There are certain things we say so frequently about the destruction of the Lower Hill that they become almost ritual, and for many statements, the repetition is justified. Misguided development displaced 8,000 people and destroyed 1,300 buildings on 28 acres. With a few wide but ghostly streets and no actual buildings currently going in, those facts are continually instructive about why we’ve had a mess for 60 years and why it’s taking so long to rebuild. Arguably, you can’t say them often enough.
But then there is the statement, “We need to reconnect the Lower Hill with Downtown.” In discussions about improving the fate of the Hill, and how to repair and rebuild, that assertion has emerged frequently. Specifically, it’s featured in the Lower Hill Land Development Plan of September 2014. The plan, produced with Urban Design Associates, LaQuatra Bonci Landscape Architects and Trans Associates Engineers for the city’s Sports & Exhibition Authority and Urban Redevelopment Authority, is essentially the guide to rebuilding the Lower Hill.
Unfortunately, we seem to have lost sight of what reconnecting really means. The timing is particularly unfortunate, because the SEA just received $19 million in federal funds to construct a concrete cap over the portion of I-579 between Centre Avenue and Bigelow Boulevard under precisely the premise of reconnecting the Hill with Downtown. Weeks earlier, LaQuatra Bonci had released a proposed design scheme for the park to be situated on that cap.
LaQuatra Bonci has led a multi-phase, open and responsive community process to develop its design, and the initial proposals present aesthetically pleasing and urbanistically useful elements. And prominent Hill figures including Pittsburgh City Councilor Daniel Lavelle and Hill CDC President Marimba Milliones have spoken in favor of the highway cap.
Unfortunately, the very premise of the highway cap does not hold up under scrutiny.
On one hand, the connection that’s sought already exists. You can already walk down either Centre or Bedford from the Hill into Downtown.
Covering a space between the two bridges with a big plane of landscape will be a slight improvement, but let’s be real. The great tangle of highways, compounded by the fortress-like remove of the USX Tower and Marriott City Center, mean that though it will always be possible to get there, it will always be dehumanizing, too.
The proposed park would look over the highway on two sides. On a third, it will face the unremitting Chatham Street wall of the Doubletree Hilton (with its own forlorn strip of greenspace). On the fourth, it will face a still-undeveloped parcel of the Lower Hill for which, someday, maybe, there will be a building, across the daunting intersection of Washington Place.
If you were teaching urban design to fourth-graders, you would tell them that the more long blank walls, fast roads and inaccessible garages you have surrounding your public space, the less successful it will be. Somehow, Pittsburgh’s great minds of urban design have lost sight of this handy rule and insisted on a new park in a place with astonishingly bad connectivity.
Also, it looks really bad to secure $19 million to build open concrete space next to your already vast open concrete space when your affordable-housing component in the nearby Lower Hill is stalled because of insufficient funds. Granted, one is a federally funded highway project, and the adjacent property is being developed separately by the Penguins. But the appearance is shameful.
Meanwhile, two instructive developments are progressing in the Hill, east of Crawford Street, away from the Penguins development site. The August Wilson House is undergoing a substantial renovation as a small arts center. Already, a production of the famed playwright’s Seven Guitars is being staged in the backyard of the house, where it is actually set.
Around the corner, the August Wilson Park reopened on Saturday. Formerly Cliffside Park, the small neighborhood greenspace with playground equipment and a majestic view over the Allegheny is already in use.
Both of these projects are notably smaller and less costly than the highway cap. Both are demonstrably effective now, with an emphasis on people already in place. Both derive from understanding what communities and resources in the Hill really are.
The real reconnection that needs to take place is of the Hill with itself. This is the gist of the 2009 Hill Greenprint, sponsored by groups including the Hill House Association and the Hill District Consensus Group. It’s also the implicit goal of a variety of groups and organizations at work on projects east of Crawford Avenue every day.
The biggest tragedy of the highway cap is not simply that it will be hugely ineffective, though that will be true. The problem is that in the name of reconnection, it actually directs resources away from the Hill, not toward it, where much smaller sums seem to produce compelling results much more efficiently.
This article appears in Aug 10-16, 2016.
How in the world did they get $19 million to build a giant concrete thing no one needs when human beings and small local businesses are being forced out of East Liberty and the Hill needs rebuilding?!? Connecting is all well and good, but how about emphasizing more PROTECTING our people?!?
The rehabilitation and reimagining of the recently reopened August Wilson Park (formerly Cliffside) has been a project of the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, City of Pittsburgh’s Departments of Public Works and City Planning, and Hill House Association. Extensive and honest community conversations and input were key components of the design, planning, construction, and reopening of August Wilson Park. The joy of the community and all involved was clearly evident at the park’s reopening event, and was indeed a wonderful thing to see.
connecting the residentiwl community withits neihboring communities needs to be considered as priority. Building infrastructure, fundung home loans, 2nd mortgages and grants to revitalize the residential properties, priority. Tax breaks, loans and grants forthe commercisl area and building new commercial spaces all priorities. Connection could occur by creating attractive avenues to oass into to2n. But perhaps a priority better suited for succesful rejuvenation is creating valuable access into the hill and destinations that attract all city dwellers.
The 2009 Greenprint referenced here is a plan for Hill District development that is smart and sensitive to both the environment and to the Hill’s history and culture. It was created in a deeply collaborative process with Hill residents, a process facilitated by the Hill House. The author, architect Walter Hood, has every bit of the credentials of LaQuatra Bonci Landscape Architects, leading us to ask, Why is the community’s own plan being ignored by the City? This is our chance to correct historic wrong-doing to an entire community- and it’s a golden opportunity that won’t come around again anytime soon.
It seems that this is a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good. It is without doubt a good thing to cover even just this one block of the highway rather than to leave its entire length as an open scar. Yes, it would probably be better if the open space could be further up the slope and immersed in the center of the Lower Hill development; that would allow this parcel to become a denser mixed-use development, bridging the divide between Golden Triangle and Lower Hill programmatically and from a massing standpoint. Sadly, the funding for this project cannot be used flexibly, so it is rather a take it or leave it proposition. I’ll take it and count it as a gain for the city overall.
The Hill community continues to be this organized force to fight back against this terrible plan. The community has already developed a plan and the city, SEA, and Penguins will not be able to continue to ignore us for long. But I also tired of waiting and doing whatever I can to continue to work with amazing group of people in the Hill to come up with community solutions to revitalize and make the community economically strong while preserving the historic and cultural legacy of the Hill! The restoration of the August Wilson House (#AWHouse) is a great example of a grass root community solution to counter act the city’s horrible urban redevelopment plans and a catalyst for positive change in a community (such as the Hill) that have been economically dis-invested for decades through racism and bad policy making by the powers that be. I will not sit on the sideline and let history repeat itself! So the fight continues and I believe that WE CAN WIN!!!
People keep asking me about the $19 million for the Hill District. The Hill District did not get $19 million. The money is another subsidy for the Penguins. In addition to the more than $750 million they have already received.
$19 million more for the Penguins no money for the Curtain Call community project promised in 2009.
Clear-eyed analysis beats blind Chamber-of-Commerce cheerleading every time. And let’s not forget all of the Hill District connections to Uptown (the Fifth/Forbes corridor). Knitting together those two neighborhoods would be a boost to both Oakland and Downtown.
Cheese and rice, look into this project a little deeper.
Housing is irrelevant to this project because it is federally funded through a TIGER grant, which comes through the Dept. of Transportation specifically for transit projects. This cap project has been an idea for years and the DOT didn’t initially see it relevant as a transit project at first; it took several years of applications by state representatives to coherence agreement.
It is not just a slab of concrete. The proposal will build up terra and support vegetation in a highly exposed, hot and uncomfortable link between Uptown, the Hill, and Downtown.
The 28-acres “someday, maybe” will be developed; wouldn’t creating physical access, outdoor congregation space, preformative space, and commercial space that bridges the largest obstruction to existing vibrance create a more inciting and commercially viable prospect for the Lower Hill? Developmental energy will come from Downtown toward the Hill, regardless of how ideal it seems to be in the inverse.
And FYI: it’s LaQuatra Bonci Associates and Walter Hood is a landscape architect, not an architect.
In spite of all of the critiques and pessimism of the author and commentators, I think it will be nice to have the gash in the middle of the city covered. Glad that the city was smart enough to put together a credible proposal for the $19 million.
Can’t wait to see this project get underway. The arguments against it hold no weight. Misguided frustration, apathy toward government, I get it. This, however, is a beautiful idea, funded by a grant specifically designed for THIS project, that will transform an area of downtown that is frankly inhospitable.
This is a practical means of helping the Hill. While symbolic means like the August Wilson House are great, there needs to practical means as well.
It’ll be great, haters will come around.