Developers behind the proposal to build a music venue in the Lower Hill District held a virtual forum with residents on Thursday in response to criticism over their lack of communication.
The meeting came at the encouragement of the City of Pittsburgh’s Planning Commission, which delayed multiple votes to move the project forward at its Jan. 10 meeting. Commissioners cited a lack of trust among residents in the historically Black Hill District.
Among the concerns discussed was access to the roughly half-acre of privately-owned green space included in the plan.
Craig Dunham, senior vice president of development for the Pittsburgh Penguins, said the space will be privately maintained but open to all.
“We may have a portion of it closed at night like the city parks are, but we would maintain public access for people to move through the blocks to get from one end of the site to the other,” he said.
The open space in question would surround an indoor music venue fit to hold 4,500 people, as well as a 900-space parking garage. The parcel—known as Block E—is but one part of the 28-acre site owned by the Urban Redevelopment Authority and the Sports and Exhibition Authority.
In earlier discussions of the project, the city advocated against taking on green spaces created through the Lower Hill development as new public assets, according to Dunham. He said they together decided to keep these open spaces under the ownership of the adjacent developers.
When asked about implementing any measures to address traffic brought in by the project, and keeping roads clear for emergency vehicles, Boris Kaplan, an executive with the Buccini Pollin Group, said he thought current roads surrounding the site already provide emergency vehicles with sufficient space to service the area, given the anticipated demand.
Residents also criticized the developers for dropping a 101-page report as last week’s Planning Commission meeting got underway. Dunham maintained that the report mostly contained material already presented and distributed over the last several years about its community commitments, echoing explanations from the developers’ lawyers.
The report includes developers’ contracts with 73 minority- and women-owned businesses to work on construction and pre-development. Developers say they have committed nearly $25 million to Black-owned businesses so far.
Still, that makes up less than half of the overall subcontracts awarded.
According to a spokesperson for the developers, 40 residents joined Thursday’s meeting on Zoom (it was set so public participants couldn’t view attendees). But most of the discussion addressed questions preselected by the developers.
Hill District resident Renee Wilson said that kind of discussion couldn’t sufficiently engage stakeholders, especially when many don’t have the technology to join online, or don’t know how.
“They should at least know what is going on, respect them enough to give them a meeting that they can access,” Wilson said. “You can't keep having Zoom meetings with the elders, who have the most at stake.”
In an online petition, Wilson called the meeting “poorly planned,” and called on the developers to convene “a timely community meeting with proper notification in a space that is accessible to all with accommodations such as transportation for our seniors.”
Many of them were living in the area when the construction of the former Civic Arena uprooted the community there, said Wilson, who's with the Allegheny County African-American Elders Council.
“This land was taken from the hands of many working Black people and, for that reason, this land has special rules that must be respected,” she wrote in the petition.
While not unique to the Hill District, developers looking to work in the area must go through the two-step Development Review Panel, facilitated by the Hill Community Development Corporation. During that process, representatives from nine community organizations conduct an initial review to determine whether a proposed project aligns with the neighborhood’s Master Plan before presenting it to the broader community for a vote.
In this case, the developers have not completed that “tried and true” procedure, failing to respond to an invitation to present and refusing to resubmit an application after significant changes were made, according to the Hill CDC.
Wilson said members of the community not only must be engaged by the developers, but also given the chance to vote on the future of their neighborhood.
“I don't think that we're going to be able to stop the development, but at least we will be able to be heard,” she said. “The voters that we count on all the time and the homeowners—the people who have this community stake—it is not important to them. And that, to me, is a crime.”
