He’s forging a new image for Pittsburgh
Mike Edwards has Steeler issues.
He’s trying to market Pittsburgh as a booming hub for education and medicine, one with a thriving downtown, miles of attractive riverfront, and neighborhoods draped in greenery. Almost sounds like Spokane, doesn’t it?
Unhappily for Edwards, it doesn’t sound like the Pittsburgh. At least not the Pittsburgh millions of Americans think they know from outdated high school textbooks. The enduring image is one of belching mills peopled by hard-hatted men carrying lunchpails. Steel workers. Steelers. The Pittsburgh Steelers.
The un-Seattle Seahawks. The un-Seattle. The ungreen.
Beloved by untold millions.
Edwards, until last April, was president of the Downtown Spokane Partnership. He left to become executive director of the Downtown Pittsburgh Partnership. When that organization’s chairman introduced Edwards to the Pittsburgh community last spring, he said the new guy’s only flaw was an allegiance to the Buffalo Bills acquired during his childhood in western New York. That, the chairman said, would be corrected.
Edwards says the transition is a work in progress. A little encouragement would help, he says, noting “Nobody has called and offered to take me to the game.”
So, like the rest of Pittsburgh, Edwards will watch Sunday’s Super Bowl game between the Steelers and Seahawks on television. ESPN, he notes, estimates 81 percent of all TVs in the Pittsburgh area will be tuned to the game. The highest national viewership for a Super Bowl is 48 percent.
Edwards says he will be at least as interested in the “beauty shots” of Pittsburgh as he will be in the game. Beauty shots like those taken of the lower falls of the Spokane River for the 2002 SkateAmerica competition. Avista Utilities channeled water over the falls especially for the event.
The right beauty shot can reshape viewer preconceptions about a city in just a few seconds, Edwards says. “It’s a really powerful marketing tool.”
But there’s always the peril that a producer will harken back to Pittsburgh in its steel-making heyday, and go with whatever footage reinforces that image
“We don’t make steel here anymore,” Edwards says. Pittsburgh has replaced the 140,000 jobs lost as area steel mills shut down with an equal number of jobs in medicine, education and other fields critical to success in the 21st Century.
“They’ve really done an unbelievable transformation here,” he says. “Once you see Pittsburgh, it’s really not what everybody thinks about.”
Edwards likens the sales opportunity for downtown Pittsburgh to that the Gonzaga Bulldogs men’s basketball team creates for Spokane when the team makes the NCAA tournament. If the team can get into the Elite Eight bracket, as they did in 1999, everybody will know how where they are from. Maybe score some beauty shots.
But try as he might since arriving in the city, Edwards says it’s been hard getting the message about the new Pittsburgh across. Steeler ascendancy has not helped.
Fans wearing Steeler yellow and black riffle through downtown like bad shag carpet. More than 30,000 showed up Friday at Heinz Field for a pre-Super Bowl rally, for which downtown office towers kept their lights on. Lights at the corporate headquarters of United States Steel Corp. stenciled out the Steelers emblem.
Edwards says almost 900 bars around the U.S. are dedicated to the Steelers, testament to the undying loyalty of Pittsburgh expatriates wherever they may be.
“The Steelers are so consistent, it’s hard to get by them,” he says. “To me, it’s a conundrum.”
Despite his puzzlement, Edwards has taken a stand on the Steelers’ Super Bowl performance. He says they will win 23 to 10, and he’s made a bet with Kate Joncas, president of the Downtown Seattle Association, to back that up. If the Steelers lose, he will send 100 pierogis and a case of Iron City beer to Seattle. If they win, he gets six bottles of Washington wine and a salmon from the Pike Place Market.
“My feeling is we’re going to be having a fish cookout,” Edwards says.
Maybe. When salmon migrate up the Ohio River.