Community meetings in Bloomfield will focus on grocery site
A series of community meetings, which kicks off this week in Bloomfield, aims to outline a vision for what residents want to see at the site of the Bloomfield IGA supermarket.
Plans for the site at 4401 Liberty Ave., which many view as a gateway to the neighborhood, have been contentious in the past. A proposal for high-end housing put forth last year was met with some community resistance and ultimately never came to fruition.
But the experience led community group Bloomfield Development Corp. to plan the community gatherings, which will begin Saturday, to work to build consensus around potential uses for the site and how any redevelopment will affect the nearby Bloomfield Bridge intersection.
Christina Howell, executive director of the Bloomfield Development Corp., said her organization aims to balance community concerns and the needs of the property owner, who wants to sell the grocery store.
Online real estate listings list the property for sale for $6.75 million, and store owner Mark Davis said he is mulling multiple offers for the site.
“After 38 years, I’d kind of like to retire,” he said.
He also said the outcome of the meetings won’t dictate what happens on the site or whom he sells it to. Mr. Davis also complained that several other grocery stores have opened in surrounding neighborhoods with the benefit of public subsidies, which he did not receive.
By proactively developing a community plan, Ms. Howell hopes any development there can be successful.
“We’re a pro-development group, so we want to make something happen there,” Ms. Howell said, although she noted that it should be balanced with community concerns.
The proposal for the site last year also called attention to increasing rents and home prices in the neighborhood.
“The people who need affordable housing in Bloomfield are often renters who have been here for 30 or 40 years and their rents are going up and they are having to start leaving,” she said.
The first community workshops on the site will be Saturday at the West Penn Hospital School of Nursing, 4900 Friendship Ave.
“Not all development is good development,” said city Councilwoman Deborah Gross, who represents Bloomfield, Lawrenceville and other East End neighborhoods. “Maybe 20 years ago ... every single development would be welcome without scrutiny. We have to be choosier in these neighborhoods that have so much development pressure.”
“We wanted to help the neighborhood be proactive,” said Linda Metropulos, vice president of real estate development for Action Housing.
The meetings are sponsored by Action Housing, using local philanthropic resources, and will be led by design firm Studio for Spatial Practice.
By engaging now, the community can say what they want and value, rather than responding after the fact to a proposal by a developer.
“I think we all were surprised at how quickly Lawrenceville changed and become a place that is almost unrecognizable from what it was 15 years ago,” Ms. Metropulos said.
The community workshops are open to the public, but require an RSVP. For more information, contact Bloomfield Development Corp: sam@bloomfieldpgh.org or 412-681-8800.