Two self-driving cars from the Uber test track in Hazelwood queued up to turn onto Second Avenue the other day. They slipped through the green light, turning left from the Almono site where Uber is, so far, the sole entity.
Redevelopment of the 178-acre site — the former LTV Coke Works along the Monongahela River — has lagged, but drills and hammers are making noise in the rest of the neighborhood.
Smaller investors, residents and non-profits are getting a head start to ensure that a giant riverfront development doesn’t dictate the neighborhood’s course.
Jourdan Hicks, a graduate student in education at Duquesne University and a board member of the Hazelwood Initiative, is a fourth generation resident. She said that Hazelwood — taking lessons from thriving, overpriced neighborhoods such as East Liberty and Lawrenceville — is both optimistic and leery of change to come.
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For generations a strong, working- and middle-class neighborhood with a bustling traditional retail corridor, Hazelwood took the same blow many neighborhoods and municipalities took with the decline in industry. The former coke works employed thousands. Today, many homes need repairs, 20 percent are vacant, and the poverty rate is around 25 percent.
But the neighborhood has a tenacious identity, with strong representation at events and meetings. It also has great housing potential — now highly affordable.
“Hazelwood has always had its own swagger,” Ms. Hicks said. “We all want it to become what we think it can be. But we don’t want to lose who we are. We’re the seeds of our neighborhood’s soil.”
Baking and cooking
Two enterprises are moving into newly renovated storefronts in 2017.
Fabien Moreau, owner of the French bakery La Gourmandine, expects to open his third store in the former Dimperio’s Market, 5013 Second Ave., by mid-January. His others are in Lawrenceville and Mt. Lebanon. The new site provides enough space for the production kitchen he said he has needed.
“Hazelwood is changing,” he said, “and I think more people will move there and buy a house. And I hope they will like French pastries.”
Population (2010 Census): 4,317
By age: 24.2 percent under 18; 14.3 percent 65 and older
Home ownership: 28.8 percent
Average home sale price: $24,156
Householders living alone: 37.9 percent
Renter-occupied: 45.1 percent
Vacant property rate: 20.2 percent
Vacant land parcels: 25.43 percent
Sources: University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Social and Urban Research and University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work.
By spring, Community Kitchen Pittsburgh expects to establish its culinary-based workforce training and catering enterprise in the former G.C. Murphy building. Now in a shared space in Uptown, it needs a bigger site to train more people in meal preparation, said its founder and executive director, Jennifer Flanagan.
“We’ve been talking to chefs about this, and they’re excited,” she said. “There is a shortage of qualified prep and line cooks.”
Community Kitchen delivers 2,500 meals a day to schools, shelters and non-profits, and 70 percent of its budget comes from earned revenue, she said. Because it is a training site for people who have employment challenges, it also depends on charitable donations to support them as they learn.
These enterprises will join businesses that include Fat Rai’s, a restaurant known for its wings; Elite Treats and Specialty Feasts, a catering company; and Dylamato’s Market, which began as a farm stand in 2014 and gained a storefront in February. It has been the only market since Dimperios closed in 2009.
’Tis So Sweet, another enterprise, operates out of a church and sells its products wholesale to customers that include Dylamato’s.
The market’s owner, Dianne Shenk, said clusters of food businesses attract people to a neighborhood, “and people who come here and get out of their cars is a good thing.” She said the two bakers will complement each other because they sell different products.
Trying to avoid flippers
Anticipating the possibility that the Almono development will draw speculators and flippers who might drive up housing prices, the Hazelwood Initiative is buying vacant homes to rehabilitate for affordable purchase. It has sold several so far and is preparing to start work on four others soon, said Sonya Tilghman, executive director of the Initiative.
It also provides 50 percent discounts to moderate-income people on exterior repairs. It refers low-income elderly, veterans and disabled residents to Rebuilding Together Pittsburgh, whose crews have renovated numerous homes in Hazelwood to make them more secure, better investments.
Ms. Tilghman said the Initiative hopes to start a home ownership incubator in a three-unit building so that people rent from the Initiative while they repair bad credit and save for a down payment to buy a home.
Next year, the Initiative will apply for funding to begin renovation of the former Gladstone Middle School, which it bought for $250,000 in November with support from Center of Life, the Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group and the Make it Right Foundation. The school closed in 2001.
Plans for its reuse include 30 affordable apartments, workforce development, a full-service medical clinic and expansion of Center of Life, a family and youth enrichment program that has had support from more than 20 foundations.
“We went through community meetings for almost two years,” said Tim Smith, founder and executive director of Center of Life. “We had no less than 90 people at every meeting. We talked about what they wanted, not just at Gladstone but neighborhood-wide.”
The most visible work so far has been that of ACTION-Housing, which invested in several non-housing projects at the request of the Heinz Endowments.
“It was a different kind of project,” said Linda Metropulos, acting deputy director of ACTION-Housing, “but when you can help with commercial revitalization in a neighborhood like Hazelwood, more people benefit.”
After renovating an old church into the new Carnegie Library branch, which is also home to the Early Learning Hub and the Greater Hazelwood Family Center, ACTION-Housing garnered Dollar Bank’s in redeveloping the properties for La Gourmandine and Community Kitchen.
Life-long resident Esther Waller, who retired in 1992 from the U.S. Postal Service, said she is optimistic about development throughout the neighborhood, despite the potential for an imbalance in housing costs someday.
“We were a thriving community once, then we were desolate, and we want to see it thrive again,” she said. “I may not be around to see it all, but we are on the uprise.”
Diana Nelson Jones: djones@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1626.
First Published: December 31, 2016, 5:00 a.m.
