At times it seemed as if the battle for Oak Hill would never end. More than a decade after Allequippa Terrace, one of the city's worst public-housing tracts, was leveled to make way for a new mixed-income neighborhood, the development was mired in lawsuits, community protests and a bitter turf war with the University of Pittsburgh.

In recent months, the Oak Hill proposal in the Hill District began to loom as a potential political liability for Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's administration. Residents lobbied the new mayor to honor the original agreement, but it looked as if he was prepared to follow his predecessor's lead.

During Mayor Bob O'Connor's brief tenure, then-housing authority board chairman Dennis Regan sided with Pitt in its dispute with Oak Hill residents over a 12-acre site set aside for the final phase of the development. The land at the center of the dispute has one of the most desirable vistas in the city; the residents and the university both coveted it.

Pitt lobbied the authority to renegotiate the original agreement with the residents, citing its long-standing interest in building athletic fields closer to the university. Many of the development's residents were outraged by the authority's willingness to renege on the original agreement and risk losing a promising mixed-income neighborhood that would sustain itself.

Hundreds of residents who had moved out of Allequippa Terrace believed the city's promise that they would be allowed to return in a few years. They looked forward to new homes on land where Pitt wanted to build soccer and baseball fields.

Beacon/Corcoran Jennison, the Oak Hill development's Boston-based builder and manager, sued the university and was close to taking the housing authority to court when hard-nosed negotiations by all parties -- including the mayor's office -- produced an agreement last week.

Pitt will get the Robinson Court site it has wanted in exchange for $4 million for the land, $1 million for programs for residents and $2 million in lease payments for commercial buildings in the development. Meanwhile, 450 new residences will be built for the next phase of Oak Hill on a site stretching toward the Hill District's Reed and Kirkpatrick streets. The final phase of the $90 million development will continue to be built by BCJ, with groundbreaking scheduled for 2008.

Congratulations are due to the Oak Hill Residents Council for fighting tenaciously to regain the project's lost momentum. Its example of citizen action is a model for other communities.

Housing authority Executive Director A. Fulton Meachem Jr., the University of Pittsburgh and Mayor Ravenstahl's office also are to be commended for their efforts to improve this corner of the city with a neighborhood built on diversity.