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Park Place is not recognized as a neighborhood by the city, but just to prove how much that matters, a few dozen East Enders last week elected officers and, short of nonprofit status, got legs as the Greater Park Place Neighborhood Association.
They turned out two dozen strong at last week's zoning board hearing Downtown, wearing tags that bore the group name and a leaf motif. They had cobbled together enough money to pay attorney Arnold Horovitz to help them fight the fight that galvanized them: a developer's plans to use -- some say encroach on -- residential land for a Walgreens driveway, razing three big, sturdy old homes in the process.
The zoning board granted Mr. Horovitz's request for a continuance, delaying until Jan. 5 consideration of Paradise Development Corp.'s request for a variance and special exception. Paradise needs those zoning allowances to build a landscaped parking buffer and two drive-thru lanes for the store.
With a breather in their first battle, the Park Place neighbors smiled determinedly on their way out of the hearing room.
"Most people aren't against Walgreens," Mr. Horovitz said. "But they need to make their project fit the site instead of trying to grab residential property. They made concessions in East Liberty for their development. They can do the same for Park Place."
John Mayberry, the association's new president, said that, "win or lose with this issue, a formal organization will empower us to seek grant money, to put together a neighborhood development plan and help us take our destiny in our hands."
He said the "Greater" in the name welcomes people from surrounding neighborhoods.
Almost every neighborhood organization begins in opposition to something or response to a crisis. It's a giddy time, like the first years of love.
"Yes, it's like you're on fire and you can't do enough," said Bev Boggio, a board member of the South Side Slopes Association. That group formed in 1998 after a fire in one house on Holt Street burned two more before trucks could get there. "It was Memorial Day weekend," she said. "We lobbied for shorter trucks to maneuver our hills and narrow streets. Around Christmas of 1999, the city took delivery of their first short fire truck."
In Garfield in 1975, the issues were a tangled web: blight, abandonment, civil unrest and political neglect. Father Leo Henry launched Bloomfield-Garfield Corp. as a people-power movement that year, and it has become one of the most venerated neighborhood organizations in the city.
In Manchester, the threat of mass bulldozing in the 1960s stimulated the founding of the Manchester Citizens Council, which has since steered an affordable housing plan that has coincided with a jump in neighborhood income by 23 percent since 1990.
Park Place for years had an easygoing and unstructured organization that woke up to breathe life into an annual summer picnic for about 400 households in the northeastern corner of Point Breeze.
Penn Hackney, a 13-year resident of what he has always thought was Regent Square, lives within that area, which also abuts Wilkinsburg. Asked to define Park Place, he said, "I'd guess Forbes to Penn and South Braddock to ... I don't know, East End Avenue? Trenton?"
Stephanie Sullivan said it is "from Peebles to Braddock and from Penn to Forbes, and we include that little bump across Braddock which is Briar Cliff [behind Waverly Presbyterian Church]."
Many believe the city granted Park Place official status some 15 years ago. The neighborhood does have welcome signs.
"I guess getting recognition will be one of our issues as a group," said Ms. Sullivan, "because everyone here knows it's Park Place."
After that first giddy cause is fought and won or lost, what keeps neighbor groups active is love of place, whether it's a "real" neighborhood or not. Without Park Place on the list, Pittsburgh has 88 official neighborhoods made up of well more than 100 huddles of citizens who assert their their-ness as a neighborhood coalition, association, council, corporation or initiative.
Some are sophisticated, with paid development and planning professionals. Some are volatile collections of Chickens Little. Most are led by residents who care more than they have time to.
"The thing that worries me is that we're a very small neighborhood to be able to sustain the kind of organization" being discussed, said Ms. Sullivan, who, several years ago, collected contact information from her neighbors at the polling place and developed an e-mail list of 250 names for a block watch.
The list has been used to alert neighbors about lost cats, bad contractors and break-ins, but it served "tremendously" to rally people to confront the Walgreens development, she said. "My hope is that we stay agile as a group, so that we are able to maintain viability and keep people involved" without a crisis.
"The Walgreens development and the way it's been handled has been so galvanizing," said resident Jim Hart. "If they can use a residential space for a driveway, that's a precedent that can be used in the whole corridor.
"It's apparent we need to get together because our elected and appointed officials won't protect us.
"This is the evolution of a group that was established to have a summer picnic," he said. "We've always been a live-and-let-live, get-along kind of place, but we have hidden reserves of strength. It's sort of like being in a Frank Capra movie."
