Five Pittsburgh neighborhoods receiving state grants under the Elm Street program have been awarded onetime infusion bonuses totaling $900,000.

	Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette Courtney Ehrlichman, the Elm Street program manager for Friendship, stands in the Baum Grove parklet. The neighborhood is spending part of its money on a new sign and benches for the park, and an herb garden is being planned. Click photo for larger image.

With $180,000 extra each, the South Side Slopes, East Allegheny, East Liberty, Friendship and Lawrenceville can achieve pieces of their five-year plans more quickly, said Alecia Sirk, Main Street/Elm Street manager for the city Urban Redevelopment Authority.

The needs range from street trees, community gardens and hillside step repairs to buying blighted properties, finishing renovations, and restoring facades and historic character.

Pennsylvania enacted Elm Street two years ago to help invigorate neighborhood streets that are integrated with business corridors. It is not associated with the National Trust for Historic Preservation's 25-year-old Main Street initiative, but it serves as a complement to it; the state Department of Community and Economic Development only grants Elm Street funds to Main Street recipients.

Eighteen neighborhoods pitched comprehensive five-year plans and the best, readiest five made the cut. They were all in their first year of regular funding when the state opened the $1 million bonus round earlier this year. The URA reaps $100,000 of it for administrative and technical assistance costs.

"These neighborhoods were encouraging us to go for the $1 million award, and we got it," said Ms. Sirk. "We got the letter from the state a month ago. The contract is still in the process of being signed."

	Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette These row houses on East Liberty's North Beatty Street will be torn down and replaced by a community garden. Click photo for larger image.

The projects should begin by the end of summer, she said.

Elm Street participants get five-year funding and each must hire a full-time manager. This year, each got $46,700 for reinvestment projects and $40,000 in operational dollars, said Ms. Sirk. After the five-year period, for which funding levels may vary, the neighborhoods must report on results for five years so the state can track its investment.

"The thing about community revitalization is that everything is incredibly complicated," said Ms. Sirk.

Among projects in the South Side Slopes are repairs of hillside steps and in Lawrenceville the purchase of blighted alley houses. The Elm Street managers of those two neighborhoods could not be reached for elaboration.

Friendship is investing in 50 street trees and its Baum Grove parklet at Roup Avenue and South Fairmount Street. Courtney Ehrlichman, Friendship's Elm Street manager, will meet residents in the park at 8 a.m. Saturday for an Elm Street Q&A.

The park is a triangular half-acre behind Day's Baum Boulevard Dodge dealership. Friendship preservation and development groups share ownership. It is lined with recently-pruned ginkgo trees and will get a new sign and new benches made by local artists. A neighborhood herb garden is being planned and Ms. Ehrlichman is trying to get city approval for a public-art mural.

Some of the money will be spent to regrade a lawn on the site into amphitheater-like seating facing a brick stage, she said. The stage has been little-used to date.

The Northside Leadership Conference will manage East Allegheny's projects. The infusion bonus will be used primarily for street trees, particularly at neighborhood gateways east and south of Allegheny General Hospital, including Cedar Avenue along Allegheny Commons park, said Mark Fatla, executive director of the conference.

"The budget is for 20 trees at gateways, and if we can do better on the cost, we will do more," he said. "We identified 19 spots in the neighborhood where street trees are missing, and another six where trees are dead or dying."

East Liberty's money will establish two community gardens and close the books on a list of "almosts" that include purchase of the last of five dilapidated houses behind Peabody High School and the closing of a financing gap in the renovation of Naomi's Place, said Kendall Pelling, East Liberty's Elm Street leader.

Naomi's Place, a project of the Rodman Street Missionary Baptist Church, was once a very large, abandoned house on North Beatty Street that is being renovated as transitional housing for single women moving from substance-abuse rehabilitation into permanent housing.

The project was $20,000 short of the $650,000 renovation cost, which includes improving the streetscape, he said.

The row houses on North Beatty behind Peabody High will be razed, he said, and the half-acre will become a community garden with help from the Urban Farming Initiative and Peabody students.

"The Elm Street money is helping us close small gaps in projects," he said, "small things that make a big difference."