Stadium debate aside, Oakland is more boring now. At least in terms of Forbes and to a lesser extent Craig -- more corporate chains, less mom and pop shops. Less, dare I say, punk.
Pitt Stadium
- Thread starter the_insider_
- Start date
you can put lipstick on a pig all you want.. Marriott hotel is what it is.It's kind of like The Manchurian Candidate. I'm just going to drop "Oakland chain hotels" in a random thread and see what happens.
hey, Marriott chains are nice, I've stayed in them hundreds of times, always pleasant. i just never wanted to go to undergrad next to one, that's all. but hey, there are bigger eye soars on campus than that hotel, i'll agree with you there.
THis monstrosity will make any hotel look like an architectural marvel when this thing gets built.
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you can put lipstick on a pig all you want.. Marriott hotel is what it is.
hey, Marriott chains are nice, I've stayed in them hundreds of times, always pleasant. i just never wanted to go to undergrad next to one, that's all. but hey, there are bigger eye soars on campus than that hotel, i'll agree with you there.
THis monstrosity will make any hotel look like an architectural marvel when this thing gets built.
I think that project is on hold for now.
Just teasing. I know it really bothers you.you can put lipstick on a pig all you want.. Marriott hotel is what it is.
hey, Marriott chains are nice, I've stayed in them hundreds of times, always pleasant. i just never wanted to go to undergrad next to one, that's all. but hey, there are bigger eye soars on campus than that hotel, i'll agree with you there.
THis monstrosity will make any hotel look like an architectural marvel when this thing gets built.
They've lengthened the timeline a little bit for the hospitals in Oakland and Shadyside; they're constructing the new one in Uptown now. The construction timelines were always a little bit aggressive for the three new hospitals, and it makes sense that they're trying to get the Uptown one done (as well as the massive new immunotherapy Pitt/UPMC joint venture on Baum/Morewood/Centre that they're building now) before moving forward with the Oakland and Shadyside projects. The immunotherapy center is IMO a more impactful project for both UPMC and Pitt Med than any hospital.
Once upon a time PITT had an on campus football stadium so they had the land and space.
Incompetent PITT admin decided to give up that stadium and build a basketball complex which could have been sited elsewhere.
It might have been a better decision to build the basketball complex somewhere else on campus and retain the stadium or demolish PITT stadium and maintain the land/footprint of the stadium for possible future use.
If PITT administration was on its game it should have been aggressively acquiring land over the last 30 years anticipating growth due to a academic and sports expansion.
Incompetent PITT admin decided to give up that stadium and build a basketball complex which could have been sited elsewhere.
It might have been a better decision to build the basketball complex somewhere else on campus and retain the stadium or demolish PITT stadium and maintain the land/footprint of the stadium for possible future use.
If PITT administration was on its game it should have been aggressively acquiring land over the last 30 years anticipating growth due to a academic and sports expansion.
That Pitt administration save Pitt athletics by infusing large amounts of capital and revenue as a result of that decision
the empty financial albatross with 4K to watch Villanova in the rain.
literally everybody except a couple loud knuckle heads have moved on-
And the program is far stronger as a result
Totally 100% agree about the immunotherapy initiative. It IS the future.
The program is great now and improving.
That's not my point.
Mrs Buffett and I drive 600 miles rt to attend Pitt home games so we're not the problem .
My point was various Pitt administrations in the past dropped the ball regarding land acquisition and Pitt football which made saving cash infusions necessary.
If the Pitt football trend line from the glory days continued to trend up we'd still have an on campus place and be better off today.
Well... give credit to Pitt for their "Human Performance Center" which will probably be badged a UPMC facility and take in rehab patients but also serve as Pitt's VB and indoor track.
I've said this before, Pitt did a pretty good job building up its medical center. I don't think you really fault that process considering it has grown into nation's largest academic health system and Pitt has climbed into a top 5 recipient of the most competitive research awards. UPMC's support of the university's health sciences is far greater financially than any other academic health system and lucrative on a level that no athletic department, anywhere, could ever come close to.
40 years of neglecting Pitt Stadium and the other athletic facilities created that luck. It should have never gotten to the point where demolishing it was the most viable option.
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Pitt is a trend setter in lots of areas.
Innovators.
Just not in how to take a great football program (NC days) and make it greater.
I think their concepts for the heart/transplant hospital facility could be transformative. It has been described almost like a next gen concept facility and I expect it will serve not only as a state-of-the-next-art clinical center, but also a show case for the enterprise business in exporting expertise for building these types of cutting edge health care facilities. Remember, they have moved into doing quite a bit of consulting to help build medical centers outside the US. These facilities could take them to the next level, not to mention maintain Pitt's status as the epicenter of the transplant world.
All they had to do at Pitt stadium was dig the field and track out so they could add more rows of seating to the field. Then they could bang out the top rows to put in luxury boxes. There were plans in the beginning of the Walt Harris era to do this and level Fitzgerald so they could build a new b-ball arena on that footprint that would physically connect to Pitt Stadium. The problem was that the state had already given money to the Bryce Jordan center and would only give the same amount of money to Pitt for an equal project. Because we had an AD and chancellor who couldn’t think outside the box for additional funding and Heinz field was being built with much taxpayer disdain, we ended up trying to be a basketball school which was relatively short lived. Now they will have to pay more to fix a much more complex problem.
If we took the track out for more seating they would have all been at the same level. We would have needed to dig the field down accordingly to add seats. I am actually happy to be playing at Heinz Field and it sounds like I am in the minority.
Be careful to distinguish between Pitt and UPMC. UPMC functions as it’s own separate entity. While UPMC is innovative, it also has the power/finances in healthcare to innovate. The operating margin(profit) has to be reinvested. The University has no such power unless it taps into the endowment, which is better protected than the holy grail.
field and track would have been dug out. Same as Stanford did with their stadium.
They'll not build a stadium, nor should they. FB might be de-emphasized in the next 10 years for everybody. I was dead set against razing Pitt Stadium, said back then that it was the end of FB in Oakland.
BTW, the new gym was to be on the OC lot.....FH footprint too small and you'd have to close the road. Escalators would take you from Gate 1 up to the top of the stadium, then another set would take you to the gym/Cost complex. SP had a video of that at a hoops game...screens set up at both ends of the court....only one projector worked. told my wife...typical half-assed Pitt effort. I knew it was too big a project.
The plan to refurbish the stadium was $200 million. That's with nothing done with the FH or OC lot, let alone a huge cost for the escalators. The Pete was to be around $85 million?? Ended up around $115. Not many big projects come in at original estimates.
The plan was for the basketball arena to be on the OC lot, connected to Pitt Stadium across Sutherland Dr.
The problem with the funding was Dennis O'Conner took all the state money designated for it up front for the Convocation Center project in order to jump start the project but fundraising for it failed miserably and the project went no where. The subsequent administration was stuck with woefully inadequate funds to build any sort of suitable arena, whose price tag had only increased. It took daft political maneuvering to get the state to pony up significant additional funds for something they had already thought they had paid for, and part of that involved playing ball with plan B.
Pitt Stadium served well during its heyday. But a problem with the design of Pitt Stadium is that half of the structure was built directly onto the hillside. That part of the edifice was not freestanding. It had no concourse beneath the stands. It was as solid as a rock and a cost effective design back in 1927. Probably saved a lot in construction costs by using the natural lay of the land.
But it wouldn't lend itself well to the kinds of renovations/upgrades that would be needed to add things like additional restrooms or concession stands underneath the stands. I sat on that side for many years. The entrance was from the street at the top rim of the stadium and the only restrooms and concessions were at the very top, also. People with seats in the lower half of the rows on that side had to walk all the way down the steps to their seats. If they needed to use the facilities they had to traipse all the way back up. Look at pictures of Pitt Stadium and you'll see no exits halfway up the stands on the home side all the way around past the north end zone where the scoreboard was.
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I love the Freudian slip, Paco. "daft" vs. "deft".
Heinz Field... better traffic flow than Oakland, better parking / tailgates than Oakland, more options for things to do pre/post game than Oakland and much more comfortable seating and amenities than Pitt Stadium. Boy, what a drag
I don't get your point. I am well aware the university is a legally separate entity from UPMC. However, they are inexorably intertwined and work hand in hand together. UPMC provides Pitt's schools of health sciences over $200 million a year in support due entirely to the financial wherewithal that UPMC currently enjoys. That is an unprecedented level of financial support provided to a university by an owned or affiliated medical center. Pitt and UPMC share projects, personnel, facilities, fundraising, infrastructure, and board members. UPMC handles 100% of the clinical operations. The University handles 100% of the research. The new hospital in Oakland will be filled with clinicians and surgeons that are Pitt med school faculty members who will conduct their research in Pitt labs.
It is not true that the university cannot innovate. The innovation institute Pitt created in 2013 would certainly disagree. Pitt is currently 23rd among US universities for patents granted and in the last 5 years spun off 79 startups and had 1,680 invention disclosures.
The endowment is protect by Pennsylvania law which limits how it can be used and the % of annual disbursements.
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I love the Freudian slip, Paco. "daft" vs. "deft".
LOL, that's so good I've got to leave it in.
Totally agreed Paco. I think a lot of posters don’t really appreciate how many doors having an adjacent world-class medical center opens for Pitt - it’s not football, but it’s important. The UPMC hospitals are the biggest reason why Pitt has a borderline top ten medical school, and why it’s able to get hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding. The faculty Pitt is able to attract because of UPMC not only increases the reputation of the entire institution, but is also nearly self-sustaining because of the grants those faculty members generate. The presence of those faculty members and the proximity to their research labs makes Pitt one of the most desirable schools in the country for high school applicants who want to go to med school - who also tend to be the highest-achieving applicants on the market. Add to it Pitt Med’s massive endowment, and you have a large amount of institutional resources that can be allocated to other areas of the university. Say what you will about UPMC as a pretty ruthless insurer and business entity, but their relationship as a healthcare provider with Pitt is the single biggest feather in the school’s cap.
As to the relationship between the new transplant hospital and the immunotherapy center, my point was more that as it stands today, Pitt has relatively few issues recruiting the best faculty members and researchers in the transplantation area - Thomas Starzl’s reputation and the institution’s history speaks for itself. The new hospital certainly won’t hurt, but Pitt is already one of the best in the business for the best minds in the field. They were more deficient in the infrastructure and resources for immunotherapy research, and the new center there is going to do wonders for Pitt Med and UPMC in recruiting the best in cancer research going forward - immunotherapy is really where the future is in actually curing cancer, and Pitt has now matched its aspirational peers (Penn, etc.) in providing the facility to make that happen. It’s huge, and that’s a sentiment shared by people actually doing research in that area.
I have been a part of both entities. The residency and fellowship programs for instance don’t even have access to the library in Scaife Hall. The researchers in the medical school really have nothing to do with the University Departments of Biology, Chemistry, Engineering etc. Recently, there has been a little more collaboration with engineering because of the role CMU engineering has played with collaborating with UPMC and the McGowan Center. The McGowan Center is likely what you are referring to regarding innovation. This was developed by UPMC to serve the purpose of spinning off companies that would bring back revenue to UPMC. $200 million is pittance considering the amount of money it costs to employ physicians who serve as faculty and treat patients. UPMC has a reputation for underpaying their physicians relative to the rest of academic centers, citing the prestige of working at the institution. Perhaps so. They are business savvy and function independently of the University. The University on the other hand requires the relationship with UPMC to innovate. It’s a one way street.
Regarding the endowment, thanks for the clarification. It still is largely untouchable.
Thanks for reminding again what a total dolt J. Dennis was. He was another one I had high hopes for. Decent resume, and a former jock, thought he was exactly what Pitt needed. But like Scott Barnes, that nice resume and high hopes were quickly squashed. Should have known something was up when the first thing he did after getting the job was spend over 90K renovating his office.
Seriously, how can our luck be this bad. With new leadership desperately needed after the end of the Posvar/Bozik error, we get O'Conner/Oval Jaynes.
I remember getting some junk mail a while back from J. Dennis, I think we was president of the Smithsonian and he was hustling for donations.
I thought the state had already given money to Pitt for the arena under the J. Dennis O'Connor regime who spent it on God knows what. And speaking of that jackass... once again... they get probably the only true academic provost in UNC history to be their chancellor. If they had picked any other UNC provost Pitt would have fake classes, fake students and real football/basketball success along with a new stadium and arena.
The Pitt Stadium debate is definitely a dumb one – I agree with that.
The bottom line is there’s really no appetite whatsoever among the university to make it happen, so it makes no sense to even discuss it.
Now, after Victory Heights is completed, I might have a different opinion. However, for now, it’s not even on the back burner.
Also, the people who talk about the infrastructural challenges associated with a prospective new stadium are unquestionably right. Building a new stadium anywhere in densely populated Oakland would definitely present a lot of infrastructural challenges.
However, there are also a lot of blind hypotheses presented in these discussions by the it will never happen folks that are passed off as facts, or near facts, that are no less guesswork than the people on the other side of the debate. I find that very frustrating as well.
To me, there are some on a salable facts associated with any potential stadium:
1.) it would not come cheaply.
2.) it would have to be accompanied by a lot of infrastructural considerations.
3.) it would almost certainly be in inferior structure to Heinz Field.
4.) there is not currently any land available that makes sense for a project of that scale.
5.) it may not be the best use of institutional resources.
6.) Pitt could absolutely do it if they wanted to do it.
7.) Pitt football will never reach its full potential playing in a stadium that seats 68,000 fans.
8.) the City of Pittsburgh needs to address the infrastructural challenges in Oakland with or without the presence of a football stadium.
9.) situations evolve with the passage of time and things that seem so obvious now May have seemed like an impossibility as recently as the Reagan administration. I learned a long time ago to never, ever say never.
10.) very few people are completely balanced and honest when it comes to this discussion. They are either all it MUST happen because Pitt Will always be considered second class until that has its own stadium; or it’s the it will never, ever happen because it’s the most impossible situation in the history of the universe crowd.
Neither is remotely true.
The bottom line is there’s really no appetite whatsoever among the university to make it happen, so it makes no sense to even discuss it.
Now, after Victory Heights is completed, I might have a different opinion. However, for now, it’s not even on the back burner.
Also, the people who talk about the infrastructural challenges associated with a prospective new stadium are unquestionably right. Building a new stadium anywhere in densely populated Oakland would definitely present a lot of infrastructural challenges.
However, there are also a lot of blind hypotheses presented in these discussions by the it will never happen folks that are passed off as facts, or near facts, that are no less guesswork than the people on the other side of the debate. I find that very frustrating as well.
To me, there are some on a salable facts associated with any potential stadium:
1.) it would not come cheaply.
2.) it would have to be accompanied by a lot of infrastructural considerations.
3.) it would almost certainly be in inferior structure to Heinz Field.
4.) there is not currently any land available that makes sense for a project of that scale.
5.) it may not be the best use of institutional resources.
6.) Pitt could absolutely do it if they wanted to do it.
7.) Pitt football will never reach its full potential playing in a stadium that seats 68,000 fans.
8.) the City of Pittsburgh needs to address the infrastructural challenges in Oakland with or without the presence of a football stadium.
9.) situations evolve with the passage of time and things that seem so obvious now May have seemed like an impossibility as recently as the Reagan administration. I learned a long time ago to never, ever say never.
10.) very few people are completely balanced and honest when it comes to this discussion. They are either all it MUST happen because Pitt Will always be considered second class until that has its own stadium; or it’s the it will never, ever happen because it’s the most impossible situation in the history of the universe crowd.
Neither is remotely true.
if we used the savings from the stadium and paid 8 million for Urban Meyer and do things winning programs do to stay on top (like retaining a lawyer to get players quickly out of trouble like Urban did at Florida), do you still think the stadium would be a hindrance?
Hard to imagine Pitt's athletics fundraising efforts failing when the same folks tasked with doing it can't even get a projector working.
But of course... blame the fans.
But of course... blame the fans.
