PITTSBURGH -- Pittsburghers will remember media images of boarded-up storefronts and a downtown "ghost town," but the G-20 was credited Monday with putting the city back on the world map, changing its worldwide perception and bringing in money and new business.
Visit Pittsburgh -- the city's official tourism promotion agency -- told Channel 4 Action News reporter Sheldon Ingram that Pittsburgh didn't just survive the G-20. It got paid handsomely.
Adding up all the money spent by visitors during the last three months, national and international dignitaries dropped about $35 million into the city.
"These are real dollars. These are real impressions. These are high-tech groups that have picked Pittsburgh because of the work of so many people," said Joseph McGrath, executive director of Visit Pittsburgh.
Downtown was nearly empty on Thursday and Friday, as tight security restrictions and street closures prompted many offices and shops to shut down.
But while everyone was gone, the city was receiving widespread media attention.
"Publications like The Economist, USA Today, Newsweek, The Financial Times, just to mention a few -- all ran feature stories on the region and our economic transformation," said Dennis Yablonsky, CEO of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development.
Visit Pittsburgh said it has counted more than three dozen national and international feature stories about the city, and it says that kind of widespread exposure has an advertising value of at least $100 million.
"I've been printing off as many as I can find, and I have a stack this high of one- and two-page articles," Yablonsky said.
Slideshow - Protests Around Pittsburgh On Day 2 Of G-20 SummitFormer Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill -- who lives in Shadyside and still advises presidents, corporations and nonprofits -- was delighted that the G-20 allowed more than 3,000 members of the media to see Pittsburgh how he sees it.
"It showed people what Pittsburgh really is, instead of the smoky, dingy image that most people have about Pittsburgh if they have never been here," O'Neill told Channel 4 Action News anchor Sally Wiggin.
While O'Neill believes that experience will have a positive impact on the city's future, he regrets what he calls "smothering" security that prevented world leaders from experiencing the actual city and its people.
Still, he acknowledged that it's unavoidable in a post-9/11 world, saying, "If one of the principals had been hurt at all, it would have been a story that wrapped around the world forever."
The G-20 process -- as brief as it was -- allowed world leaders and finance ministers to come together and know each other as real people instead of distant images.
"It really was helpful to me -- especially after 9/11 -- to know these people on a personal basis as we were seeking to interdict flows of terrorist finance," said O'Neill, who was involved in the G-7 and G-8 process under President George W. Bush, before it was expanded to the G-20.
Copyright 2009 by ThePittsburghChannel. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
