Interim director leaves Pittsburgh Land Bank

The Pittsburgh Land Bank, an agency that has struggled to fulfill its mission of returning vacant and blighted properties to productive use, is without an executive director.

Interim Executive Director Paul Leger let board members know Friday that his term had ended and he would not be providing any further service to the agency.

Mr. Leger, a former land bank board member who has had a number of other city and local government positions, was hired in January to be the agency’s interim executive director, with the goal of handing the position off to a permanent director by July.

The agency was created by the city in 2014 but has lagged at acquiring and transacting properties, a major part of its blight-fighting mission. It has a nine-member board of directors.

At the land bank’s last monthly meeting, in March, Mr. Leger said the organization was at a crossroads, and he laid out several potential paths to board members.

Among the options he listed:

• Embed the agency into an existing City of Pittsburgh department,

• Operate the land bank as a stand-alone organization,

• Regionalize and combine with the Tri-COG Land Bank, which serves a number of municipalities in the eastern and southern parts of Allegheny County,

• Abolish the land bank entirely.

Mr. Leger presented the advantages and disadvantages of the potential options in a report to board members.

Were it to become part of city government, it would need less funding and could work well with other city programs focused on housing.

However, as its own standalone organization, it could be faster and more nimble than municipal government, although then it would need more funds and might have a harder time acquiring city-owned properties.

Combining with the existing Tri-COG Land Bank could create an almost countywide entity, although that could be difficult to deal with various municipalities

and other taxing bodies, such as school districts.

As to the fourth option, total abolition of the land bank?

“If we aren’t going to do this in a way that eliminates the confused tangle of property acquisition and disposal, we should not add another level of complexity,” Mr. Leger wrote, an apparent reference to the already yearslong and complex process to buy a cityowned property.

The agency has not had a public meeting since then, either in person or virtually, although members had an executive session via Zoom on Friday.

Board member state Sen. Wayne Fontana, DBrookline, said he and other board members are continuing to evaluate “the same things we’ve struggled with all along: funding and staff, and where do we go from here?”

Among the big-picture issues are where the land bank should fit in among entities such the Urban Redevelopment Authority, the city’s real estate division and the Pittsburgh Vacant Property Reserve, Mr. Fontana said.

“I think the land bank can be something good for the communities,” he said, such as playing a role in affordable housing and rebuilding neighborhoods with a lot of blight.

Several other board members could not be reached or declined to comment on Friday.

“The community deserves a functioning, resourced land bank,” said Chris Sandvig, director of policy at the Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group, one of the organizations that fought for the creation of the land bank. The lack of one most adversely impacts communities of color because of the legacy of redlining and the blight that it created, Mr. Sandvig said.

Mr. Fontana said board members plan to have a meeting in September.