After almost two decades of having the developmental rights to the former Civic Arena site in the Lower Hill, the rights have expired for the Penguins.

Now, it moves to the Urban Redevelopment Authority and the Sports and Exhibition Authority.

Timeline of events

In 2007, the Penguins were on the verge of leaving town. To keep them, the Penguins were promised a new arena and developmental rights to the former Civic Arena.

Now in 2025, about 7 of the more than 28 acres of land have been developed. Only the FNB Tower has been completed, while Live Nation is building a concert venue.

“Those spots have been empty for far too long,” said state Sen. Wayne Fontana, the SEA board chairman.

There have been several community meetings and frustrations with a lack of development, including mixed-income housing. In a joint statement, Mayor Ed Gainey and Pittsburgh City Council President Daniel Lavelle said it’s disappointing to see a lack of development over the past 18 years, adding the area must commit to development that not only honors Pittsburgh’s Black history but also repairs the harm done.

The Penguins said in a statement that the organization is committed to inclusive development of the Lower Hill. The team plans to stay engaged in the city’s plans for the area.

“They had the opportunity to do so. They had developers, contractors, and advisors over the years, but still they didn’t get it all done,” Sen. Fontana said.

Community groups like the Hill Community Development Corporation said this is a chance to reset and meet the promises made of community collaboration and implementation plans. The group wants to see development, but wants to see work that will benefit the Lower Hill, Hill District and city. 

It’s a chance to fix the wrongs of urban renewal more than 70 years ago. 

“Instead of talk, we can have some real action there to show we accomplished something in that area,” Fontana said.

The URA says it plans to meet with community groups and work on a plan with the SEA to get future development done.

GREEN BAY, Wis. — While so much of the focus of Sunday’s prime-time matchup between Green Bay and Pittsburgh has been on Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers facing his former team, Christian Watson plans on it being a special night for him, too.

The Packers wide receiver expects to return to game action for the first time in nearly 10 months.

“That’s my plan,” Watson said after Wednesday’s practice. “I say it every week — obviously just leaving it up to the trainers — but my goal and my plan is to play this week.”

If his plan comes to fruition, it will mark Watson’s first game action since he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee during the Packers’ Jan. 5 regular-season finale against the Chicago Bears.

The Packers opened Watson’s 21-day practice window on Oct. 6, when they returned from their bye week, shortly after signing him to a one-year extension that includes $11 million in new money and keeps him under contract with the Packers for next season, alleviating concerns he might have had about trying to rush back to game action and earn a new contract.

The team could wait until after Sunday night’s game to activate him from the physically unable to perform list. Watson, whose in-practice workload has steadily increased over the past two weeks, believes his surgically repaired knee is ready.

In fact, the 2022 second-round pick believes his knee has been ready. Watson was listed as a limited participant in Wednesday’s practice,

“I’d say I could’ve played last week, too, to be honest,” Watson said of the Packers’ 27-23 win at Arizona on Sunday. “But, obviously, (I’ve) got to make sure I’m hearing everybody’s opinions on everything and being as smart as possible about it.”

There’s no question that Watson brings a different dimension to the Packers’ offense.

He finished last season with 29 receptions for a career-high 620 yards and two touchdowns, with his 21.4-yard per-catch average leading the team and ranking second in the NFL.

With rookie first-round pick Matthew Golden having emerged in recent weeks, Watson’s return would give the Packers two wide receivers with elite speed to stretch defenses and open up other aspects of the offense.

“(That’s) a lot of speed, man,” said Golden, who has caught seven passes for 123 yards over the past two games. “I’m excited for him coming back. Definitely going to open up a lot of things.

“I’ve watched him work each and every day to get back where he is now. I’m excited for him. I’m ready to see him go.”

The final call on whether Watson is ready to go will be made by the medical staff, of course. And while the Steelers’ home field at Acrisure Stadium has drawn criticism from players in recent weeks, Watson insisted that the field conditions shouldn’t matter in his comeback.

“When I’m at 100 percent, obviously, in years past, I wasn’t thinking about the surfaces,” Watson said. “If I’m worried about the turf, then honestly, I probably wouldn’t be playing, anyway. My goal is to feel 100 percent, so that’s not really something that we’re thinking about.”

At Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, robots are being trained to use artificial intelligence to do everyday tasks. One curvy, tubelike robot with a claw for a hand is learning how to hang clothes. Another is being trained to help people get dressed – it can grab onto a sleeve and pull it up a person’s arm.

The robots are examples of something called physical AI: essentially, robots that use artificial intelligence to perceive their environment and make decisions with some degree of autonomy. The university sees physical AI as a technological frontier where it can plant a flag – and it’s doing this work in a building that carries echoes of Pittsburgh’s industrial past.

In a passageway between lab rooms at the institute – housed in what a top faculty member says used to be the Bureau of Mines – a pair of tracks mark the path where steel mining carts used to bring equipment to be inspected. It’s a visible reminder of Pittsburgh’s steel boom, which brought in a massive wave of manufacturing and job growth until the industry collapsed in the early 1980s.

Now, Pittsburgh is banking on being a leader in a potential new industrial revolution. With a pool of talent from Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh, the city ranks No. 7 on the Brookings Institution’s benchmarking of nearly 200 U.S. artificial intelligence hubs. City leaders promote Pittsburgh’s potential to be a global AI hub. They say the AI revolution is a natural extension of the region’s industrial history, and will bring in blue-collar jobs by way of data center construction. They also say Pittsburgh’s culture means its AI innovation is focused on technologies that can solve significant problems for people.

“We’re not a land of dating apps,” says Meredith Meyer Grelli, the managing director of Carnegie Mellon’s Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship. “We’re like, figure [stuff] out that makes the world a better place to be in.”

As with all bets, Pittsburgh’s wager on AI comes with risks. After a decades-long economic slump, the AI boom has brought venture capital to the city, with investment reaching a record high of $999 million last year. But AI is still a new industry, and it’s not yet clear whether people will flock to robots that could empty their dishwashers or perform surgeries. A number of high-profile figures like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman suggest investors have become overexcited about the technology – and if they pull back, the boom could fizzle.