Hill group nears arena deal
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Hill District leaders, determined to redevelop their neighborhood in conjunction with the construction of a new arena, last night said they had reached "a framework for a tentative agreement."
"This is a historic event, actually," said Carl Redwood Jr., chairman of the One Hill Community Benefits Agreement Association.
But Mr. Redwood cautioned, "We don't have an agreement yet. We'll be working out a number of other items, and we look to the very near future to bring a tentative agreement back to the residents."
The Hill District group has spent more than a year negotiating with city and county leaders toward a seven-point blueprint for "A Livable Hill" that spells out the issues to be resolved.
Among the goals are a master plan for development, the establishment of a community-improvement fund, a jobs program, a grocery store, a community center, historic preservation and continued input from residents.
The breakthrough, Mr. Redwood said, occurred in the past week as the Penguins joined the talks. "The Penguins have been negotiating in good faith," he said.
Yarone Zober, the mayor's chief of staff, characterized the keys to yesterday's announcement as a corporate-backed Hill development push and the creation of a job and social services center near the Hill House.
Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, county Chief Executive Dan Onorato and Penguins officials have begun approaching corporate leaders about their participation in a Neighborhood Partnership Program that would provide state tax credits to companies in return for development aid to the Hill.
Mr. Zober said the reception among corporate leaders has been very positive.
The Hill Resource Center will be "a way to connect people to existing services, located right in the Hill," Mr. Zober said. It will tie into the existing CareerLink job-finding system and other services.
Negotiations between the parties at the Downtown headquarters of the Sports & Exhibition Authority that ended around 5:30 p.m. nailed down the key planks of the agreement, which now goes back to the One Hill Community Benefits Coalition for approval and likely modifications.
Then it would go to the SEA board, and possibly the Urban Redevelopment Authority and county agencies.
"This will be a win-win for the Hill District and the Penguins," said former NAACP President Tim Stevens, who described the difficult negotiations as "a birthing process for economic freedom for the Hill."
"We on the Hill don't want to look down on the Penguins," he said. "We want to root for the Penguins."
Marc Dreves, recording secretary and business agent with Teamsters Local 926, praised the framework as an opportunity "for big business and government [to] give something back to the people who live here and who have sacrificed over the years."
The Hill District group had vowed to stop construction of the $290 million replacement for Mellon Arena unless it reached an agreement for guarantees the neighborhood would benefit from the arena.
Mr. Redwood decried recent development in the city that has been blind to the communities affected.
"The way development has been done has not been done in the interest of the community and the public," he said, citing examples such as a new electronic billboard sign being built Downtown.
"We really need to change that in every neighborhood, not just in the Hill. [We can't have] corporations get favors and subsidies from the government without giving back to the community."
The optimism that marked last night's announcement contrasted with on-again, off-again negotiations between Hill leaders, city and county officials and the Penguins.
The negotiations began in earnest in September and occasionally screeched to a halt as Hill leaders asserted that they were not getting a fair deal. In January, members of the One Hill Coalition, upset with the terms of a proposal from the city and county, formally rejected the proposal and set a copy of the document on fire.
And in February, the One Hill Coalition, joined by four other groups, filed an appeal in Common Pleas Court, challenging the city planning commission's Jan. 14 approval of a master plan for the $290 million arena.
First Published April 12, 2008 12:00 am
