Recently listening to the police scanner, Alex and I heard a call come across the air to summon the fire department to “Allegheny Center Associates” on the North Shore in response to a fire alarm. For those unfamiliar with Pittsburgh, “Allegheny Center Associates” refers to what is known locally as Allegheny Center Mall, a retail space/mall from the 1960’s that has now been turned into office and living space(!) in an effort to revitalize both the facility and the Northside as a whole. The mall’s living spaces have a local reputation for being student living space for both Point Park and Art Institute of Pittsburgh students. What is most interesting about the mall, though, is its conversion from a retail to office/living space and the story behind it.

I don’t know all of the back story, but when you go into the building, what clearly used to be an “anchor store” is now a home loan bank customer service center, and what used to be smaller stores off the main concourse are now mostly telecom companies, one of which was my destination: switch and data. Even the kiosks and platers from the building’s former retail life remain untouched–everything is “dated” in appearance; the building empty and quiet.

The Pittsburgh Business Times printed an article back in 2000 on the building’s transformation from a mall to an office space, and termed the facility a “telecom hotel”. Evidently, (and not surprisingly) the building’s manager has had a hard time finding companies that want to locate in the mall. Instead, they’ve found a eager and willing audience in telecommunications companies. Reasons cited in the article for their interest include the cement architecture of the building and its close proximity to the power grid, both important to companies looking to keep computers cool, protected and running 24/7/365.

What I also find interesting, and not mentioned in the article, is the necessity of fiber optic links to run a telecom company in today’s global age. Conveniently, and perhaps one of its failings as a retail mall, there is a major freeway (I-279) and multiple railroad tracks just south of the mall (map). These imposing rights of way may cut off the mall from the rest of downtown, but they also usually carry fiber optics (freeways and railroads usually being places safe from digging). The mall’s close proximity to the office towers that house Pittsburgh’s (few) large multi-national companies make the mall a more cost-effective, but still convenient place to keep associated communications and IT equipment.

It’d be an ironic turn of fate for something that may have killed the building’s original purpose to be the thing that saves it from the wrecking ball. It also just proves that when you have an asset (especially a tangible one), there is always both an audience and a way to present that asset to that audience, that can turn the asset into a sustainable, revenue generating part of your organization. “It’s all in the presentation…”

If you live in Pittsburgh, you *have* to go to Millvale. It’s like stepping back in time. From the streetlights, to the road signs, to the signage on local establishments, it’s all 40 years ago. Alex and I went there to visit, but I didn’t take a lot of photos. Millvale was just coming out of a flood from the recent severe weather, and I didn’t want to be disrespectful of their situation. It seems they got hit pretty hard–most families we saw had what appeared to be their entire basements on the curb. Sad. But we plan on going back, though.

Then we went to Dormont. Dormont is kind of the same thing–I have a few more photos from there, including a great old appliance store. Dormont seems like it’s a bit more affluent, and has access to the T (the subway). The people in the shops we stopped in were really nice–it’s hard to believe you’re so close to Pittsburgh, because in so many ways, both boroughs seem a world apart. It’s amazing what a river or a small mountain can do to separate cities and cultures.

It’s interesting how sometimes obvious solutions can be novel in other domains. One example is using ice to cool a building. The premise of the system is this: it’s cheap to buy electricity at night, expensive during the day. Why not make ice at night (consumes a lot of electricity), and then use the ice to cool the building during the day (consumes little electricity), thereby saving money on cooling bills? Here’s a New York Times article on one such install in Manhattan. Interesting.