Digital dashboard promising transparency in Downtown Pittsburgh launches

PITTSBURGH — Smells, loitering and violence. It’s the story of Downtown over the last few months, but a story the leaders are working to rewrite.

“This is the core of the region, not just the core of the city or core of the county, it’s the core of the entire region, he golden triangle in Downtown and we want to just make sure it’s vibrant and people are using it,” said County Executive Rich Fitzgerald.

Vibrancy, economics, safety and cleanliness are the staples. The Allegheny Conference is now tracking those elements on a new digital dashboard called Index PGH.

“Local tourism surpassed pre pandemic levels by 16 percent,” said Jeremy Waldrup with the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership.

Nearly 67,000 square feet of sidewalks cleaned last month. All data at your fingertips with this new tool including 1.7 million visitors, 91 percent residential occupancy and 76 arrests.

“When we start to measure numbers that’s how you start to make some improvements once you start quantifying things and you see the trends,” Fitzgerald said.

In order to make the changes, corporate companies from across the area are making a $2 million investment into improving this area of the city.

It comes at a time where commercial real estate occupancy is at 81 percent and companies are pushing employees back into the office.

“I think they get some push back that I don’t want to come to town for this reason for that reason, so I think it’s a joint effort. We know the vacancy rates in some of these buildings are problematic it’s got to be dealt with and other strategies around housing,” Fitzgerald said.

Homelessness is another big factor.

“I’d appreciate if we’d start making sure these homeless people are taken care of because it hurts, they are all on the streets,” said Barabara Allen who lives in Pittsburgh.

The first step forward there is a new temporary public restroom launching in September to aid in public health growth and keep the city streets clean.

“This pilot program will oversee new temporary facilities in highly visible highly accessible locations, these restrooms will be open 16 hours a day and staffed by our dedicated clean team,” Waldrup said.

The locations of those restrooms have yet to be released.

The hope is to update the data weekly on the digital dashboard at indexpgh.com.

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