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Hill residents back public housing plan
Wednesday, October 17, 2001 By Tom Barnes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
City officials are touting a Bedford Avenue renewal plan as a way to remake public housing in the Hill District.
The $37 million plan involves construction of 187 units in the Middle Hill -- an area roughly bounded by Roberts Street on the west, Bedford on the north, Wylie Avenue and Enoch Street on the south and Erin Street on the east.
Some existing units, which have been acquired by the Urban Redevelopment Authority and the city Housing Authority, would be demolished. Some of the new units would be rental and some would be for sale.
The plan -- which could be under way by spring -- generally got support from Hill District residents at a city Planning Commission hearing yesterday.
Duane Cooper of Devilliers Street, in the target area, said he liked the fact that residents who wanted to remain in their houses and not sell them to the URA could do so. The URA has agreed not to use eminent domain, the city's power to acquire property against an owner's wishes.
The first phase includes two areas, both off Bedford, within a block of each other.
A 4.7-acre section would have 107 units in 27 new buildings, and a three-acre section would contain 80 units in 20 new buildings.
Housing authority official Michael Eannarino said the construction discussed yesterday represented the first of a four-phase, 600-unit, $110 million remake of public housing in the Hill.
Eventually, at least 460 of the 880 existing rundown units in Bedford Dwellings, a public housing project on Bedford Avenue, would be demolished, using a $26.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, he said. The three-story brick units are readily identifiable as public housing, which sometimes carries a stigma for residents, he said.
The new units won't carry such visible identification, he said. Some will be market-rate units and some will be subsidized for people with lower incomes. But all will be designed to look similar.
"This will be a new community," he said. "You won't be able to differentiate the public housing units from the others. This will transform the lives of public housing residents. It will be remarkable."
The housing authority and URA are working with McCormack Baron Associates, a St. Louis-based firm that did the Crawford Square housing development in the lower Hill, just west of the proposed Bedford Avenue housing.
The new housing "will continue the progress of Crawford Square and eliminate blight" in the Hill, said Elbert Hatley, director of the Hill District Community Development Corp., a nonprofit neighborhood group.
The Planning Commission is expected to vote on the plan in two weeks, and then it will go to City Council. If approved there, construction of the first units could start in the spring, Eannarino said. It will take several years to complete all 600 new units.
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