Mayor Gainey's top deputies in Green Bay to observe 2025 NFL Draft
A group of Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey's top deputies are in Green Bay, Wisconsin, this week to observe the 2025 NFL Draft, learning what they can to help make next year's draft in the Steel City the best it can be.
"We can learn a lot," Mayor Gainey told KDKA-TV in an interview on Wednesday afternoon, one day ahead of when the draft in Green Bay is set to begin.
The draft in Pittsburgh will be the biggest event the city has ever seen, Gainey says. For it to be successful, he says it will take good preparation, which he said is underway.
A spokesperson for the mayor said the deputy mayor and the directors of Pittsburgh Public Safety, the Pittsburgh Public Works Department, and the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure are all at the draft in Green Bay, along with members of their teams.
"They're in Green Bay right now, just looking at one, taking a look at the city. Two, what's going on in the city. Any type of techniques we can learn from the city that we can better implement here," Gainey said. "That's what it's all about."
KDKA asked Gainey what their focus is in Green Bay.
"I think public safety is the primary focus," Gainey said. "I think also when you talk about crowd control, how they control the crowd, how they navigated around the whole city, creating a situation where everything can move smoothly, but at the same time just making sure that the city is safe."
Despite a shortage of police officers, Gainey said the city will be fine from a public safety standpoint because the department has experience with big events and because it will coordinate with county, state, and other officials.
Teams with the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure and the Public Works Department are in Green Bay to observe day-to-day operations and learn what it takes to run an event of that size, a city spokesperson said.
Specifically, DOMI will observe things like infrastructure, traffic management and traffic light control protocols. Public works crews will focus on trash collection and cordoning off streets. They are all things important for people who live downtown and could be impacted by the draft.
"We're going to make sure you're safe," Gainey said. "We're going to make sure you can get in and out of the place that you live at, and we're going to make sure logistically that everything is good."
Gainey said he's partially interested in seeing how the draft will work in Green Bay because the city is so much smaller than Pittsburgh. It may allow them to learn different things from larger cities that have hosted the draft.
"After this in Green Bay, I would love to talk to the mayor to see what his evaluation was, see what he learned from it, what he can pass onto us," Gainey said.
While the mayor will not be at this year's draft, he did go to the one last year in Detroit. He said he learned about how their security protocols allowed them to detect guns of people entering the event, saying he hopes the technology can be brought to Pittsburgh.
