Hill church presses Pens on agreement
Land conflict opens old wounds
Representatives of Pittsburgh’s oldest Black church held a news conference Friday to express frustration about the use of the church’s 1906 former site in the lower Hill District, now part of the land surrounding PPG Paints Arena, the Pittsburgh Penguins’ home venue.
“We want our land back and our redevelopment rights back unencumbered,” the Rev. Dale B. Snyder said from the pulpit of the church’s 1959 building at 2720 Webster Ave. “Penguins, are you going to take the same role as your historical fathers? You have no contract on Parcel F.”
He was flanked by representatives of at least eight other congregations and religious denominations.
Rev. Snyder presented evidence indicating that the city and the Penguins promised in 2021 to collaborate with Bethel to redevelop a parcel of land, called Parcel F, that includes the site where the church stood from 1906 to 1957. On Sept. 30 in Mayor Ed Gainey’s office, the parties reached an agreement and the church paid $5,500 for a survey of the land. Since then, Rev. Snyder said, the Penguins have not responded to emails or phone calls until the church announced Friday’s news conference.
Kevin Acklin, president of business operations with the Penguins, took issue with some of that characterization. “We’re excited to do this. Nobody’s running away,” he said. “I wish the original site is something we could give back” but part of it is under an existing road and the rest is slated for open space, he said.
He and Rev. Snyder said the church wanted to build low- to moderate-income housing on Parcel F. But Mr. Acklin said that because of setbacks and the existing road, that kind of development wasn’t possible.
“You can’t build anything there,” Mr. Acklin said. Under the master plan, other parcels closer to the rest of the Hill have been designated for housing, he said. Mr. Acklin mentioned a historical marker being something that could go on Parcel F.
The Penguins are conferring with the mayor’s office about a meeting, he said. A representative from Mr. Gainey’s office could not be reached to respond.
Rev. Snyder said the Penguins proposed another site for housing, but it was far away from the original church site, closer to Crawford Street and Centre Avenue. “It’s like exchanging a Rolls- Royce for a Pinto,” he said.
Mr. Acklin said that site was only a first proposal.
From the church’s perspective, the conflict with the Penguins is reopening old wounds from Pittsburgh’s 1950s “urban renewal.” As part of that movement, the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority razed the Lower Hill District, a largely Black neighborhood, to make way for the Civic Arena. The Civic Arena was demolished in 2012 after development of the new PPG Paints Arena. The Penguins promised that the land around the new arena would be built with community input.
The demolition of the lower Hill destroyed not only housing, both substandard and good, but also destroyed Black-owned businesses and a major hub for Black culture. About 8,000 people, most of them Black and poor, were shunted into public housing projects that, while new, had none of the access to churches, shops, neighbors and businesses that the lower Hill had had and were far from the Hill District.
Bethel A.M.E.’s congregation traces its roots to 1808. It offered the first school to teach Black people to read and was part of the women’s suffrage movement and other social justice movements. After the Pittsburgh fire of 1845 destroyed the church’s building at the time, the congregation moved to Wylie Avenue and Elm Street. A newer building was erected there in 1906, in the Romanesque style with an 85-foot tower.
According to church documents presented at Friday’s news conference, the 1906 building was appraised at $745,672.75. However, the URA gave the congregation $233,000 for the structure, of which the congregation had to pay $17,000 for the demolition. “They made us pay for the destruction of our church,” Rev. Snyder said.
The church celebrated its 139th anniversary in May 1957 and held its last service in the 1906 building in June 1957. The structure came down later that year. The congregation built its present church in 1959.
Rev. Snyder said he wished the URA had allowed Bethel A.M.E. to stand the way it had allowed Epiphany Roman Catholic Church, a parish with a predominantly white congregation across the street, to remain.
Representatives from Southwestern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Emmanuel Lutheran Church of Eastmont, the Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community and the Sixth Presbyterian Church in Squirrel Hill were among the churches whose representatives spoke in support of Bethel A.M.E.