Pittsburgh Riverfront Development Could Include a Massive Ferris Wheel

Pittsburgh's riverfront redevelopment could be anchored by a 174-foot ferris wheel, an homage to the wheel's inventor, George Ferris, who lived in a nearby neighborhood. The city's Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) is weighing a proposal to build the wheel alongside "a 300-unit apartment building with affordable housing, a hotel, condos, plenty of retail stores, a parking garage, and a public marina at the edge of the Ohio River," reports Jon Delano.

The 15-acre development, dubbed The Esplanade, depends on the URA's willingness to sell 5.6 acres of public land to the developer, Millcraft Investments. The project would revitalize a formerly industrial area and reconnect the Manchester neighborhood, which was cut off from the river by the elevated Ohio River Boulevard, to the waterfront. According to another article by Mark Belko, "For the past two years, Millcraft also has been working with North Side community groups to try to find ways to improve access to the area and to the riverfront. In materials accompanying the URA agenda, the authority stated that possible upgrades could include the conversion of one-way Beaver Avenue into two ways and the enhancement of existing connections between Manchester and the riverfront. 

The improvements, writes Belko, could be funded in part by a proposed Transit Revitalization Investment District (TRID), a financing mechanism created by the Pennsylvania legislature in 2004 designed to encourage transit-oriented development.