Pittsburgh is just over three weeks away from hosting the 2026 NFL Draft, a three-day event that organizers say will go down as the city’s largest event ever.
Mayor Corey O’Connor, a former county controller and city councilor who was sworn in as the city’s 62nd mayor in January, views the April 23 to 25 event as an opportunity to market the city’s universities, bustling tech industry and arts scene. But there are things that aren’t in his administration’s control — overtime and tax revenue included.
Here’s what we learned in an interview Tuesday about the mayor’s approach to pitching Pittsburgh as a place to stay long after the NFL draft, edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: How has it been adjusting to your new role while also planning the NFL Draft?
Mayor O’Connor: There’s a lot more to it than you would have thought: not only road closures, but security protocols and various things like that, transit in and out of the site. But then also, it gave us a unique ability to sell Pittsburgh differently. It’s allowed us to get support for certain things we might not have if the draft wasn’t coming.
I think for us, it’s the follow-up to how do we take this momentum and then turn it into other things, especially small businesses and cleaning up. While we’re doing our cleanups, we’re not just doing Downtown. We’re doing them in neighborhoods. And I think that was the emphasis that we wanted to prioritize, as everything is not just Downtown. It’s in your neighborhood. This is what we care about, and we say it almost every time: Details matter, and there’s a lot of details that we have to focus on.
Q: Can you name some of those neighborhoods?
Mayor O’Connor: We did a blitz in the Hilltop on demos. … We’re blitzing everything. Abandoned car vehicles. Even the newspaper kiosks that we saw Downtown, we had public works take them out of small business districts, too. So it wasn’t just Downtown. These projects are also impacting neighborhoods.
Q: What aspect of the NFL draft planning and coordination has created the most strain on city government?
Mayor O’Connor: I think the safety protocols are probably the biggest. Funding, we believe, will be made whole with overtime and everything like that.
Q: Do you feel as though tax dollars are being spent appropriately through the NFL draft?
Mayor O’Connor: At the end of the day, as long as the city is made whole from police, fire and EMS overtime expenses — that’s what a lot of that state money was supposed to go to. That’s our big concern: Is the tax money that’s being spent from the city’s own dime, are we going to be reimbursed for it? There are some entities that will make sure we don’t have to pay for all those overtimes.
Q: Has the city done anything to engage people who won’t be able to participate Downtown?
Mayor O’Connor: At almost every meeting, I say that there are empty storefronts Downtown. We don’t control them because we don’t own most of them. But I say, if you are an entrepreneur, whatever type of entrepreneur, and you want a storefront Downtown, there is an opportunity for you, but it’s through the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership. So we have been trying to make those connections.
If you’re a vendor … Come down, pass out your business cards. It’s open to do those things. Come down and say, ‘Hey, I just opened a restaurant.’ ‘Hey, if you’re in town and you’re staying in this part of town, come to my store.’ We want you to be entrepreneurs. We want you to sell yourselves, too.
Q: As we prepare for the draft, some people have pointed out that unhoused communities may be displaced. What is the city doing to ensure that, as it prepares for the draft, it’s not simultaneously displacing anyone?
Mayor O’Connor: To that extent, it’s working with the county and DHS [Allegheny County Department of Human Services], making sure that individuals get the support that they need. We have not done anything different. It’s continuing to work with DHS, and making sure that individuals get the support that they deserve. So, we haven’t changed. Our OCHS [Office of Community Health and Safety] department’s been doing the same thing.
Q: As county controller, you published a report criticizing VisitPittsburgh’s management of public funds. How do you feel about them handling this very large project?
Mayor O’Connor: I think this is all-hands-on-deck to do this. We need support from everybody. When we did the audit, VisitPittsburgh opened up the books, and that had not been done in a very long time. We saw some cost savings, and that they implemented some of those recommendations that we had from the controller’s office. But also, when I was the controller, we had to make sure every tax dollar was spent appropriately.
Q: You’ve said that you want Pittsburgers to serve as ambassadors. If a Pittsburger were to go up to a non-local person during the draft, what would you hope they say?
Mayor O’Connor: My role that week is, ‘Welcome to Pittsburgh. What do you like about our city? What can we do better? What can we do different?’ I think for us, it’s an ability to learn from people that have never been here before. What’s the sales pitch that gets you to come back? If you’re a resident and you’re coming down to the draft, be kind to the Ravens fans, but after that, I think it’s a lot of, ‘Where are you staying in Pittsburgh?’ And if you know the neighborhood they’re staying in, like, ‘Oh, my cousin lives in Bloomfield’ or ‘My cousin grew up in Homewood. Have you tried this restaurant or shop?’ I think that’s the one thing that we can do that other cities probably couldn’t. I think Pittsburghers are good ambassadors to ourselves, but also to new visitors.
Q: In previous interviews, some specific industries that you’ve said you want Pittsburgh’s ambassadors to highlight are robotics and tech. What do you think we do well in those areas and what do you want to highlight to folks?
Mayor O’Connor: The talent that’s trickled out of CMU, that’s stayed, that’s done all of these startups, the robotics companies, the AI companies.
But not just them: I think we also have to pitch our arts, our culture, our neighborhoods, our restaurants and the history of the city. Not just Andy Warhol or August Wilson — we have a lot of rich history that I don’t think the world knows about Pittsburgh. And that’s kind of our time to shine. And I think this is a prime example of how we can do it, and do it quickly. You have a three-day window to make that sales pitch.
Q: There’s a pitch that Pittsburgh wants to make to non-locals, but is there a pitch to people who already live here, such as young professionals or college students?
Mayor O’Connor: Look at what we’re doing. We’re the only city in the U.S. in National Geographic’s list of places to visit this year. So if you’re a senior or a junior and you’re starting to look at what your future looks like, why are you not doing it in Pittsburgh? We can host large events like this. And if you can host something like this, can you do a concert? Can you do a World Cup game in the future? There are so many possibilities for us once we host a large event like this, that you’re really on the map to do more and more of them. So, if you’re thinking of leaving, why? Why not Pittsburgh for your future? You already came here. If you graduated high school or college from here, you obviously love it. You came here for a reason. So now how do we keep you here?
Q: You mentioned in a previous interview that you don’t want Pittsburgh’s pitch to focus on its past. But the city’s past still affects its built and natural environments. How is Pittsburgh trying to kind of remedy those things?
Mayor O’Connor: You don’t run away from your history. You embrace it, but you use that history to then forge a new one. When you’re talking about the steel industry when it was here, you built all the steel basically for World War II, and that’s our history. But now it’s building robots and AI and other things that are saving lives across the country. Embrace the history and why it was built. I always bring up Mellon Square as an example. That was actually built to replicate Rockefeller Center.
A lot of people, when they fly in and they go through the tunnel, they’re going to be impressed because it’s an amazing view that you’re not expecting. They’re also going to be looking for steel mills in Downtown. They don’t exist. So I think we’re going to get that new wave of visitors that’s going to go home to wherever they’re from and say, ‘I thought they were steel mills. It’s not. There’s rivers, there’s trails, there’s culture, there’s food.’
Q: How do you imagine a spike in tax revenue will help the city?
Mayor O’Connor: It’ll definitely help our budget deficit. But then you still have to iron out what those numbers look like. And remember, this isn’t the only event we have this year.
Q: Are you hopeful that it will provide relief?
Mayor O’Connor: There will be a windfall and that money goes into our debt, but then we also have to put that money aside because we’re going to have overtime for other things. There’s not state money for all of these events for overtime. So we have to be cautiously optimistic with how much money comes in, but then put it in the right place. So definitely making sure everybody remains whole after the event. But then anything we get has to go to that debt, [it] just has to.
Q: Once your time gets a little bit more free after this event, what do you hope to redirect that energy towards?
Mayor O’Connor: Sleep. Ten minutes would be nice.
Every day our message is about partnerships and different programs that we want to build. So, again, family-first approach, that’s what we’ve been doing from day one. The draft is just this big event that’s overhanging, that everybody’s excited about in the next couple of weeks. But I still think it’s getting back to the basics of government that we said we would do and focusing on that.
Q: What are you most excited about in terms of the draft as a person, not as mayor?
Mayor O’Connor: You’re always excited to see who the Steelers pick. Besides just the football, I think for me, I won’t be able to sit still. But I think the first day, just taking a pause, looking around and saying, ‘Oh, wow, look how great our city is,’ especially at that moment. So hopefully I’ll have time to do that, but I think I’m going to make time to just sit and look and say, ‘Here’s where we are. It’s a great moment in Pittsburgh’s history.’
Mia Hollie is the economic development and housing reporter for Pittsburgh’s Public Source. She can be reached at mia@publicsource.org.
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