There are 50,000 people in the shadows of those new stadiums. They've got plans too.
by Lauri Apple
"Getting somebody to stop here is like trying to get people to shop downtown," Lenny Verdetto says with a chuckle. "Here" is Spring Garden--the middle-class, North Side neighborhood where Verdetto's Restaurant stands on Madison Avenue, Spring Garden's designated commercial strip.
For now, Madison doesn't have much commerce. Other than the UPMC Back Institute a few blocks down, Verdetto's is the only business on the street. Since Verdetto opened his restaurant 15 years ago, he's lost dozens of neighborhood regulars to the suburbs. Decay followed; surrounding the restaurant are vacant lots, abandoned houses and Interstate 279, which runs directly in front. At night the street looks desolate and dangerous, even when it isn't either of those things. Several streets away from Verdetto's, East Allegheny resident Barbara Burns points out another desolate and dangerous-looking North Side attraction: its underpasses. "These things are my favorite horrible things about the North Side," she laughs. As she steers her tan hatchback through the Anderson Street underpass, day becomes night at 2 p.m. Burns and other residents call the double railroad/highway barrier the Berlin Wall, because it cuts them off from the Andy Warhol Museum, the Carnegie Science Center and other attractions near the North Shore.
"Nobody ever thought of the underpasses as 'for people,'" she laments. But Burns has worked toward making the North Side "for people" for over 20 years.
Born and raised in East Allegheny, she incorporated the East Allegheny Community Council (EACC) in 1979 to insure the neighborhood had a place at the bargaining table during I-279
construction. The EACC also saved North Side landmarks like the Priory--a historic, 19th-century church, now a banquet facility--from destruction.
Burns still belongs to her neighborhood council, which has 14 properties on its redevelopment agenda. This month she became city councilwoman for District One, which includes her
own neighborhood. "I'm going to have fun down there," she jokes, pointing downtown. The dollar signs in her eyes are neighborhood development grants.
And for the past several years, Burns has had "fun" on the board at the Northside Leadership Conference--"The United Nations of the North Side." NLC unites leaders from 13 of the North Side's 18 neighborhoods to decide on redevelopment initiatives, economic and planning issues and unsexy issues such as underpasses, parking and re-zoning. Since 1980, NLC has planned and/or developed millions of dollars worth of residential and commercial property. Its small staff also coordinates a neighborhood employment center, an economic revitalization program and community outreach activities.
After years of working for positive change, Burns knows the North Side's growth markers and problems like she knows her front steps. She keeps a lengthy fix-it list in her head. Near the top--somewhere next to improving the underpasses--is making Madison Avenue thrive.
In 1997, the NLC's City Shops program helped Lenny Verdetto and wife Pat renovate the exterior of their 100-year-old restaurant, including a new facade. The owners redid the interior as well. It now features antique furnishings and a tin ceiling. "People thought this was a new place when they saw it," Verdetto says proudly. On most afternoons, the restaurant bustles. During the dinner rush the Verdettos wait on tables, check up on customers and get an earful of daily news. In the past couple of years, the gossip has sounded less and less familiar, Lenny Verdetto says; the bulk of their business now comes from across the interstate and beyond. But Verdetto is optimistic for the future, and it isn't only because two stadiums are going up just down the road: "I think in 10 years we won't recognize this street."
Think of "North Side redevelopment," and expensive stadium projects immediately spring to mind. Next year, the Pirates will host their first game at PNC Park. The Steelers will score their
first touchdown--with any luck--at Steelers Stadium a few yards away. The new stadiums will join the Andy Warhol Museum, the National Aviary and other cultural attractions on the
North Shore, as well as the waterfront's small business incubators and parks. Sports team owners, politicians and city residents hope their investments will bring commerce and tourist
dollars.
But North Shore development sometimes overshadows North Side development. The North Side comprises one-fifth of the city of Pittsburgh. The waterfront tract is only one of the
North Side's 18 neighborhoods and represents a fraction of its more than 50,000 residents. Many North Side neighborhoods wear the mark of successful preservation programs and
extensive rehabilitation. All feature underdeveloped areas, boarded-up houses and vacant lots.
Ed Brandt, executive director of NLC, can deal with vacant lots. What worries him is that North Shore development will turn the North Side into the parking lot of Pittsburgh. "We don't want people buying up residential structures and demolishing them for more parking spaces," he says. Parking is already the dominant land use of the North Shore, and when Plan B is finished it will have created 5,200 spaces. Last January, Brandt and other North Side advocates reluctantly agreed to the Urban Redevelopment Authority's deal with Allegheny Center Mall to convert two nearby green spaces into surface parking lots. They'd rather not do it again.
Cement and vast empty spaces skew people's perceptions. Gray landscapes make them feel intimidated and unsafe. Add years of bad press and a history of urban planning disasters, and even vast green spaces like West Park lose their vibrancy.
"We don't want to make the same mistakes people made 30 years ago," Barbara Burns says. One "mistake" is Allegheny Center itself, a socialist-realist experiment of the '60s that replaced 500 businesses and a public square with a failed mall. In recent years, Allegheny Center's one million-plus square feet of space have become offices. It is almost completely occupied now. Yet it's still characterless and cold.
Another "mistake" is I-279. When PennDOT constructed the highway in the '80s, they created an insurmountable physical and communication barrier between several North Side neighborhoods. It's hard to build community spirit when half the community is several concrete lanes away.
But perhaps the most damaging "mistake" affecting the North Side is perpetuated by television. Eric Kukura, former director of the NLC's City Shops program, keeps a top five list of reasons why the North Side doesn't share the same popularity as Shadyside, the South Side and other Pittsburgh neighborhoods. The news is number one. "If a robbery takes place in a North Side neighborhood," Kukura explains, "the media refers to that particular neighborhood as 'the North Side.' But if a robbery occurs in Squirrel Hill, it's not 'the East End.' Reporters should be careful when they refer to a specific part of the city. Otherwise, let's use 'City of Pittsburgh' and we can all suffer the brunt."
To be certain, homicides occasionally steal peace from North Side street corners. At night, prostitutes walk near East Ohio Street, looking for commerce one wouldn't expect on Walnut Street in Shadyside, Carson in the South Side and other popular strips. Though the North Side boasts an estimated 200 social service agencies, homeless people--many of them from other neighborhoods--use the North Side's parks and alleys for night-time shelter. "We're not all poor, homeless or criminal," Kukura emphasizes. In fact, it's affluent suburbanites who bring other troubles to the North Side. "When visitors need a place to park, pee or litter," Kukura laments, "the North Side becomes the safest place in the world." After football games, Kukura often has to tow Steelers fanmobiles from his driveway. He doesn't want to be doing the same five years from now.
Better mass transit could alleviate the North Side's parking crunch. Port Authority Transit recently secured federal funding to study a light-rail transit line that would link the North Shore to downtown and the South Hills. One plan would put the light-rail line underground. Barbara Burns is crossing her fingers. "I don't believe in redevelopment at any cost," she says, parking her car at the foot of the Federal Street underpass. "Let's use creativity. We don't need another underpass."
The North Side's underpasses are about as sexy as cement parking lots, but as links between the North Side and other neighborhoods they're essential. Anderson, Sandusky and Federal provide direct pedestrian/road access to downtown. Farther west, Merchant and Allegheny connect North Side neighborhoods. Yet all have been neglected for years. Burns points to the roof of the Federal Street underpass. It has cracks and holes that leak puddles of water onto the unfixed sidewalk; walls and lighting are in desperate need of repair. It's become a canvas for graffiti artists and a rest stop for the homeless. Burns and other neighborhood advocates have lobbied the city for improvements. An Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) study completed in July suggests almost $6 million dollars in improvements, including a consistent streetscape north and south of the underpasses, lights, historical markers and murals to connect the underpasses to businesses and attractions on neighboring streets.
Burns calls both the North Shore and the other North Side assets "pearls." "When you string them together and make a necklace," she says, "they have a greater value." She parks across the street from a "pearl" of un-Plan B-like proportions: a small tennis court, located in East Allegheny next to a medical center. The fenced-off plot is sunk deep in the ground, barely noticeable from street view. "You're isolated playing there," Burns laments. But by simply removinga short wall of earth from the court's southern side, she explains, people who play there would feel safer. "Sometimes one detail makes all the difference," she says.
Allegheny Center is nearby. Burns wants to re-establish a walkway between its East and West Commons, greenspaces currently divided by the mall and underdeveloped space. A pedestrian connection might inspire people to visit Western Avenue on one side and East Ohio Street on the other.
With museums, stadiums and diversity, it's only logical the North Side should be a prosperous community. Each neighborhood has unique qualities--from the German flavor of Troy Hill to the independently owned businesses on East Ohio Street, the North Side's major commercial strip. Community initiatives such as the summer-long Farmer's Market bring rich and poor together. But important North Side streets like Madison and Federal feature empty storefronts and wasted space. Other than a lively pornographic movie theater, Federal has experienced little economic growth until very recently, when Allegheny General Hospital bought a large building for expansion.
And socioeconomic problems follow. In East Allegheny, one-third of the population lives below the poverty level. Half never graduated from high school, and many are unemployed.
East Allegheny County Council president Randy Strothman is often forced to make decisions affecting neighbors living far outside of the advocacy loop. An independent creative consultant, he lives in an elegant home the EACC renovated several years ago and is one of the more affluent residents on his block. But when he looks beyond his backyard to the alley below, he sees a vista of unresolved issues. Yet he doesn't look away. Neither do his neighbors. "The level of volunteerism in our neighborhoods is astonishing," Strothman says. "People pick up garbage on the sidewalks and streets. They clean up vacant lots." Strothman does too. He points to his neighbor's garage. "One day," he says, "I got tired of looking at that and decided to paint it myself." Once dirty and covered with graffiti, the door now has a clean, white facade.
Nuisance bars on nearby East Ohio Street still fill up with underemployed locals who voluntarily produce litter. Strothman often fields complaints about drunks sprawled on neighbors' lawns. A few weeks ago, a flight of church steps across the street from his own house served as a makeshift bed for prostitutes. Drug dealers and garbage piles have long called West Park home. Nevertheless, Strothman says greening and rehabilitation are "probably more important" for low income neighborhoods than for affluent ones. "Conservation and sustainable development aren't just cocktail party topics for middle class suburbanites," he says. "The poorer you are, the more it makes sense to hold on to what you have."
No one will move to the North Side to be near new stadiums, no matter how many are built. Randy Strothman and others saw the North Side as an opportunity to transform decayed streets into flourishing ones. Still others are also interested in historic preservation. More than a hundred years ago, the North Side was the City of Allegheny, the home of wealthy families. The city's Historic Review Commission designated four North Side neighborhoods--Allegheny West, Deutschtown, Manchester and the Mexican War Streets--as historic districts. Thanks to grass roots preservation efforts, these four areas now feature stately, refurbished homes and host house tours and garden parties.
In the Mexican War Streets, the Central Northside Neighborhood Council has developed rehabilitation programs to turn unused buildings into occupied homes quickly and cheaply. Through its "shell rehab" program, the Council finishes exterior work to replace new windows, secure floorboards and redo antique facades. For $30,000, buyers can complete the interiors to their liking. To finance these projects, they secure funds from the city's Department of Urban Planning and the URA as well as nearby corporate sponsors. "There's an assumption that the poor have been moved out of the North Side and replaced in some areas," says Sala Udin, city councilman whose district includes part of the North Side. "But it's not true. People are moving into abandoned buildings, spending money to fix them up and bringing up the rest of the neighborhood. North Side neighborhoods are the most organized in my district," he says--which includes Downtown and the Hill. "I'd say they're the most effective in the city."
In the past couple of years, the NLC has secured help from corporate interests and other neighborhood groups, including a major job training grant from Alcoa and a joint effort with Allegheny General Hospital (AGH) for the Northside Partnership program, which encourages hospital employees to buy homes on the North Side and fosters investment. AGH is also the major underwriter of the $40 million Federal/North Redevelopment Project, intended to change the blighted three-block area into a renovated gateway street. Last year, the Conference developed the Northside Planning Committee for city officials, sports team owners and North Side residents to discuss Plan B development. "If it wasn't for stadium development," admits North Side Civic Development Council director Graham Ivory, "there's no way the North Side would be getting this kind of investment." The NCDC works with the Leadership Council on similar goals. However, Ivory adds, Plan B is a different kind of project compared to previous North Side development initiatives. This time, city officials have included North Side residents in their discussions. "I give the city kudos," he says. "I guess they've realized the decisions on the table are going to affect our lives for the next 30 years."
Community initiatives are minuscule in comparison to projects the size of Plan B. But it doesn't always take a half-billion dollar budget to produce major progress. Sometimes all it takes is a furnace.
"We probably would have been better off making this a vacant lot," Barbara Burns says, as she drives up to a house on East Allegheny's Cedar Avenue. Once an upscale, three-story Victorian, the house was a wreck when the EACC purchased it a few years ago. The roof was caving in, and there were ferns growing on the second floor. Through grants from the URA, Allegheny County, Duquesne Light and others, the EACC installed a geothermal furnace. The house will provide energy for properties nearby, including several homes, a laundromat and a restaurant. Wells drilled into a parking lot behind the house will absorb heat from the earth. After six to 12 months as a demonstration project, the EACC will auction off the house. "We could get $250,000 for this one," Burns says excitedly. Then her cell phone beeps.
It's Tom Cox, executive secretary to Mayor Tom Murphy, with a question about Howard Street. Located adjacent to I-279, Howard Street featured a row of stately homes until PennDOT began building the expressway in the '80s. The homes' foundations began to crack and slip, forcing tenants to leave. PennDOT bought the land; today it's barren and covered with trash. "You can't let Howard Street remain a wreck," the newly crowned councilwoman tells Cox. "Let's make it safe, and put it on the tax rolls again."
It sounds like a prescription for the North Side itself.
After she hangs up, she explains her sentimental attachment to the street: "It's named after my grandfather."
Lauri Apple writes for In Pittsburgh, where this article first appeared
