Appearances are a top priority for Pittsburgh officials ahead of the 2026 NFL Draft.
Just this week, Pittsburgh police started a citywide sweep of abandoned vehicles. City public works crews are also putting in overtime to clean up Downtown Pittsburgh ahead of the event, which runs from April 23-25 and is expected to draw more than 500,000 people.
But there are some things city officials can’t control, such as how Pittsburgh is portrayed during broadcasts of the event.
“The networks are going to show Terry Bradshaw and Franco (Harris) and Lynn Swann,” Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O’Connor said Wednesday, rattling off the names of Steelers legends. “But they’re also going to show steel mills. And it’s like, no, that’s not Pittsburgh anymore.”
The draft will be a chance to shed lingering steel-town perceptions and show off the city’s dynamic economy, O’Connor said during his 45 minutes on stage at this year’s HIKE2 Innovation Summit in Bakery Square in the city’s East End.
He was joined by Gerardo Interiano, senior vice president of government affairs for Pittsburgh-based autonomous trucking startup Aurora Innovation, as the pair kicked off a two-day conference about artificial intelligence in the workplace.
Their discussion focused more on broad economic development, however, a favorite topic of the young O’Connor administration.
Some of the burden of promoting Pittsburgh during the draft falls on O’Connor (he said his primary job as mayor is to be a “cheerleader” for the city). But he also called on 100 or so tech leaders, government officials and other summit attendees to evangelize Pittsburgh to out-of-towners visiting for the draft.
A positive experience, the thinking among many Southwestern Pennsylvania elected officials goes, will compel visitors to move to the region or establish a local business presence.
A conference on the intersection of sports and artificial intelligence the day before the draft at a Carnegie Mellon University facility in Hazelwood Green is also meant to showcase Pittsburgh’s tech prowess.
“I think that week is huge for all of us,” O’Connor said. “I hope everybody in this room is an ambassador of Pittsburgh that week.”