Regional News Archives - Pittsburgh Quarterly

As the nation marks its 250th anniversary this year, the importance of understanding our shared past has never been clearer. Here in Pittsburgh, that moment of reflection is taking shape in a tangible way, as the Senator John Heinz History Center is set to embark on a major expansion that reflects the organization’s remarkable evolution …

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Regional News Travel

New Airport Accentuates Pittsburgh’s Key Attributes

by Evan Pattak

If you’re an old-time Pittsburgher who’s resistant to change, you fondly recall Forbes Field, even with its tiny seats and occluded views of the field. You long to shop in Jenkins Arcade one more time. You cherish the memories of your trips to Greater Pittsburgh International Airport, with its inviting observation decks and concession stands …

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American Spirit Regional News

Sailing at the Point

by Joe Kirk

It’s a brisk early-June Saturday morning on the North Shore just downriver from the Point. A light breeze is moving in from the west on the Allegheny River. Almost a dozen high school girls and boys from several Pittsburgh and suburban schools gather at an under-used concrete riverfront amphitheater, jabbering away while looping their arms …

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Opinion Regional News

Noteworthy Summer 2024

by PQ Staff

Stop the StrikeFor the past 18 months, Pittsburgh has endured the divisive antipathy of a newspaper strike between the Post-Gazette and five unions. While it’s understandable that workers would like to see better wages and benefits, it’s also clear that the newspaper industry has been in a steep, often terminal, decline for decades. The only …

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Regional News

Noteworthy, Fall 2023

by PQ Staff

A Pittsburgh Great for 140 yearsIt was all the way back in 1883 that captain john B. Ford and John Pitcairn started the first commercially successful plate glass factory in the U.S., in Creighton. By the early 1900s, the company was expanding into paint, because paint and glass reached customers through the same distribution channels. …

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Regional News

Latin American Cultural Center Opens in Oakland

by Julia Fraser

A woman spins a crisp white thread, a vermillion sky rises over water and doves hover in Paula Nicho Cúmez’s painting, “Process and Vision of the Peace Accords.” She composed the painting in the wake of the 1996 Peace Accords in Guatemala, which brought an end to the country’s 36-year civil war. “The only thing …

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Pittsburgh Immigration Pittsburgh Today Regional News

Pittsburgh’s Immigrant Puzzle

by Jeffery Fraser

Allegheny county’s small population bump from 2010 to 2020 owes much to a spike in the number of immigrants who decided to make it their home. They accounted for more than 60 percent of the 27,000 residents the county added overall. Without the gains in foreign-born residents, southwestern Pennsylvania as a region would have been …

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Pittsburgh Today Regional News

Pittsburgh’s Population Problem

by Julia Fraser

Butler street in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood wears the face of a young adult enclave. Seven breweries and counting, a cider house, a craft beer store attached to an independent movie theater and bars with outdoor beer gardens flow through the neighborhood, as does a healthy population of young men with dense beards who patronize those …

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Pittsburgh Today Regional News

Pittsburgh’s 2023 Economic Forecast

by Kurt Rankin and Stuart Hoffman

With the U.S. facing a strong possibility of recession in 2023, the Pittsburgh metropolitan statistical area is at risk of losing more than its fair share of economic activity in such a downturn. Pittsburgh’s labor market has not yet recovered to its pre-pandemic levels, in terms of employee headcount, in eight of 11 major industrial …

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People Regional News

Pandemic Learning Loss

by Julia Fraser

For decades, educators fretted over how to prevent “summer slide,” the learning loss that students often experience over summer vacation. The COVID pandemic raised the stakes. Mounting evidence suggests that periodic school closings, the abrupt shift to remote learning and other disruptions profoundly set back students’ education, accelerating learning loss into a national crisis — …

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Regional News

Unemployment Drops, Jobs Growth Slows

by Julia Fraser

November unemployment in southwestern Pennsylvania fell to a level the region hasn’t seen in almost 50 years. But stagnant job growth and a dip in the labor force continued to challenge local employers, according to recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area, 4.0 percent of workers …

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Regional News

Regional Unemployment At “Extremely Low” Rate

by Julia Fraser

The unemployment rate in southwestern Pennsylvania fell to one of the lowest rates in the past 50 years, according to the latest Pennsylvania Department of Labor data. In September, 4.2 percent of workers in the seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area were looking for work. That rate tied for the lowest unemployment rate in the region …

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Pittsburgh Today Regional News

Region Continues Adding Jobs, But Can’t Erase Pandemic Losses

by Julia Fraser

Jobs ticked up in the Pittsburgh region in September, but incremental gains haven’t been enough to bring the number of jobs back up to pre-pandemic levels. Employers in the seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area added 11,700 jobs from August to September, a 1 percent monthly gain, according to recent data from the U.S. Bureau of …

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Pittsburgh Today Regional News

Unemployment Remains Low; Hiring Remains Challenging

by Julia Fraser

Regional unemployment in August remain unchanged at 4.4 percent, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor. “There’s only been a few months in the last 50 years in which the regional unemployment rate has been lower,” said Chris Briem, a regional economist at the University of Pittsburgh University Center for Social and Urban Research. “The …

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Pittsburgh Today Regional News

The Workforce Training Swamp

by Julia Fraser

When southwestern Pennsylvania’s steel mills began falling like dominoes in the 1980s, some 3,400 workers turned to publicly funded workforce training programs for help shifting careers. One was a robotics training course offered by the Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC) and its partner, Westinghouse Electric Corp. Federal dollars flowed to CCAC to pay for …

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Regional News

Let’s Take “the Pits” out of Pittsburgh

by Douglas Heuck

In my spring column, I wrote about the borough of Wilkinsburg, encouraging Pittsburgh City Council to vote in favor of annexing the failed municipality. When I wrote it though, it had been years since I’d veered off of Wilkinsburg’s main drag — Penn Avenue — and actually explored the borough. Last month, I drove all …

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Regional News

Opportunity Awaits, but…

by Jeffery Fraser

Kendell Pelling knows vacant and blighted property. For more than 15 years he was in charge of land recycling at East Liberty Development, Inc. There, he saw how, even in a real estate market that was heating up, new houses priced to sell couldn’t find a buyer when blight was nearby. But once the abandoned …

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Regional News

The View from Erie

by Steve Hallock

Peering out at the choppy waves from the shore of Lake Erie, the businessman sees opportunity. The fisherman envisions a trout dinner. The tourist anticipates a boat ride. The farmer appreciates the plentiful water supply. The environmentalist frets about lake pollution. James Grunke, president of the Erie Regional Chamber & Growth Partnership, sees all of …

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Pittsburgh Today Regional News

PLACE YOUR BETS

by Julia Fraser

In the mid-1960s, public- and private-sector leaders in southwestern Pennsylvania threw their support behind an effort to diversify the region’s steel industry-reliant economy by developing the emerging rapid-transportation market in their backyard. Their hopes were pinned to Skybus, an innovative, automated transportation system that allowed for congestion-free travel on tracks high above streets and highways. …

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Pittsburgh Today Regional News

College Students Wanted

by Julia Fraser

When the United States slid into the Great Recession, throwing millions out of work, America went back to school. Older adults enrolling in community colleges or other two-year programs led a surge in enrollment that saw colleges add 2.5 million students from 2007-2010, a 14 percent enrollment spike. School administrators were elated. “We all thought, …

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Regional News

On a Pedestal, Spring 2022

by PQ Staff

A Steeler for LifeWas it really 18 years ago that Ben Roethlisberger took the field as a rookie with the Steelers? How the years have come and gone. And while last season’s Steelers eked out a winning season with an unlikely playoff appearance that ended in lopsided defeat, the team gave us something that’s a …

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Regional News

Unemployment Drops; More Workers Needed

by Julia Fraser

Unemployment ticked down in southwestern Pennsylvania to begin 2022, but the region’s labor force woes persisted, according to the latest Pennsylvania Department of Labor data. In January, 5.1 percent of workers in seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area were unemployed –a drop from 5.3 percent in December 2021. But the unemployment rate in the region remained …

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