is the construction around the the Manchester Bridge Pier near Heinz Field.  It looks like they cut a hole in it or something.  So I went to research mode.

Turns out, it’s going to be the new Mr. Rogers monument.  It was supposed to be completed in Fall 2008, but I guess they hit some major delays.  I found a few articles that said the 10 foot scultpure of him is already done and sitting in a warehouse somewhere since may 2008.  That’s a long time.  This looks like a pretty cool place though.  I’m almost concerned that the northshore is going to become something like washington DC with all the monuments along the Mall.  Either way, I’m happy to see new stuff, especially for Mr. Rogers.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07144/788654-53.stm

I’m going to put it out there because it’s true.  I want to write a novel.  I have tons of ideas written down on note pads for stories and characters, but never really get beyond that step.  I’d love to write something like Palahniuk.  If worse comes to worse, I had an idea for a series of books, sort of like the "Whatever : for dummies" books.   It’d be something like "A local’s guide to : Pittsburgh"  and it would contain all the underground info about the place that only locals know.  Sure it’d have the incline, primanti’s, etc  but it’d also talk about the mattress factory, the O, student rush, when to get a tour of Heinz Field, all the running paths at schenley, places to catch live music, etc.  Details!  because of the potential of outdated information, a website would go along with it (of course!)  something like localeyes.com or localize.com and each city would be a subdomain, pittsburgh.localeyes.com

I walked over to the North Side yesterday to play basketball at the Allegheny Center Alliance Church and I walked through the Allegheny Center mall…That place is like walking through the set of 28 days later.  There’s no one there.  Stores are empty.  THIS IS A MALL.  I felt like I was walking through some sort of quarantined area, and it’s 4 o’clock in the afternoon!  The whole area is just dead and creepy.  It’s totally wild to see such a big area completely abandoned.  Even the old Carnegie Free Library has a sign on it that says "Closed indefinitely."  That’s nuts!  What happened here???  It’s almost like this area has a dark secret in it’s past and no one is talking about it.

Maybe all the development on the North Shore will revive that place.  The Steelers are in talks with a west coast developer to bring in some sort of venue/entertainment complex next to Heinz Field.  You’ve got Don Barden’s casino going in.  Another hotel going in by PNC Park.  The North Shore connection with the T to be finished in 2011.  If I were to make a prediction, I’d say that once the river front of the North Side is developed in the next 5 years, the West End/Station square side is going to BOOM.  When I say BOOM, I mean it.  The attraction of that side of the river(s) is that there’s nothing there right now.  Developers will be able to plan huge buildings, not worry about closing roads and such, and have a clean canvas to work with.  I haven’t heard anything about that Pittsburgh maglev project for a while either…