Remember the 25-day nightmare we walked you through on the 9th — I-376 shut in both directions between the Squirrel Hill Tunnel and the Edgewood/Swissvale exit, ~100,000 vehicles a day scattered onto side streets? It was supposed to stay closed until August 3. It won't.

PennDOT says the $95 million Commercial Street Bridge replacement is running ahead of schedule and the Parkway should reopen the middle of next week — weather permitting, maybe a few days sooner. Starting Sunday, crews slid the new 22-million-pound bridge into its final position over about a day and a half, one of the largest lateral-slide jobs Pennsylvania has ever attempted: build the whole span off to the side, then push it into place like the world's heaviest sliding door.

Pittsburgh is a city that expects the infrastructure news to be bad — a bridge falls into a ravine, a project runs three years long, a "temporary" closure becomes a way of life. This is the opposite story.

Earlier this month, Colorado's Voyager Technologies closed its ~$300 million acquisition of Astrobotic, the North Side company that's spent the better part of two decades trying to land American robots on the moon. It's now Voyager Lunar Systems — but it keeps its Pittsburgh "Moon Base" headquarters and CEO John Thornton, and the deal closed just as NASA handed it a $297.9M contract for two lunar-lander missions in 2028.

Two men are charged in an Allegheny County scheme that used counterfeit notary stamps — bought online — to file forged deed transfers on 43 properties, funneling ten into a shell LLC. A local real estate agent, Kelsey Green, independently flagged ~35 cases, most on the South Side, and the County is rolling out deed-fraud alerts that notify owners when their records change.

Helltown Brewing is closing its Strip District taproom at 1700 Penn Ave on August 30, after nearly six years, to clear the way for a 14-story, 64-unit mixed-use building (condos on floors 3 through 14). Map test: corner of Penn and 17th — you can point right at it.

The chipped-ham-and-Klondike icon Isaly's is opening a retro storefront at 2111 Penn Ave — 3,500 square feet, targeted for later this summer, its first new shop in decades.

Peak Pittsburgh moment of the week: one of the detour roads rerouting all that Parkway East traffic sprang a water main break and closed too. The detour needed a detour. Somewhere a guy on his porch in a faded Iron City shirt is nodding like he called it.

We can slide a 22-million-pound bridge into place in a weekend and also lose a residential street to a main older than the parkway itself — the miracle and the century-old plumbing, same week. So if your GPS sends you toward something that looks like a splash pad, believe it, and take the third option you already know in your bones.

I'll be honest — the interior specs aren't even what got me. It's the rooftop deck.

You're at a glass railing with the entire Downtown skyline in front of you — the rivers, the stadiums, the Point — and it's yours, not a platform you're sharing with forty tourists and a coin telescope. Mount Washington is finally building the thing it's threatened for years: luxury housing that faces the city and actually uses the view. This is one — a new townhome in Grandview Heights, Infinity Custom Homes' enclave on Grandview Ave, the most photographed street in Pittsburgh. Elevator to every floor, a chef's kitchen, a two-minute walk to the Duquesne Incline. The click is worth it just for the deck photos.

Q: Before it was Mount Washington — the hill every Pittsburgh postcard is shot from — what was it called?

A: Coal Hill. The bluff above the South Side was mined for the coal that fed Pittsburgh's early mills, hauled up and down by the inclines that still run today. It was later renamed for George Washington, who came through in 1753 and famously judged the Point below to be well-suited for a fort. Two and a half centuries later we put a row of steakhouses and a brand-new luxury townhome on the same view.

This week on the socials, in case you missed them:

— Inclusionary zoning — or the lack of it. Only a few Pittsburgh neighborhoods — Lawrenceville, Bloomfield, Polish Hill, parts of Oakland — actually require developers to include affordable units. The Strip and South Side, where all those towers are rising, aren't among them — and there's a push to take the policy citywide. I broke down what that really means for prices. ▶ Watch →

— Hot take: gentrification is good. I made the case this week — the investment remaking the Strip lifts the whole neighborhood, and "gentrification" has turned into a lazy boo-word for a place getting nicer. Come argue with me. ▶ Watch →

— The Wylie is nearing the finish. The Live Nation / Citizens venue in the Lower Hill is on track to open around October — the Strip and the Hill are both becoming places you go out. ▶ Watch →