Mayor Announces TALKPGH Neighborhood Program from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Pittsburgh will send a vehicle into neighborhoods next month to ask residents what the city can do through public art and urban design to help their community. Mayor Luke Ravenstahl today announced the program, which will send a film crew into 90 neighborhoods beginning April 6. The program is known as TALKPGH and is part of the city's first-ever 25-year planning process called PLANPGH, which has 12 components and is expected to be finished in 2014."

$1M Tax Credits Awarded to Larimer Housing Plan from the New Pittsburgh Courier
"The Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency has awarded $1 million in low-income housing tax credits for a plan to redevelop Pittsburgh’s Larimer community.  The Housing Authority of The City Of Pittsburgh and the Urban Redevelopment Authority applied for the funding in September after selecting Keith B. Key as the developer for the first phase of the plan. As a result, construction of 40 new mixed-income housing units can begin this summer."

Teachers Union Supports Ravenstahl Tax Battle against UPMC from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"""UPMC must clearly make a choice: to live up to its tax-exempt status and meet the criteria that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has put forth, or to pay its share on taxes that would be enough to eliminate the deficits of both the Pittsburgh Public Schools and the Port Authority.""

Pittsburgh Ranks High for Consumer Banking from the Pittsburgh Business Times
"The competitive banking landscape -- 105 branches per 100,000 residents -- and what NerdWallet calls an "above average percentage of fully banked households (74 percent) -- landed Pittsburgh as No. 2 to only Cincinnati. On the downside is the high checking account fees, $14 a month.
Cincinnati, by comparison, had average checking fees of only $10 a month."

Pennsylvania Department of Education Puts Wilkinsburg, Aliquippa School Districts on Financial Watch list from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 
"Troubled finances have led the state Department of Education to put the Wilkinsburg and Aliquippa school districts on a financial watch list. Being on the list enables the department to offer school districts technical assistance to correct their financial problems,"

All Aboard: Corbett and Amtrak Swing a Deal on Train Service from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Gov. Tom Corbett knows how to keep the trains running. Last Thursday, the Corbett administration struck a deal with Amtrak, the federal rail agency, to maintain passenger service between Pittsburgh and the state capital."

Unfit for Work: The Startling Rise of Disability in America (Chana Joffe-Walt) from NPR's This American Life
"...people on disability don't show up in any of the places we usually look to see how the economy is doing. But the story of these programs -- who goes on them, and why, and what happens after that -- is, to a large extent, the story of the U.S. economy. It's the story not only of an aging workforce, but also of a hidden, increasingly expensive safety net."
Here's the This American Life program.  Here's a separate segment from All Things Considered.

Two Port Authority Transit Center Projects Slated for this Year from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Port Authority officials are hoping for groundbreakings this year on two long-awaited major transit-oriented projects. Construction could start as soon as late summer on a $34 million transit center at the East Liberty station on the Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway and in November on the $36 million Shannon Transit Village in Castle Shannon, said Michael Cetra, assistant general manager of legal and corporate services."

Environmental Groups, Industry Agree on Standards for Shale from the WESA program, Allegheny Front
"Think of it like ‘organic’ or ‘LEED-certified’ for fracking. A working group of environmental groups and oil and gas companies have announced a plan to develop a series of 15 standards for unconventional natural gas extraction like hydraulic fracturing. The Center for Sustainable Shale Development will develop standards it called "progressive and rigorous" for developing shale gas. Many of the standards are either already in use in the field."

Pittsburgh Starts Legal Battle with UPMC over Nonprofit Status from WESA 
"The Pennsylvania Supreme Court developed a nonprofit test as a result of the case Hospital Utilization Project v. Commonwealth. An organization must act within the following five "HUP" test parameters in order to be considered a purely public charity: ... Ravenstahl said UPMC fails three out of five. He added UPMC's city property and payroll taxes would amount to approximately $20 million."

UPMC, Pittsburgh Stake Positions for Court Fight on Nonprofit Status from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Starting in January, staff at a longtime Pittsburgh law firm, Strassburger Mckenna Gutnick & Gefsky, researched whether UPMC met the "HUP test," a five-point test that the state Supreme Court reemphasized in a landmark ruling last year. The conclusion, firm President E.J. Strassburger wrote in a 13-page letter to city solicitor Daniel D. Regan on March 5: "As we have discussed, waging a legal battle against a behemoth like UPMC will be neither quick nor easy. However, we believe that both challenges are well-justified, because ... UPMC appears to fail the constitutional test for qualifying" as an institution of purely public charity."

Pittsburgh Lawsuit Challenges UPMC's Tax Status from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl likened it to "the David versus the Goliath." The David, in this case, is the cash-strapped City of Pittsburgh, whose coffers are feeling the strain of burgeoning pension obligations and rising health care costs -- the plight of many municipalities across the state. The Goliath that Pittsburgh faces is UPMC, a $10 billion medical enterprise defined by superlatives -- largest health care provider in the region, biggest property owner in Allegheny County."
Here are the legal justifications for the lawsuit.

Ongoing Growth Touted for Downtown from the Pittsburgh Business Times 
"A completed Point State Park and riverfront trail. More than 2,000 apartments now in development. And a time frame for construction to begin at the 28-acre site of the former Civic Arena in the Lower Hill. Those were just a few of the new developments to look forward to in Pittsburgh’s growing downtown as presented by a host of panelists at Tuesday morning’s annual meeting of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership."

Can Shale Boom Really Boost Manufacturing? from the Pittsburgh Business Times
"Earlier this week, we wrote about an article in The Wall Street Journal looking at the shale boom and its impact on manufacturing. One of our sibling newspapers, the Houston Business Journal, explores the Journal article's contentions and how it's playing out in Houston and elsewhere."

$1M Tax Credits Awarded to Larimer Housing Plan from the New Pittsburgh Courier
"The Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency has awarded $1 million in low-income housing tax credits for a plan to redevelop Pittsburgh’s Larimer community.  The Housing Authority of The City Of Pittsburgh and the Urban Redevelopment Authority applied for the funding in September after selecting Keith B. Key as the developer for the first phase of the plan. As a result, construction of 40 new mixed-income housing units can begin this summer."

Keith Key and Ricky Burgess

$175M in 3 Port Authority of Allegheny County Transit Projects in Talks from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
"Port Authority of Allegheny County is negotiating with developers to start three projects on its property this year costing more than $175 million. Although the agency will neither spend nor make a lot of money on any of the projects, all stand to add substantially to the tax rolls."

PA Loses Out on $90M Movie Studio from the Pittsburgh Business Times 
"The Pittsburgh region and the state have lost out on $90 million movie studio and entertainment facility projected to create 1,000 jobs to Effingham County, Ga., according to a news report in today’s Savannah Morning News. The company pushing the studio plan is called Medient Studios Inc., which also considered Savannah and Atlanta within Georgia as well, along with New York state, according to the report."

NEWS CONFERENCE!!

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl is Expected to Challenge the Tax-exempt Status of Health Care Giant UPMC at a News Conference on Wednesday from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
"Officials in Ravenstahl's administration declined to discuss details, but spokeswoman Marissa Doyle said an announcement is set for 11:30 a.m."

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl

New Wave of Development in Store for Downtown Pittsburgh from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"A Downtown apartment building with a rooftop pool, a spa and a yoga room. A dining and entertainment complex near the Consol Energy Center. And a playhouse that never sleeps.
They are among the projects on the drawing boards or getting ready to start in the heart of the Golden Triangle or its fringes -- some 60 in all worth an estimated $2.2 billion in investment, according to the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership."

Pittsburgh City Council OKs Pursuit of Major Tax Package for Hazelwood Project; Deal Will Provide Tax Benefits for $900 Million Development from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Pittsburgh City Council today gave the Urban Redevelopment Authority the green light to pursue the largest tax increment financing deal in the city's history, an arrangement that would provide upwards of $90 million in tax benefits for a proposed $900 million residential and commercial development in Hazelwood. The proposal would allow a portion of the tax dollars paid on the property to be earmarked for roads, utilities, parks and other public improvements on the riverfront land, the former site of the LTV coke works."

LTV Coke Works site