News

Pittsburgh celebrates its 250th anniversary in three years -- November 2008, to be exact, marking the date British soldiers captured Fort Duquense and renamed it for the British statesman William Pitt.

The conference, as the region's leading business-oriented civic organization, wants to throw one heck of a party for "Pittsburgh 250."

But it also wants to build up to the anniversary with a series of events recognizing the region's past and laying out its future, said F. Michael Langley, chief executive officer. The events will likely include several national forums around the 2005 Bassmaster Classic, the 2006 Major League Baseball All-Star game and the 2007 U.S. Open golf tournament.

"It gives us a great opportunity to build the brand and image of the Pittsburgh region in a positive light," Langley said. "It's a chance to not only talk about how great we've been for 250 years but how great we're going to be in the future."

After a few minor setbacks in reaching its goals for southwestern Pennsylvania, the conference and its affiliates -- the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance, the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce and the Pennsylvania Economy League -- have laid out a new agenda.

In June, the 60-year-old conference acknowledged that job losses attributed to regional and national economic problems made it "unrealistic" that the group would meet its goal of creating 50,000 new jobs by 2005.

That was the halfway point for the group's "3 Rivers: One Future" strategy unveiled in 2002, which also set as a target $1 billion in new investment over the 2002-05 period.

The region's economy has lost 20,000 jobs since 2002, meaning 70,000 new jobs would be needed to hit the strategy's employment target for Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Indiana, Fayette, Greene, Lawrence, Washington and Westmoreland counties.

"They're much more realistic about their expectations," said Jim Roddey, the former Allegheny County chief executive. "In the past some of the conference's presentations tended to be very optimistic."

The conference will focus for the next decade, Langley said, on two facets: improving governance and creating a competitive economy.

On the governance side, the conference will continue to promote consolidation of government such as combining municipalities or eliminating duplication of services between Pittsburgh and Allegheny County. The idea, Langley said, will be to work at reducing the costs and challenges of doing business in southwestern Pennsylvania.

To create a more competitive economy, the conference wants to make the region more business friendly by trying to reduce the cost of doing business. The conference sees three local technology areas emerging and converging: information technology, life sciences and advanced materials and manufacturing.

"We're trying to match our agenda and resources with the challenges of the region," Langley said. "If we're taking on the easy things, we're kind of just not stepping up to the table."

Just since the conference's annual meeting in November, the region has started tackling two of the biggest problems it was facing in the fall.

Pittsburgh won state approval for new and higher taxes, helping it to start reforming its finances. The conference worked locally and in Harrisburg to help lawmakers, city officials and the state-appointed oversight boards coalesce around one plan.

"If any one of those groups went in the wrong direction, we would not get to a solution," Langley said. "It's not as good as we wanted but it is a start."

The conference also worried in the fall about how Pittsburgh would replace the loss of US Airways. The region has slowly lost thousands of jobs and still stands to lose thousands more.

But where the airline has reduced flights out of Pittsburgh International Airport, other airlines have started providing new service. Low-fare king Southwest Airlines announced it will begin serving the airport in May.

"That's a huge uplift," Langley said. "That is the world's most profitable airline ... coming here because it thinks this is a great place to do business."

• Most Read
• Most E-mailed
• Latest News