Keep the Hill
Civic Arena development must respect history
Thank goodness for the computer age: With just a few taps on a keyboard, the developers of the former Civic Arena site can correct an unfortunate mistake. They can replace their project’s inapt moniker — “Centre District” — with the location’s once-and-always name: The Lower Hill.
It’s a place-name as timeless and evocative as the Left Bank or the Latin Quarter, if not as well known. It respects what was, is and could be.
While an inappropriate name can be changed in mere moments, the project’s second mistake will require more time and money. But it too must be addressed: A greater percentage of the site’s new housing must be “affordable.” Pittsburgh must acknowledge and in some way restore what was sacrificed not so very long ago.
The Lower Hill District’s history is complicated. For one thing, in 1957, when bulldozers began clearing 100 acres of houses and shops to make way for the Civic Arena, the city’s black leaders had agreed to the drastic overhaul. For another, the area wasn’t exclusively black.
In fact, the Lower Hill was the city’s last great melting pot. As the PG’s Diana Nelson-Jones noted in a widely sourced 2011 article, “Italian grocers lived and worked among black barbers, Syrian bakers and Jewish butchers. Schools and stores were integrated, and many businesses hired cross-culturally.”
All these establishments were lost to eminent domain, and back
then, the government, whether federal or local, did not fairly compensate those whose property was seized. We can and should acknowledge the forced sacrifice of newer immigrants who were trying to grasp hold of the American Dream. It was our city’s collective idea of progress that plucked the dream from their hands.
Some of those who suffered this loss are still living. In other words, this is an injustice recent enough to receive appropriate redress.
Property ownership is the central component of intergenerational wealth. Homes and businesses are passed down; parents’ hard-won assets provide the leg-up for their children — unless terrible fate or government fiat interferes.
Local government destroyed the Lower Hill for complex reasons — to replace subpar buildings with something new and solid, yes, but also to separate a largely minority population from an overwhelmingly white Downtown during years of racial unrest. Our most vulnerable citizens paid the price.
Today’s vulnerable people need to be offered the leg-up that our society removed. One hundred percent of the Hill District in 1957 was low-income. It is not unreasonable for us to require that 30 percent of it today be made available to lowincome citizens.
The new developers of this site are the Pittsburgh Penguins. Whether they like it or not, they are benefitting from long-ago sacrifices and mistakes. It is time for the Penguins to be heroes off the ice.