New park to reconnect Downtown and Hill District
Project is an effort to ‘right a wrong’
A $32 million effort to “right a wrong” that occurred half a century ago gets its start Friday.
A slew of politicians and stakeholders will gather in a parking lot near PPG Paints Arena to break ground on a 3-acre park that will straddle Interstate 579/ Crosstown Boulevard.
To its supporters, the project is more than a green oasis surrounded by parking. It represents a literal reconnection of Downtown and the lower Hill District, a link severed to a large extent when the former Civic Arena was built in late 1950s.
The arena construction destroyed part of the Hill neighborhood, displacing more than 8,000 residents and 413 businesses.
That damage was further exacerbated by adding the highway — creating yet another physical and
economic barrier between the Hill and Downtown, city Councilman R. Daniel Lavelle said.
“What we’re going to begin doing [Friday] is finally righting those wrongs of 50 or 60 years ago,” added Mr. Lavelle, who represents the Hill.
For Brenda Tate, who has lived on the same block of Webster Avenue in the Hill for all of her 70 years, the park once again will give her the chance to traverse Wylie Avenue to the park then into Downtown and back.
“There won’t be separation. There will be a clear avenue to come back and forth. It’s symbolic,” she said.
Beyond serving as a link between the Hill’s past and its future, the park, all publicly funded, represents the first tangible piece of construction associated with the redevelopment of the 28acre former arena site.
To Penguins CEO David Morehouse, the project not only “rights a wrong that happened 60 years ago.” It will serve as a catalyst for the transformation of the arena site.
“What it does is it unlocks the potential,” he said.
After years of delays and false starts, the Penguins, who hold the development rights to the publicly owned 28 acres, hope to start work on the property this fall with the first 288 apartments near Crawford Square.
The park and the first housing units will serve as bookends to the site, an arrangement Mr. Morehouse sees as significant in itself.
“It was a place where people were displaced and it will bring to life the 28 acres that the site sits on,” he said. “It will be a place where people live and eventually will work and play.”
The Penguins, Mr. Morehouse said, could be ready to get rolling with as many as three developments on the site by year end or early in 2020.
Beyond the housing, the team is “close to closing a deal” with Live Nation for a 50,000-square-foot music venue, Mr. Morehouse said. The venue would be built on top of a 900- to 1,000-space parking garage and have indoor and outdoor components.
The Penguins also are “past the interest phase” and in active negotiations with a company that wants to build a headquarters on the north end of the site near Washington Place where a “signature tower” is planned.
Mr. Morehouse would not disclose the prospective tenant, but at least two local companies — First National Bank and EQT Corp. — are believed to be in the hunt for headquarters space in or near Downtown.
In addition, “multiple tenants” are interested in another office building planned on Centre Avenue across from PPG Paints Arena, Mr. Morehouse said.
“Our biggest problem is we have too many people that are interested at once. It’s a good problem to have. Everyone sees the potential,” he said.
In all, the Penguins are proposing up to 1,420 new units of housing, 810,000 square feet of office space, 190,000 square feet of retail, the music venue, a food hall and a 220-room hotel at the site.
On the retail side, the development has landed Punch Bowl Social to take 23,000 square feet of space. The team also is in talks with the Milk Shake Factory
But without the new park linking Downtown to the site, “The development is hard to make work,” Mr. Morehouse said.
As part of the plan, the Penguins intend to incorporate 4 acres of green space running the entire length of Wylie from the park to Crawford Square.
The team has committed $900,000 to the construction of the park through the purchase of land needed for the parcels being developed.
The bulk of the funding for the park is coming through a $19 million federal grant.
The rest is cobbled together from state, local and foundation sources. The park is scheduled to be completed in November 2021.
It will include pedestrian paths, bicycle routes, performance space, an outdoor amphitheater, rain gardens, and design elements produced by Hill artists.
While the park is important, Mr. Lavelle said the greater value lies in providing business and job opportunities within the arena redevelopment for Hill residents and minorities.
“If we do all of that and more, then the Hill District will benefit from that development, and this cap plays a role in that,” he said.
Likewise, former city Councilman Sala Udin, who also represented the Hill, said he sees the redevelopment itself playing a bigger role in righting the wrongs caused by the Civic Arena construction than A V E . the park itself.
R E
CE NT “You will be able to sense the connection once the 28 acres gets to be filled out,” said Mr. Udin, a board member of the Sports & Exhibition Authority, which owns the bulk of the redevelopment site.
Mr. Udin’s son, Bomani Howze, is a principal in Intergen, the minority-led firm that will do the first two phases of housing for the Penguins.
Not everybody sees the new park as a real or symbolic link to the Hill.
Carl Redwood, chairman of the Hill District Consensus Group, said the park “represents Downtown taking over a portion of the Hill District, not the other way around.”
“They want the lower Hill, including this cap, to look like a hockey game. What I mean by that is not many black people will be participating,” he said.
Mr. Redwood and his group have been campaigning to get 30% of the housing built at the arena site designated as affordable. The Penguins have committed to 20% under an agreement with Hill leaders.
But Ms. Tate, who with her 98-year-old aunt will attend Friday’s groundbreaking, sees positives in the park’s construction.
“It will be a nice green space, a welcoming space, for people who want to come into the community,” she said.