There is a market for theater in Pittsburgh, but the problem is, there isn’t a consistent market for high dollar African American theater.... We have a multitude of performing arts options within downtown and throughout the city.
They eminent domained an entire city block and tore everything down to build this thing, and it never ever had a chance of being successful.
The article blames mismanagement, and I don’t doubt it was likely managed poorly as well, but I don’t think best management in the city could have made this thing financially feasible.
This was one of those ideas that I really think no one wanted to say no to it for fear of looking racist, when in fact it was a piss poor plan from the get go. This thing didn’t fail from lack of people wanting it to work, it just was a poor concept and apparently even more poorly executed.
As to the NYT portraying downtown pittsburgh as anti-black, they are idiots who know nothing about the city, Downtown is not a place that intimindates African Americans at all, that is nothing more than the NYT playing race cards where none exist and looking down its nose at Pittsburgh. Anyone who would write something like that, has never spent 5 minutes downtown.
and that, i believe, was the case for the Central Valley city i lived in... there were not enough people interested in a downtown theatre when they have access to many theatres in nearby big cities... which is where a lot of the townspeople were from to begin with...