I thought I would throw this out in case anyone is so interested. I live out near the huge new Market District store at "Settlers Ridge" in Robinson, and I would really like to see them include a reasonable bike rack, for employees and customers. They are billing this thing as a "full service destination", and LEED certified, so to me that means including bike facilities. Being outside the city, there are no requirements that they do this, but... I have emailed them through their Market District web site, so if anyone else feels so motivated (after you're done flaming me for being a suburbanite), please contact them, the more voices, the better. Thanks.
I have to follow up my own post, I got a pleasant reply from Giant Eagle, they do plan to have a bike rack in a prominent place in the front of the store.
So I give them a thumbs up, first for putting in a rack, I can be cynical and say it was just to get a LEED (green) point for their building, but the end result is the same for me.
And also, for responding promptly and pleasantly to my question.
keep an eye on them. after they said they were going to put one in the southside location, it took a good two years
My parents live 10 minutes away from Robinson Town Center, right on the Montour Trail. I can walk to the shopping area, but there are no sidewalks anywhere! We have a trail that goes all the way from Robinson to DC, but we can't have a sidewalk going up to the shopping area.
I write the township council about once every 4 or 5 months about it. I've never heard back.
So I wouldn't be surprised if they don't do anything to help you.
I'm always amazed by communities that don't have sidewalks, like where I grew up. Really? someone got paid to plan this community? maybe they don't have legs? sad
Bike racks are like the cheapest way to get leed points, I imagine if they didnt buy them initially to help get their rating, they never will.
Could be wrong though.
my parents live in eastern pa, and there's one of those suburban mall complexes that's set up like a "Main Street" complete with parallel parking (that nobody knows how to use). there are bike racks all over the complex, although i don't think i've ever seen anyone riding in that area that didn't look like they lost their license. even the walmart has one of the coolest bike racks i've seen. there are even "phone booths" in the mall, although there are no phones inside, they are just meant to give some shelter for cell phone users.
it struck me as funny that a faux-city that was trying really hard to give people the impression of being in a city, is able to out-city an actual city on bike racks.
re: timito; No, no one plans these communities. This is an area that was borderline rural 20 years ago, and the small time local commisioners thought they could DIY 300 million dollars worth of development. These guys saw big dollar signs, and the developers got to do pretty much whatever they wanted. So we have a community with almost no public facilities, even from a driving perspective the traffic flow is crap.
Several years ago when the mall was being developed, someone wanted to get an extension of the Montour Trail up to the mall, it's like 1/4 mile, it just seemed to make sense, and one of these old bonehead commissioners rejected it and actually said "we don't want those people coming up here". Most bizarre crap I've ever heard.
Anyway, this Big Bird is having a big grand opening this weekend, I'll be riding over, and I'll be locking the bike up to something, guarantee that. The weather looks to be lovely.
I get furious just thinking someone would name a section "Town center" and not put sidewalks in.
No man, "Town centre". Even better.
Occasionally even "towne center".
I have it on Robinson Township stationery that they had $50M in development in 1995 alone (minutes from a township meeting).
Anyone, anytime, who uses that "those people" line in whatever form, need to be quoted, verbatim and in context, and have that comment posted publicly and very visibly. The transit community gets it all the time, too. Damned annoying, too, bordering on illegal. Hence the need for recording such quotes.
Ok, to be fair, I didn't get the wording exactly right:
Robinson Chairman William Blumling said one part he doesn't agree with, however, is linking trails to the retail area.
"One of the biggest problems with developing sidewalks is because we didn't want to tie the Montour Trail in with the mall because it will bring bicycles up there," Blumling said.
duh!?!
Still have the link, ha,
http://post-gazette.com/neigh_west/20030709wactazw1.asp
Oh, would I love to get a Critical Mass ride together and take a crowd up from the Montour Trail to RTC. That's a bitch of a hill, never mind the traffic. Or maybe have 20 of us take over a lane of McKnight Road on a busy Saturday. (I'm in a feisty mood today, can you tell?)
To me, RTC represents everything evil about suburban America. Of course there are no bike racks.
It also shows what happens when you have an unlimited canvas to work from. You're not forced to be creative and 10 years down the road you're stuck with way too much traffic and ridiculously confusing roads that are in no way shape or form livable.
These people then commute into the city and blame bikes for traffic! Ha ha.
Creating those faux "towne centre" environments really ticks me off. Have everyone drive 30 miles to park in a huge parking lot, walk around a fake city block, buy some crap and then drive home. Ugh.
There's a REI store going in there, I think, and they may have some bike racks nearby for that. But I have no idea where that will be in relation to the Giant Eagle.
RTC is disgusting. It's one thing to sprawl out if you're Houston or Phoenix and your population is booming and you really really need commercial capacity, but to build something like that in Pittsburgh, when there's plenty of great, sustainable, not-sprawly space in the city proper, is just gross and ultimately quite damaging to the region.
Whoa up, there aothman, are you really saying that sprawl is acceptable even in Houston or Phoenix? If anything, a municipality that is economically booming would have MORE leverage over developers to require reasonable planned development.
I have a real problem with giving Pgh the rap, since we're not economically booming. Pgh needs economic development, and "poor" is better than "none". I see a lot of working class folks taking the 28x who work at all those generic restaurants, and take their paychecks back into the city.
I think a huge problem is the tininess of Pgh's boundaries. If you drew a radius around Houston or Phoenix at the city limits, I'll bet the same radius around Pgh would include RTC in the city. RTC is like, 7 miles from the Point! What we have here can barely be called sprawl, compared to other cities. Cranberry,yes.
Yeah, great. Why don't I just bike out to Robinson Twp. to visit the new Giant Eagle and lock up on their rack. After that I'll fly to the moon for a pizza just because the American flag makes it inviting once I get there.
There is a sidewalk coming off of Campbells Run Road leading up to the lower side of Settlers Ridge from the lower entrance area (exit off of the parkway).
@edmonds59: I think you have some valid points. Our geography sets some pretty hard limits on the city boundaries. Places like Denver (also suffering from sprawl) are just flat, with no geographic boundaries, so things just keep going--there's always one more flat parcel of land to develop.
@edmonds59 What about all the folks that work in the city but take their paycheck home to their respective suburb? Plus, one of the largest corporations in town is non-profit. We have no tax base, that's one good reason why we're flat broke.
@Lee; I'm sorry if you can't ride out this far. I regularly bike from my home in Robinson to visit Chris at Thick Bikes or grab a bagel at the South side Brueggers. As it turns out, I live about a 3 minute ride (and that's on my Raleigh 3-spd) from the Giant Eagle under discussion, and thus will find the new rack quite useful. Probably even useful for folks in Carnegie, Rosslyn Farms, Findlay Twp, etc.
And for the cynics, I went by this morning, they have a lovely rack set up, 10-12 bike capacity, right in front of windows for security, and UNDER A ROOF, it's Portlandian in its execution. The winds of change are blowing.
Bitching about the tax base could be its own thread! Don't forget about the breaks the city gave to businesses moving into the city in the 90s, assuming that their employees would actually live in the city.
@dmtroyer, you are 100% right, and I think it's apalling, people who will sit in their car for 45 minutes to and hour to work in town and live in some exurban illusion are complete morons.
But I think that occurance has more to do with bad state and national planning that cuts the legs out from under cities, has more to do with it, and there is very little the city can do about it.
However, in my opinion, the root cause of many of today's social problems, including sprawl, is RACE. The seeds of racism need to be dragged out in the light and burned before any of these other issues have any hope of being solved.
Let's us in the bike community keep an eye on ourselves in that respect. My rant. Done.
all good points. well, at least, congrats on the bike rack.
i was pretty stoked after they put one in the southside after like 2 years of bugging them. it wasn't until this thread that they actually put one in.
An even bigger question for me is, what the hell is wrong with the Giant Eagle that's already there???
I remember growing up out that way, years ago, when the FOODLAND in Imperial was the only place to get groceries, and that whole mall/town center area was all woods...
I did some recon at Settlers Ridge last night and there is a bike rack in front of REI and sidewalks leading up to the shopping center on both drives. Traffic is crazy over there most of the day so if your biking on Campbells Run BE CAREFUL!!! The road was a mess to begin with so take it easy. I'd recommend coming in from Ridge Road on the other side of the parkway.
wsh6232, this would be the third Big Bird store out there, that I know of. The one by Staples was built around 1997-98, replacing the store that occupied what is now The Golf Shop and Petco, that whole building. When I lived out there in 1990, I thought *that* one was the biggest grocery store I had ever seen.
From my office in Hightower 200, I watched how the Mall At Robinson was built. Over a year's time, a square three-quarters of a mile on each side, with a hillside and valley with a 220-foot elevation difference, was reduced to level asphalt with a box in the middle. Every blade of grass to the property line was bulldozed. Every tree was burned. This is how malls are built.
Oh yeah, I do vaguely remember Giant Eagle being across the street from where it is now. I think there was a Hills or Ames or something over there as well.
That would absolutely kill me coming to work everyday and seeing a forest get flattened like that. Then again, I benefited from it, since my high school and college jobs were at that Giant Eagle and in the mall.
How would I ride there from the East End? I'd like to give it a shot sometime.
How would I ride there from the East End? I'd like to give it a shot sometime.
You know... there's a Market District in East Liberty, err I mean "Shadyside". Or is it Friendship?
How would I ride there from the East End? I'd like to give it a shot sometime.
One way I like is to go through the West End and Carnegie; take the Circle to Steuben St, then hang a left and right after a couple of blocks to pick up Rt 60. Follow 60 for a mile or so, then left on 50/Noblestown Rd to Carnegie. Head through downtown Carnegie to stay on Noblestown, then make a right on Cubbage and head up the hill to a left on Collier. Collier eventually becomes Ridge Rd, which skirts Settler's Cabin Park and brings you across the parkway to Campbell's Run Rd, facing the new mall.
Another way is to head to Coraopolis, pick up the Montour Trail, and take the trail until you head up the hill through Robinson and down Campbell's Run, but traffic through there tends to be unlovely.
Yes, the way things are developed nowadays is hidious, just a whole new level of raping the earth that's been going on for hundreds of years.
But one thing that gives me hope is that 60 or 70 years ago, Bavington was a strip mine. Nature is infinitely more resolute than humans. Ironically, as humans we are impacting our own quality of life more than anything else, we are short-timers here on this planet.
Hey Dan et al, I think we should put a group ride to the new GE together. Not sure if I want to deal with that mess around the holiday shopping car lovin' festival of consumerism (now with cell phones!) but perhaps after the New Year?
If I went out there, it'd be with the bike on the front of a 28X, which you can catch at CMU. It's less than a mile from the stop at Iron & Glass Bank/Applebees to REI/GE, and you can cut through the Kohl's lot to avoid the already-horrendous-in-2002 Steubenville & Campbells Run intersection.
@sarah: We could always tag a trip to Settler's Ridge onto the end of the Wheelmen's Icycle Bicycle ride on Jan 1, make it a righteous and proper start to the New Year...
I am in Florida on Jan 1 every year since most of our family lives there. I always go out for a long ride in solidarity with the Icycle ride, only w/o the Icycles and with lots more miles. 
But I am all for an adventure to Robinson. I won't ride when it's so cold my H20 bottles freeze. However, there are always a few freakishly warm days in the winter.
