Pittsburgh City Council is expected to approve zoning legislation Tuesday to allow a controversial development to proceed in the city’s Oakland neighborhood. The Planning Commission approved the zoning proposal in March after negotiations that included Mayor Ed Gainey and the developer.
Walnut Capital, the developer behind Bakery Square in the East End, wants to put a grocery store, urban green space and a pedestrian bridge that crosses over Boulevard of the Allies near UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital. The 13-acre development will also include residential housing, with 10% of units slated to qualify for affordable housing vouchers.
To begin construction, Walnut Capital needs the city to approve a zoning change in South Oakland that would place the development area in a special zoning district. The change was first proposed by former Mayor Bill Peduto last fall. After an outcry from some community members, Gainey revised the proposal to classify the zone as “Urban Center-Mixed Use,” lower the building heights and shrink the overall development from 18 to 13 acres.
Further changes would allow a grocery store, but no other buildings, to stretch up to 425 feet. The amendment ensures space for delivery trucks to unload inside the facility, according to deputy mayor Jake Pawlak, the director of the city’s Office of Management and Budget.
Some residents remain concerned that the development will negatively change the character of their neighborhood.
Two registered community organizations have called on council to vote against the zoning changes. Oakland Planning and Development Corporation and the Oakcliffe Community Organization have criticized the project as a catalyst for gentrification that was pushed forward before the neighborhood finished a master plan to set forth development criteria for the entire district.
Members of the Oakland Planning and Development Corporation have repeatedly criticized the project. Andrea Boykowycz, assistant director of OPDC, argued that it didn’t receive enough public input. She criticized the plan moving forward separately from Oakland’s 10-year plan. “This project hopscotched all of that,” she said.
Boykowycz also took issue with the fact that the zoning changes were proposed by Peduto. She argued it sets a bad precedent in which the mayor's office could "arbitrarily rezone any swath of residential neighborhood ... for the benefit of a particular developer."
Elena Zaitsoff, vice president of the Oakcliffe Community Organization, said last week that the Oakland Crossings has no regard for residents in the area. She argued at a council meeting last week that the development will result in “Oakcliffe being walled off along Boulevard of the Allies and Coltart Avenue will become a canyon.”
Zaitsoff said a grocery store and dense housing could be built without a zoning change “except not to the extreme dimensions that Walnut Capital wants.”
But a third organization, Oakland Business Improvement District, has long supported the development. And Joanna Doven, a spokesperson for Walnut Capital, claimed that community groups like OPDC prevented the developer from presenting their plans to the community months ago. The group's executive director put the kibosh on a development presentation at a community event last fall.
“I think it’s ironic that we’re still talking about process, yet the [residential community organization] that is mandated to run a transparent public process to inform residents and businesses about how a development will impact them … stopped the process,” Doven said.
Doven claimed much of the community criticism of Oakland Crossings comes from a small group of property owners, many of whom don’t live near the development site. “We’re going to shape the future of Oakland around 30 homes, most of which are not owner-occupied?” she said.
Though council preliminarily approved the zoning change last week, some members echoed concerns about the process through which the development advanced. Councilor Deb Gross argued the zoning ordinance should be further reviewed by the Planning Commission.
“No member here sponsored this bill,” she said during a council hearing last week. “This was a zoning map amendment sponsored by a mayor and that is not allowed by our ordinance.”
Gross was the sole “no” in council’s preliminary vote last week.
Councilor Erika Strassburger voted yes last week to push the zoning change forward, but also called the process “flawed.”
“I, too share the concerns that we’ve heard from many different people about the path that this legislation took and its origins,” she said. “I don’t wish to see that replicated again.”
But Strassburger said she ultimately supports the zoning changes because of what she called the city’s need for more dense housing.
Doven echoed the need for dense housing in Oakland. “Over 100,000 people come to Oakland every day to work and to study,” she said. “We’re going to be thrilled to break ground and deliver on a transformative project that’s going to give Oakland a grocery store and start to make that entire landscape something that everyone can feel proud of.”
