Asian influence molds old steel town
Ananda Gunawardena might well typify the kind of immigrants flocking to Pittsburgh.
The native of Sri Lanka left Houston, a more culturally vibrant and diverse city, about eight years ago when his physician wife, Sriya, landed a job at an Oakland hospital.
Now, they live in McCandless with their two children, one of whom attends a private girls school. Sriya is a pediatric hematologist and oncologist at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh; Ananda is an associate professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University.
Drawn by Pittsburgh's thriving universities and high-tech and medical sectors, a small but growing number of Asian immigrants are helping to revitalize the economy and change the face of the city as its majority white population has been aging and shrinking.
In 2001, Ananda Gunawardena founded a small business, a Carnegie Mellon University spinoff providing technology that allows publishers to customize textbooks to be delivered by print or electronically. Textcentric employs about 45 people in Pittsburgh and Colombo, Sri Lanka.
"You feel an allegiance to the society you live in," he said. "You feel America has done something for you and you have done something for America."
The number of immigrants coming to the Pittsburgh region is relatively small compared with other American cities. Asians make up 1.3 percent of the Pittsburgh metropolitan region's 2.3 million population, according to Chris Briem, an economist at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Social and Urban Research.
But, according to the Census, about half of the 25,000 immigrants who came to the Pittsburgh region in the 1990s were Asian.
Influx of intellect
More than half of the 1,600 foreign students at the University of Pittsburgh and 75 percent of Carnegie Mellon's nearly 2,100 international students are Asian, most from India, China and South Korea.
As a result, the Pittsburgh region boasts the nation's highest percentage of immigrants with college degrees -- 58 percent, according to William Frey, a demographer with the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
Sunil Wadhwani received his master's degree from Carnegie Mellon in the 1970s. He returned to his native India but came back to Pittsburgh in 1987 to start iGate Corp., an information technology services and business process outsourcing company, in Robinson. Today, iGate has annual revenue totaling more than $270 million and employs about 6,500 people in 32 offices in 14 countries.
Wadhwani, 53, said he could have opened shop anywhere.
"I just came to love this area," he said.
City of opportunity
Also, "being close to Carnegie Mellon has been a huge plus," Wadhwani said. "They are doing some of the leading-edge stuff in terms of software and we're able to tap into research and researchers."
Carnegie Mellon is why Ravi Koka decided to open SEEC Inc. when he realized his software company in India needed to break into the U.S. market.
"Clearly, that is a major draw. Otherwise, I would have gone somewhere else," said Koka, 56, who visited Carnegie Mellon as a scientist in 1984, lured here by Raj Reddy, the university's award-winning and renowned professor of computer science and robotics.
Koka estimates SEEC has employed about 200 engineers in Pittsburgh through the years, fueling more immigration as many brought their parents.
SEEC Inc. and iGate are among more than 70 Indian-owned or -led companies in the region, according to the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance, a business promotion group.
Passage from India
Much of Pittsburgh's Indian community was started by engineers hired for research and development by Westinghouse Corp., a company that over several decades attracted many professionals who had immigrated, Briem said.
That changed in the 1980s, as immigrants brought their families to the area, said Indian-born Harish Saluja. He came to Pittsburgh in 1972 and is executive director of the Pittsburgh chapter of the IndUS Entrepreneurs, an international nonprofit network of entrepreneurs and professionals who help Indian and other entrepreneurs.
"Suddenly, you met nonprofessionals, too, and as families changed, suddenly it replicated and mushroomed into other branches," said Saluja, who also is a filmmaker, painter and radio show host. "Some of them had given up the shackles of being an engineer or doctor and other options were open to them. I thought it was absolutely wonderful."
Saluja's group recently partnered with the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance to start iPort, a group whose goal is to lure India-based businesses and entrepreneurs to the city. To do so, the group highlights the universities and hospitals, software and medical industries and the high quality and low cost of living in Pittsburgh.
"Pittsburgh is not too big, not too small," Koka said. "It doesn't have that big-city alienation. It's reasonably big, but you have suburbs and that sense of community and Asians like that. It's a friendly atmosphere. It's not much of a rat race to adjust to."
The region boasts vibrant Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean communities. There are more than 8,600 Chinese out of an Asian population of nearly 31,000, according to Census figures.
"Pittsburgh is unique," said Dorothy Lee Green, who is actively involved in the Pittsburgh chapter of the Organization of Chinese Americans. "We keep our own separate cultural identity, but we are very much a large, varied family. It's a very colorful, wonderful fabric."
The influences of this burgeoning community are seen across the city and suburbs.
Cultural additions
In addition to a few dozen Indian community groups, Vietnamese Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh temples, the region also boasts several mosques, Indian and Chinese Christian churches, a Chinese School and Sunday schools for Asians.
In September, the Sri Lankan community opened a Buddhist center and temple after buying a house northeast of the city. The center hosts meditation classes and religious discussions and will hold a Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve.
Built in 1976, the Sri Venkateswara temple in Penn Hills draws tens of thousands of visitors annually. On summer weekends, about 3,000 worshippers attend services, filling the temple's parking lots with cars from throughout the United States and Canada.
Indian and other Asian grocery stores are commonplace, surprising for the area's onetime steel-town image and predominantly white European immigrant population.
"In the beginning, there used to be only one or two Indian stores," Saluja said. "Suddenly, it mushroomed, especially in the last 10 years or so."
A multiscreen movie theater complex in the North Hills regularly screens Bollywood films alongside the latest Hollywood fare, and Allegheny County has more than 200 Asian restaurants, including about two dozen Indian eateries.
In 1996, Subhash and Usha Sethi opened Taj Mahal, the first Indian Restaurant in the North Hills. They wondered if their lentil soup, tandoori chicken and other traditional fare would appeal to the local tastes.
"Every day it looked to us that we have jumped in the ocean and we don't know how to swim," Subhash Sethi said.
Today, their buffets, especially on the weekends, are almost always packed. In addition to their first restaurant, the Sethis now operate a catering service, a kiosk in a mall food court and a second Indian restaurant.
Additional Information:
Asians in Pa series, day by day
Nov. 26: Asians are Pennsylvania's second-fastest growing minority group.
Today: Asians lured to Pittsburgh's thriving universities and high-tech and medical sectors.
Nov. 28: Residents in Philadelphia's Chinatown worry about loss of area's immigrant character.
Nov. 29: The increase in Asian immigrants leads to new places of worship around the state.
Nov. 30: Banks in the Philadelphia are catering to Asians.
Dec. 1: Immigrants are adopting western ways while still preserving their cultures.
