We need to develop Route 51
Those rooting for more jobs and more development in Fayette County might well root for the same in southern Allegheny County.
Specifically, they should hope that the Route 51 corridor catches up with regions north, east, and west of Pittsburgh. Development in those locales have helped Washington, Westmoreland, Beaver and Butler counties create economies and jobs that far outstrip what’s going on in Fayette County.
Now, it would help if Uniontown were 15 miles closer to the city, but that ain’t going to happen. So, the best we can hope for is rapid expansion coming out of Pittsburgh along Saw Mill Run Boulevard and running through Baldwin-White Hall, Pleasant Hills, and Large. Elizabeth, too.
And because it stands between Fayette and Allegheny, we should also hope for an uptick in development in the corner of Westmoreland County where Route 51 meets I-70.
Admittedly, that’s a lot of hoping.
For that reason, we need an entity to encourage development — a commission, say, to concentrate on the problems and challenges of bringing new energy to job creation and residential development on lands and in communities stretching 20 miles or more along Route 51, up to and including Perryopolis.
True, no commissions oversaw or encouraged development east, north, and west of Pittsburgh. Those locations did it the old-fashioned way: as a result of a fortune juncture of key job-enhancers.
What?
Let me explain, and this gets to the point that Uniontown sits 45 miles from Pittsburgh instead of an optimum 30 to 35 miles.
In the days of coal and coke, it didn’t matter that the county seat of Fayette County was no closer to Pittsburgh than it is today. Big Coal (Fayette) and Big Steel (Allegheny) needed one another. Today, we would use a fancy word, synergy, to describe the relationship.
Back in the day, people didn’t call it anything. It was just there, a fact of life.
(It is instructive when reading old newspapers to see the close attention both big-city and small-city reporters and editors — encouraged, no doubt, by the publishers and owners of those papers — paid to events and personalities in each other’s portion of western Pennsylvania. This attentiveness was a clear indication of their awareness that the health of one depended on the wellbeing of the other, a circumstance that while rarely acknowledged was widely understood.)
In the big picture, it was clear that the coke extracted from the rich vein of bituminous coal that ran beneath the Connellsville Coke Region was a leading factor — some would argue, the leading factor — in fueling the steel-making behemoth that was Allegheny County.
Today, the nexus of local coal and steel is largely history. But that doesn’t mean Pittsburgh doesn’t have an important, perhaps decisive, impact on adjacent communities.
Take Greensburg, for example. The county seat of Westmoreland County is approximately 35 miles from Pittsburgh. Equally or more importantly it sits on the side of Pittsburgh where two major universities are rooted — Carnegie Mellon, a national leader in the fields of robotics and engineering, and the University of Pittsburgh, home of the region’s major medical complex, UPMC.
Have you been to Greensburg and its environs lately? The development is absolutely mind-boggling. The traffic. The new homes. It’s all rather dizzying.
Meanwhile, across the way is Canonsburg-Washington. Sure, Washington County has taken to calling itself “the energy capital” of the eastern United States, and there’s a case to be made for that. Gas-well drilling has mushroomed in Washington County.
But how much of the development in the Canonsburg-Washington area rests not on natural gas, but on its proximity to Pittsburgh? Canonsburg, at 22 miles, is a veritable hop, skip, and a jump from the city.
Moreover, this region of Washington County is close to Allegheny’s Robinson Township, a strong retail center. And Robinson is down the highway from Pittsburgh International Airport. Proximity to the airport has been immense for Washington County as well as for Beaver County, where the jobless rate is typically a point-and-a-half lower than Fayette’s.
Contrast that with Route 51 in Allegheny County. About the only retail store that has gone up in the last few years was yet another Sheetz. Century Three Mall is now practically a ghost town.
As for residential development, that has been pretty much confined to a handful of new homes off Old Clairton Road.
It’s not a situation that’s likely to ignite the kind of eye-popping growth that’s taking place elsewhere.
A commission to work on this matter may not be the answer. Special panels frequently fail because the issues they tackle are so tough. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be needed in the first place.
Besides, this one would smack of special pleading. To most people, I’m sure, the paucity of growth in the Route 51 corridor doesn’t even rise to the level of concern.
In the absence of major private sector development, what then is to be done? Wait for things to happen on their own? Is that really the best we can do?
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — “Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation” and “Our People.” He can be reached at grandsalutebook@gmail.com