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Sunday, July 21, 2002

By Jan Ackerman, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

After the shutdown of the LTV coke works in 1998, community leaders in Hazelwood took a deep breath and began to visualize living in a community without soot, smog and noise.

	Hazlewood resident and Mon-Fayette Expressway opponent Bill Bellas believes that the proposed expressway route will continue Hazlewood's decline. (Martha Rial, Post-Gazette)

A year later, when the Tennessee-based Sun Coke Co. offered Hazelwood another chance to get a new local coke mill, the community resoundingly rejected it.

"We enjoy not having soot on our houses and our cars," said Hazelwood resident Lisa Kunst Vavro, chairwoman of the Hazelwood Initiative, a nonprofit organization that would like to see Hazelwood return to the era when it was a pleasant home to families who wanted to escape from Downtown, but not be too far away from it.

Its hope for the future lies in negotiations between a group of foundations that is trying to buy the sprawling 178-acre coke works site from bankrupt LTV Corp. The deal has not been finalized, but if it goes through, the Hazelwood Initiative has plans to turn the old mill site into a mixture of residential and commercial, with a marina and maybe a hotel.

But the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission's plans to build a leg of the Mon-Fayette Expressway through the heart of Hazelwood doesn't fit into the group's plans. The four-lane expressway would be built below grade in Hazelwood with at-grade covers providing parking or public open space on top.

"The freeway was not in our vision at all. We feel that it will sever our community," Vavro said. "Whether they compress it or not, we will still have a roar through town."

On Tuesday, residents of Hazelwood will get another chance to voice their opinions about the freeway plans at a public hearing from 1 to 9 p.m. at Burgwin Elementary School.

The hearing is the second of three seeking comments on the newly released draft environmental impact statement for the freeway, part of decades of discussion about the road. The turnpike commission is giving critics until Sept. 9 to review and comment on five documents that make up the draft environmental study.

William D. Bellas, a lifelong Hazelwood resident who is a leader in Citizens for Alternatives to New Toll Roads, said that was still not enough time to digest the five volumes of information filed about the freeway.

"How is a general lay person supposed to read it, digest it and make a statement?" asked Bellas, who will be testifying against the road on Tuesday.

The proposed $2 billion, 24-mile section would go from Route 51, Jefferson Hills, north to the Parkway East in Pittsburgh and Oakland, with a Y-shaped "split" in East Pittsburgh to create a Squirrel Hill bypass that will bring the road through Hazelwood.

About 35 miles of the Mon-Fayette Expressway already is completed south of Route 51 into Washington and Fayette counties.

In Hazelwood, the Mon-Fayette Expressway would have an interchange with Second Avenue near the Glenwood Bridge, an eastbound off-ramp near Hazelwood Avenue, across from the former LTV site, and an interchange that would connect to the Parkway East near Bates Street and to Second Avenue near the Hot Metal Bridge.

What Hazelwood residents don't want, Vavro said, is for the LTV site to be cut off from Hazelwood's main street, Second Avenue, in the way The Waterfront is somewhat isolated from Homestead's main street, Eighth Avenue.

Because of complaints that the freeway would split the community in two, the road was redesigned so that it would be depressed about 25 feet below the existing grade. Three at-grade covers would be built over the expressway that could be used for parking or public open spaces.

Plans call for the highway to go through what is now the CSX railroad right of way between Second Avenue and the Monongahela River.

Rob Hilliard, environmental manager of Mackin Engineering, the firm that prepared the preliminary design, said all at-grade railroad crossings would be eliminated and there would be three new local street crossings between Second Avenue and the LTV site.

The road would displace about 108 residences, 16 businesses, three community facilities and two small parks in Hazelwood. Under the current design, Hilliard said, Pittsburgh Recycling Services, Morningstar Baptist Church, Glenwood Play Area and Elizabeth Street Tot Lot would be among the road's casualties.

He said the freeway has been redesigned so it will not affect the Kerotest Manufacturing Co.

The draft environmental study of the freeway said it would improve access to brownfield sites, including the LTV site in Hazelwood, and would accommodate all proposed riverfront trail projects in Pittsburgh.

City Councilman Bob O'Connor, who represents Hazelwood, is in favor of the highway and thinks it will help revitalize Hazelwood.

The leaders of Hazelwood don't agree.

After a May workshop, the Hazelwood Initiative passed a motion saying, "A four-lane limited access highway is not compatible with the vision for Hazelwood's future."

Bellas predicted that Hazelwood's most valuable resource, its riverfront and green areas with lush vegetation, would be destroyed.

"The value of our riverfronts has not been included in the cost of the toll road," Bellas said.

Fran Bertonaschi, chairman of the Hazelwood Initiative's planning committee, said the committee finally felt like it was poised for a new beginning, but that, "Here comes another environmental disaster."

While Hazelwood leaders fight the highway, they are working with city officials to make positive things happen on heavily traveled Second Avenue.

Mulugetta Birru, executive director of the city's Urban Redevelopment Authority, said a row of dilapidated buildings was being torn down in the 4700 and 4800 blocks of Second Avenue. The two blocks were declared a Keystone Opportunity Zone, which offers tax breaks designed to spur development.

The Spahr Building, a former hall of the International Association of Odd Fellows at the corner of Flowers and Second Avenue, will be restored, said Julie DeSeyn, senior project specialist for the URA.

Steve Gombas, owner of the Dairy Mart on Second Avenue, worked with the URA and Mellon Bank to construct Plaza Sophia, a new office building on Second Avenue that has a Laundromat and a deli that will open tomorrow.

"I have been a business owner here for 10 years, and I have always done well here," said Gombas, who erected the new building to try to provide more services for Hazelwood residents who longed for better services.

Using neighborhood needs money from O'Connor's office and money from the federal weed and seed program, the Hazelwood Initiative turned a vacant lot at Second and Johnston avenues that used to be the site of an abandoned gas station into a community garden with a gazebo.

The group had a ribbon cutting on Friday, which also kicked off the community's fourth season of summer concerts.

Hazelwood, with a population of 5,334, served as an industrial site since the mid-1800s when Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. started building blast furnaces on the site and later built a battery of byproduct ovens to manufacture coke there. The blast furnaces ceased operations in 1979 and were demolished in 1983. After that, the site was used primarily for coke production until it was permanently shut down in 1998.

Hazelwood suffers from blight, open-air drug dealing and other problems related to poverty or near poverty associated with its approximately median household income of $17,117 in 1989, the most recent income information available.

Despite its decline, Hazelwood has a long history of racial harmony and home ownership. About 63 percent of its residents are white and the rest are a mix of minority group members. About 65 percent of its homes are owner occupied, according to the 2000 census.

Bellas, who has lived on a quiet street high above Second Avenue all his life, said he loved Hazelwood for its prime location close to Downtown, Oakland and the South Hills, its inexpensive homes and its diverse population.

"If we build this highway, we are signing a death warrant for Hazelwood," he said.