Urban farm being developed at former St. Clair Village public housing site

It will be among largest

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Aimee Mangham has found shoes, dolls, baby booties and jump ropes in the soil as she plows around the horseshoe that used to be Bonifay Street.

With her husband, James, she coowns Go Supreme, a Beltzhooverbasedcompany that is brush hogging, tilling and plowing into existence one ofthe largest urban farms in the country — on 23 acres of the former St. ClairVillage.

It will be years before it’s that large, that functional and that brag-worthy, but the people who had a hand in getting it this far assembled Thursday to walk the street surrounded by Queen Anne’s lace and other overgrowth and learn what it will look like.

The Hilltop Urban Farm is partially cleared land, amended with organic compost, growing cover crops. It will unfold in phases, as parts of old foundations still have to be dug out. The plan calls for community-supported agriculture, or CSA, through which people buy shares of produce for a season. Incubator farms will help people start their own businesses. An orchard, a youth farm, greenhouses, compost processing, storm water ponds, a farm market and community plots are all part of the plan.

Sarah Baxendell, project manager for the Hilltop Alliance, said the first crops could be grown after another year of soil improvement.

The site sits high above Becks Run Road, which floods regularly. She said storm water mitigation ponds would prevent 1 million gallons from Becks Run from entering water and sewer infrastructure.

The farm began as an idea four years ago when Aaron Sukenik, executive director of the Hilltop Alliance, sought advice from Grow Pittsburgh and Penn State Extension as to whether a farm would be feasible on the site. The former public housing site was demolished from 2006 to 2010. Neighborhood Allies, Heinz Endowments and the PNC Foundation supported the study.

To be a community asset for enterprise and sustenance, it had to