Saturday, August 14, 2010

If Somone Gets me Decent Sledgehammer, I'll Take the Arena Down Myself.

There is an interesting tension, I think, between conservatives and liberals of a nostalgic bent. (E.g., the preservationists and the conservationists, with whom we share etymology. And come to think of it, if the word wasn't all ready taken, I might self-identify as a "preservative.") We would seem to have a lot in common. With our most fundmental instincts, we seek to maintain things. (Ooh! How about "maintenists?") We tend maintain values and institutions; they try to prevent change in the tactile things around us. For that reason, I don't object to preservation and conservation per se, which is why I'm all the more frustrated by institutional nostalgia when it insists on picking battles that are specious, obstructive and downright asinine.

Keep this in mind, please, as I begin to eviscerate the movement to save Mellon Arena, perhaps the ugliest sporting venue in North America. The call it the "igloo" because of its hemispheric shape, but that is being euphemistic. Igloos are natural, and the arena is the apotheosis of dehumanizing urbanism; igloos are colored a pure white, and the arena has deteriorated from a cold silver to a pathetic gray. And not only does this awkward monstrosity blight the cityscape like a lifeless urban pimple, it was designed and built so hastily and carelessly, that its ungainly location is often blamed for the decline of the Hill District, Pittsburgh's once-iconic black neighborhood (--although, as conservatives, we know that the New Deal, the Great Society and the cultural unraveling of the inner city are also major factors). Getting rid of the arena, and fast, would improve the aesthetics of the city, open up a chance at renewal for one of Pittsburgh's most desperate neighborhoods, invigorate the city and county coffers with a much needed multi-millon dollar transaction, and provide the region with a giant, wide open plot of city real estate for development. With these interests aligned, you would think the stupid thing would already be flattened.

Of course not! There are people in this town who actually want to save it. Apparently even the most politically sentimental among us don't have the nerve to suggest that a city of 300,000 people can sustain to two 16,000+ seat arenas, so the nostalgists have resorted to ridiculous suggestions like this. Some of the nostalgists suggest, correctly, that at its inception the "Civic" Arena was a major architectural achievement. Designed to house the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, it was the largest retratable-roof stadium ever conceived or built.

The problem with that argument is this: The symphony moved out after one year and the Pittsburgh Penguins moved in, and shortly thereafter the sporting world was introduced to the Jumbotron. Since the venue was not intended to preserve an ice rink, it was a terrible hockey venue with a terrible ice surface, especially when the Pens played hockey into the summer months. And since the Jumbotron was suspended from the ceiling, the roof never opened again. So, while it was hailed as a triumph on the day the ribbon was cut, history has shown it to be a short-sighted disaster like most of the other brave new venues of the era. (Remember this beautiful craphole?) In a world where Forbes Field can give way to (eventually) PNC Park, any movement to preserve this comparatively worthless arena amounts to either stubbornness or liberal self-promotion.

So what should we do with that real estate? I've got a novel idea: sell it. No meetings, no stipulations, no feasibility studies, no economic impact studies, no environmental impact studies, no community write-in contests. Just sell it to the highest bidder and bank the check. The thing about those heartless developers is that they're pretty good at developing. The person who pays the most for the land probably has the most lucrative idea. This open plot of land is a perfect opportunity to let these people do what they get paid to do for once.

But really, I don't care if they turn it into a park and it never throws off a dime of revenue. Or if they turn it into a parking garage and it's almost as ugly as the thing it replaced. Just lay off the phony sentimentalism; some things need to die in order for others to mature. Schumpeter called in "creative destruction." In the case of the Mellon/Civic Arena, I call it "mercy."

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