Joseph Sabino Mistick: Working together 'the Pittsburgh way' can save our city

It was in the 1940s just after World War II when Arthur Van Buskirk changed the direction of the city forever with an offhand remark to his boss Richard King Mellon, the head of Mellon Bank and all its corporate holdings. Van Buskirk, a vice president of T. Mellon & Sons and a Reed Smith lawyer, was part of R.K. Mellon’s inner circle.

Republican Mellon knew that Pittsburgh was in trouble. Heavy smoke and toxic industrial waste filled the air and rivers, and much of Downtown was crumbling. Mellon had recently created the Allegheny Conference to rally corporate leaders to help, but little could be done without the political leadership of Pittsburgh’s Democratic leader and new mayor David L. Lawrence.

As the late author and historian Michael P. Weber describes it in his book, “Don’t Call Me Boss: David L. Lawrence, Pittsburgh’s Renaissance Mayor,” after Mellon’s aides persuaded him to meet with Lawrence, Van Buskirk chimed in with an unprecedented suggestion.

“The generous offer,” Van Buskirk advised Mellon, “would be for you to leave your office and go over to visit the mayor.” Mellon balked, but eventually he was persuaded.

According to Weber, “One can only speculate what went through Lawrence’s mind when he saw the head of the family he had fought against for so long walk into his office. Few more incongruous meetings had ever taken place. The multimillionaire blue-blood, Presbyterian Republican stood face to face with the Roman Catholic, Democratic son of an unskilled laborer.”

The Mellon and Lawrence partnership went right to work. They cleaned up the air and the rivers and razed ramshackle buildings. They built parks and housing and office towers. They created modern Pittsburgh. It became “the Pittsburgh way” of getting things done.

Later mayors — Richard Caliguiri, Sophie Masloff, Tom Murphy — followed their lead and partnered with business leaders and the Allegheny Conference to move the city forward. Among their other accomplishments with that approach, Caliguiri revived a stagnant Downtown, Masloff led the campaign for a Regional Asset District tax that saved our treasured institutions, and Murphy built a brand-new East Liberty.

As Mayor Ed Gainey prepares to run for reelection next year, Pittsburgh is in a tough spot again. The excuse that other cities are also struggling post-covid is not good enough. Pittsburgh has always been the leader, not stuck in the pack.

The litany of the city’s current problems is familiar. Downtown has lost its vibrancy, office occupancy and property values have plummeted, and urban disorder has created an air of danger Downtown and in our neighborhoods. And we have run out of police officers.

But Gainey has shown little interest in a public-private partnership. He refuses to work with UPMC, our region’s biggest employer, because they are at odds with the SEIU health care union, his biggest supporter. At times, developers have been treated like unwelcome adversaries instead of corporate citizens whose projects — if well planned and executed — will grow the city. And he refuses to speak with one of the city’s two major newspapers.

Even the $600 million proposed Downtown makeover recently announced by Gov. Josh Shapiro doesn’t have a chance of succeeding without an enthusiastic public partner in the mayor’s office.

I often wonder what would have happened to Pittsburgh if Arthur Van Buskirk had not spoken up during that meeting with Mellon. I do know for certain that the city would be better off now if Gainey had a Van Buskirk on his staff when he started his job.