From the Robinson Street extension, you wouldn't even think to glance up the little street its denizens call Whitney Terrace -- a dead-end pathway of busted-up asphalt, really. It isn't marked. It's barely wide enough for two cars, and the city doesn't maintain it.

Larry Johnson has kept it patched together so his family and their few neighbors can park behind their homes. He's in the construction business and has renovated almost every home in this surprisingly rural enclave. It has been so isolated that Barbara Johnson can walk the properties in her housecoat collecting fallen pears to can with no worry of scrutiny, save that of deer or wild turkeys.

But the Johnsons have learned there's no such thing as being isolated when you're on the perimeter of the University of Pittsburgh.

Whitney Terrace -- the little world Larry Johnson was born into and kept his family together in -- is not long for the real world. Pitt's Olympic Sports Complex is already under construction on the other side of the tree line -- 12.2 level acres that will become a 1,500-seat baseball field, a 1,500-seat soccer field and an 800-seat softball field. It was granted a special zoning exception pertaining to noise and lighting last month.

"They've shoved us in a corner like a rat,' said Mrs. Johnson, who originally said she would fight the loss of her home, a haven where Johnson kids have lived beside their parents. If the university didn't buy them out, she said, it would drive them out with game noise, band practice, cars crowding up into their private little drive and lights high in the air just across the driveway.

"I'm 70 years old and I don't want the stress of it," she said. "I can't live like that."

The Johnsons have reached an agreement with Pitt for their four properties and will be house hunting for the first time in their lives.

Their longtime neighbor, Gloria Besley, a real estate broker whose mother raised her on Whitney Terrace, returned from her home in Georgia to advocate for the Johnsons and James Spearman when she heard the university offered Mr. Spearman $40,000 for his house.

"I thought they were being taken advantage of," said Mrs. Besley. She met with university officials last week to negotiate a better price for five of the properties.

The Johnsons' fate is the flip side of the happy ending Oak Hill celebrated last year, on the sports complex's more visible border.

In March 2007, when representatives of Pitt, the city, the Pittsburgh Housing Authority and Beacon/Corcoran Jennison, the developer of Oak Hill, hammered out a deal that got Pitt its prize and Oak Hill compensations and investment, the residents of Whitney Terrace weren't part of it.

University officials claimed magnanimity for contacting them at all -- last month.

"We didn't even have to let Brackenridge know," Eli Shorak, an associate vice chancellor, told the Zoning Board of Adjustment.

Brackenridge Street is the address for Whitney Terrace houses on the county assessment site, but the tax bills are addressed to Whitney Terrace. The Johnsons can't even see Brackenridge deep below their front lawns because of dense foliage, and they have no access to that street. They get their mail at Whitney Terrace and suspect the address was changed to lower their value, since Brackenridge is on the Hill District side of their homes.

When Pitt did let Brackenridge know, the Johnsons showed up at the zoning hearing last month to argue about ingress and egress. They were told the hearing was only to determine by how much the university could exceed residential compatibility standards for noise and lighting.

University officials said they would let the Johnsons use Whitney Terrace. They tried to assure residents that games would be over by 9:30 or 10 p.m. and that crowds won't be an issue: "If we're lucky, we'd get a few hundred people," Mr. Shorak told the zoning board. He said the nearby parking garage has adequate space after work hours, when most games would be played.

University officials reasoned that a car horn is 110 decibels and they were only asking for 75.

Knowing car horns don't sound for nine innings, the Johnsons said they are insulted. More than that, said Mrs. Johnson, propping her chin on her hands, "We are in-con-se-quen-tial."