2025 Pittsburgher of the Year: Jeremy Waldrup

JEREMY WALDRUP | PHOTO BY ELAN MIZRAHI

Jeremy Waldrup has executed some outlandish issues to entice folks again Downtown.

Like the time he purchased a $25,000 Heinz pickle balloon, which turned out to be a terrific thought. Or the time he rented a curling mat and set it up exterior an artwork gallery crawl, which, it turned out, was not such a terrific thought. (No one needed to play the area of interest winter Olympic sport in a gravel car parking zone.)

The president and CEO of Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership likes to experiment. He doesn’t thoughts if folks typically query his sanity, as they did when he requested his PDP board to not solely foot the invoice for the ginormous Picklesburgh balloon — but additionally to insure it. The balloon, recognized for floating over metropolis streets, has turn into the logo of the wildly profitable July avenue honest for 10 years.

PHOTO BY ELAN MIZRAHI

His suggestion to erect a 60-foot Ferris wheel atop the Roberto Clemente Bridge drew some humorous seems. It was a enjoyable thought, being that inventor George Ferris was a Pittsburgh man, however county officers puzzled if the bridge would collapse. Some $20,000 in engineering reviews later, Waldrup grew to become one of many first folks to trip the Ferris wheel, now a preferred attraction in the course of the annual Oktoberfest, which kicked off two years in the past.

You may name {that a} excessive level — actually — of Waldrup’s 14-year profession on the town. The low level was the 2020 pandemic shutdown, when the Golden Triangle floor to a halt, the hum of workplace staff and site visitors all of a sudden silent, abandoning folks experiencing homelessness, who had been camped out in doorways.

More than a decade into his job, Waldrup is working more durable than ever to revitalize Downtown, combating complaints that it’s nonetheless not protected and that there are too many empty storefronts. PDP is overseeing the renovation of Market Square, doubling the out of doors eating space and including an open-air metal anchor pavilion and 33 extra bushes. Waldrup additionally performed a task — together with authorities leaders, foundations and organizations — in securing $600 million in state-led funding in Downtown. The funding will embrace modernizing Point State Park and creating the Arts Landing public area within the Cultural District in addition to including tons of of recent housing items to the Golden Triangle.

For his management, inventive considering and imaginative and prescient, Pittsburgh Magazine has chosen Jeremy Waldrup as its 2025 Pittsburgher of the Year.

“There is no one who is more critical to the success of Pittsburgh than Jeremy Waldrup,” says Herky Pollock, the true property developer, dealer and entrepreneur who moved from the East End to Downtown in the course of the pandemic. “He has been the fabric and glue that has kept Downtown together.”

“I never met a person who didn’t like Jeremy,” he says. “He’s very easygoing and kind of ‘aw shucks,’ but he’s very smart and very shrewd and gets everything done.”

Related: Celebrating our Previous Pittsburghers of the Year

PHOTO BY ELAN MIZRAHI

A Beacon for Downtown

On a sunny day in early November, backhoes dig into the concrete of Market Square whereas workplace staff maneuver across the impediment course of orange fencing.

Some passersby look confused, however Waldrup appears at house. He chats up retailers, grabs his common espresso order on the 106-year-old Nicholas Coffee & Tea Co., and greets the mail service. When he walks by The Original Oyster House, co-owner Renee Grippo, often called Mama G, yells out “Jeremy!” She hugs him and he compliments her on the winter cutouts within the window. Her daughter and co-owner, Jennifer Grippo, comes out to greet him. They discuss him making a degree to come back to their a hundred and fifty fifth anniversary occasion contemporary from Oktoberfest in his lederhosen.

Waldrup, 50, has pale blue eyes that peer out of Kent Clark-style glasses, a thick wave of grey hair sweeping throughout his brow.

He stops to get updates from the development crew that’s busy engaged on a brand new Market Square in time for the NFL Draft, scheduled for April 23-25 and sure drawing some 700,000 guests to town. “It will be like a European plaza, pedestrian-first,” he says.

Though PDP is a nonprofit community-development group created to boost Downtown, that is the primary time the group has overseen a development undertaking — and it’s a giant one, at $15 million. Waldrup has realized the intricacies of the allowing course of and the logistics of supporting the operations of native companies, from accommodating meals supply drivers and buyer entry to delivering tons of of kilos of components to eating places, all with barricades throughout them.

He talks to Mike Schoeneman, superintendent at Mascaro Construction Co., about shifting site visitors patterns from the south a part of the sq. close to PPG to the now accomplished north aspect of the sq.. They focus on the route pedestrians will take for the Block Party that was deliberate later within the month to mark the midway level of the revitalization undertaking.

“It will be ready, right?” Waldrup asks playfully.

Schoeneman nods. The Saturday night time Block Party was a reminder that dozens of Market Square companies are nonetheless there amid the chaos of development that has depressed gross sales in the course of the all-important vacation purchasing season. The PDP deliberate weekly family-friendly occasions, dubbed the Yinzer Wonderland, in Market Square in the course of the vacation season. Waldrup’s group additionally coordinated November Light Up Night, when hundreds converged on the Golden Triangle to observe the tree lighting.

Making his method to the jap nook of Market Square, Waldrup passes a haggard-looking man sitting on the sidewalk, wrapped in a plaid blanket. A younger lady palms him a sandwich.

Scenes like this have turn into extra seen after the COVID-19 shutdown.

“What makes Downtown feel safer is people. If they are not in here, you are in a cavernous place and you feel like, ‘If I yell, [there is no one to help.]’”

Waldrup says 65% to 75% of staff have returned to Downtown’s workplaces. But the pandemic confirmed that town was overdependent on workplace area and had too little residential area — one thing he hopes to vary.

Downtown crime grew to become a sizzling matter and generated headlines, notably after some extremely publicized assaults on bystanders, together with an 18-year-old intern who was assaulted by a stranger in the summertime of 2024 and a 65-year-old man who was stabbed on the road in 2025. Some retailers left city as security issues grew. Robert Fragasso, chairman of the board of Fragasso Financial Advisors Inc., had been working Downtown for 50 years earlier than leaving in 2023. He says his constructing on the nook of Smithfield Street and Sixth Avenue was on the epicenter of crime, a number of doorways down from a no-barrier homeless shelter that has since closed.

“We had drug dealers parked in front of our building, dealing. Police were prevented from policing that activity. Drug dealers were preying on the poor homeless people. Our building custodian was cleaning up feces and squirting urine off our sidewalk every morning. We had shootings, fights, overdoses all the time. Our clients told us, ‘We are not coming down.’ … It was like wading through a crime scene of a movie every day. It was untenable.”

He says he was annoyed when he known as former Mayor Ed Gainey’s workplace concerning the lack of enforcement and social providers for these in want. “There was a complete absence of participation. The police expressed frustration to me,” he says.

For all his complaints concerning the outgoing mayor, Fragasso praised Waldrup for doing all he may via his nonprofit. “Jeremy is a beacon,” he says.

Fragasso additionally says police started making arrests, and Downtown has improved — however not as a lot because it ought to. Merchants say a brand new police substation that opened on Wood Street two years in the past has helped fight crime.

Gainey calls claims that he directed police to not make arrests Downtown categorically unfaithful, including that knowledge exhibits crime within the metropolis decreased underneath his administration. He famous he thanked officers, PDP, PNC and different companions for his or her work in enhancing town’s “living room” throughout a press convention held on the Downtown Police Substation in 2025.

“Specifically for Downtown, we held quarterly meetings with corporate leaders, business owners and other stakeholder organizations over the course of two years to provide a forum for open and honest dialogue about the challenges and opportunities for partnership to address those same challenges,” Gainey stated in a press release. “While those were difficult conversations, no one was ignored. These discussions were critical in informing the work that ultimately led to the $600 million comprehensive reinvestment plan for Downtown.”

For all of the publicity about unsafe streets, Waldrup says, “crimes against people who don’t know each other are very uncommon Downtown.”

PDP additionally stepped up its efforts to scrub up and join with folks. In their brilliant gold uniforms, the On-Street Services Team picks up trash, removes graffiti and power-washes sidewalks and alleys. The outreach group interacts with the homeless and panhandlers in a nonjudgmental manner and connects them with social providers.

“I don’t think anybody really wants to sleep on the street. So we have this day in, day out engagement, to get this person into stable housing,” Waldrup says.

Pollock, the true property developer, refutes the narrative that Downtown is harmful. “The people who are most critical of Downtown Pittsburgh are the people who live in the suburbs and never come Downtown,” he says.

Service of Others

The man who’s now recognized for revitalizing cities grew up in tiny Fletcher, North Carolina, inhabitants 8,320, on the outskirts of Asheville. An solely baby, Waldrup labored one summer time at age 14 on the native path using steady in change for a horse.

His father, Chuck, was a police officer turned Pentecostal preacher, and his mom, Libby, led the prayer worship group on the church. The two had met in a Southern gospel touring band — he performed drums and she or he sang — and appeared on the “PTL Club,” Jim and Tammy Faye Baker’s Christian TV present.

As a youngster, Waldrup helped with the kids’s ministry at their church. He inherited his mom’s singing voice, crooning the nationwide anthem at highschool soccer and basketball video games and performing a solo at his commencement. Though not lively within the Pentecostal church, he says, “I grew up in the service of others, and I do feel like this job is similar. You are sharing people’s happiness when things are good and you are there for the not-so-great issues with construction or public safety.”

Even as a child enjoying Little League, he had a manner of defusing battle amongst gamers if issues acquired tense, Chuck Waldrup says. “In the South, we call it unruffling feathers. He would be a jokester and get everyone laughing and calm things down.”

Yearning to attend faculty in a metropolis, he selected to get his bachelor’s diploma in economics from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Many of his classmates went into banking, however he knew that wasn’t for him. Intrigued by a metropolis growth group known as Charlotte Center City Partners, the 21-year-old walked in and requested if he may volunteer.

“They looked at me like I had three heads,” he recollects. No one had ever requested to volunteer earlier than.

He was despatched out into the streets with a push cart at hand out pamphlets and area questions on native points of interest.

Rob Walsh, then the CEO of the group, knew instantly that “he was someone special. He had this knack with people.” That summer time gig led to a full-time job in financial growth. After Waldrup obtained a grasp’s diploma in public administration from the University of Colorado, Walsh, his outdated boss — who had turn into NYC Commissioner of Small Business Services underneath Mayor Mike Bloomberg — provided him a giant alternative. Waldrup was employed by the South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corp.

At first, New Yorkers rolled their eyes on the younger rent. “They counted his niceness against him. They underestimated him,” Walsh says.

Waldrup then grew to become assistant commissioner of district growth for the Department of Small Business Services, overseeing 64 Business Improvement Districts.

As he moved up the ladder, the child who may settle down his Little League teammates proved that he may work with the heads of Business Improvement Districts. “They had egos the size of Arkansas,” Walsh says “They thought, ‘Who was this kid who didn’t grow up in New York telling us what the rules are going to be? How dare you?’ But he managed to do it all with grace and professionalism.”

He was solely 35 when he was recruited to PDP, transferring to Pittsburgh along with his spouse, Wesley, a counselor, and their three children — the youngest simply an toddler. Waldrup figured since he was heading up the Downtown group, he would stay Downtown. Then the couple came upon there have been hardly any younger children round, and the closest playground was on the North Side. The household moved to Shadyside after which purchased a home in Friendship; they managed with one automobile till the pandemic, relying usually on public transit, Wesley says. Weather allowing, Waldrup commutes through ride-share bike Downtown.

The nonprofit has garnered nationwide consideration for Picklesburgh. Waldrup had seen one other group, Riverlife, unveil Pierogi Fest, and wished he had considered the concept based mostly on the power it created round one thing so authentically Pittsburgh. He informed his workers at a gathering 11 years in the past that he needed to provide you with one thing comparable. Russell Howard, the PDP’s former vp of particular occasions and growth, advised an occasion centered on the lowly pickle. The advertising and marketing director christened it Picklesburgh.

“I knew it was a good idea,” Waldrup says. “I didn’t know it was a great idea.” That grew to become obvious once they ran out of T-shirts the primary night time of the 2015 competition and needed to ask the printer to do an in a single day rush order. Four occasions, USA Today has named it the No. 1 Specialty Food Festival within the nation, together with in 2025.

Waldrup himself judges the pickle-juice slurping contest. “It can get contentious. You have several thousand people who also watch it with you and have very strong opinions. So thank God for video playback.”

While festivals like Picklesburgh, Oktoberfest and the Holiday Market have given PDP probably the most consideration, Waldrup is proudest of how he reacted to the dire wants of eating places in the course of the pandemic shutdown. His group paid for eating places to create nourishing meals and supply them to folks in want.

Now he’s waiting for rebuilding town after the trauma of the pandemic, together with bringing in additional outlets and providers. “We want to double the residential population in the next 10 years,” he says, which might carry the present 7,300 residents to about 15,000.

To try this, he says, he desires the following younger couple contemplating a transfer Downtown to search out different younger households and parks and playgrounds. He’s excited that the 4-acre Arts Landing will embrace town’s first youngsters’s playground Downtown.

He provides the NFL Draft is a catalyst and a deadline to enhance public areas.

“We are getting ready to welcome several hundreds of thousands people, and millions will watch this on TV. We want that B-roll shot of Downtown Pittsburgh to show the vibrancy and beautiful architecture and amazing public spaces. But our real focus is on what’s happening beyond the draft.”