Appeals of Allegheny County property assessments, unleashed by a lawsuit, are starting to bite into the revenues of governments, notably in already strained Mon Valley communities. Pittsburgh, meanwhile, has stayed above water, because rising residential value has outstripped slashed skyscraper tax bills — so far.

Unbalanced
How property tax assessments create winners and losers

As thousands of pending appeals threaten to upend municipal and school budgets, County Executive Sara Innamorato is taking a cautious path on one of her key campaign planks supporting routine countywide reassessments.

A reassessment would come with political costs for Innamorato and monetary costs for some individual property owners. (It could also cost her personally, by boosting the low tax bill on her Upper Lawrenceville house.) But experts say it’s the cure for a defective system that currently overtaxes some and undertaxes others.

Even with most of last year’s appeals as-yet undecided, some municipalities saw a drop in taxable assessed value in the last two years, with much of the downturn coming in Mon Valley communities that are hurting economically. Fifty of the county’s 130 municipalities lost taxable value since the start of 2022; Homestead (10%), West Homestead (6%) and Clairton (4%) saw the biggest percentages of their tax base disappear.

Property owners filed an unusually large number of assessment appeals last year. That’s because a court ordered a change in the math used to calculate assessments determined by appeals, making it more favorable to owners.

Owners of large commercial buildings appealed en masse and are expected to win significant cuts to their assessed values, lowering their tax bills. Already, three of the dozens of Downtown towers have won appeals and seen significant tax relief. 

When big property owners saw the new tax math, “they jumped on it,” said Dominick Gambino, a local government consultant who managed the county’s assessment office from 2001 to 2003. He added that yet another change in the tax math, taking effect this year, could cause a fresh round of appeals.

While Pittsburgh’s assessed value rose 1.87% from 2022 to 2024, a PublicSource review found, a decline has already begun Downtown. 

Assessed value in the city’s 2nd Ward, which spans much of Downtown and the Strip District, dropped 3.73% during that time period, shedding more than $112 million in assessed value. Using current tax rates — measured in mills — that $112 million represents more than $900,000 in lost tax revenue for the city and $1.2 million for the city school district. And appeals for dozens more commercial properties are still pending. 

So far, value has increased enough in residential neighborhoods to make up for Downtown’s problems. The 6th Ward, in Lower Lawrenceville, saw a whopping 30% increase in assessed value ($130.2 million in taxable value). The 5th (Hill District), 16th (South Hills) and 17th (South Side) wards each increased between 9% and 13%.

But the math is unlikely to favor taxing bodies for much longer.

Looming crisis

The successful Downtown appeals are “just the beginning” of the wave of assessment cuts Downtown, said Chris Briem, a regional economist at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Social and Urban Research. “I think what’s in the news of late of the percentage declines in these big buildings are probably typical of what most Downtown buildings will get in the short term.”

Six-figure tax bill decreases for dozens of commercial properties would have a devastating effect on the city and school district. The city is facing a razor-thin budget in the near future with an operating surplus of just a few million dollars. The school district is already operating at a deficit and is considering plans to close school buildings to cut costs.  

“One way or the other, property values Downtown are coming down,” Briem said. “It’s probably going to force a millage increase on everyone else.” That would effectively raise tax bills on property owners throughout the city to make up for the lost revenue coming from Downtown.

While Downtown owners will see lower tax bills, Briem said they are hardly winners in the situation. 

“They’ve lost, they’ve lost a lot and they’re going to keep losing,” Briem said, because decreased demand for office space since the start of the pandemic has crushed commercial building revenue. The assessment cuts are “reflecting that reality.”

Pittsburgh Public Schools solicitor sounded the alarm in a January interview.

“If these large reductions that have occurred Downtown and will continue to occur, they simply do not have financial wherewithal to sustain that,” solicitor Ira Weiss said.

Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey’s office took a less dire tone. 

“Budget wise, the team forecasted the possibility of reduced real estate tax revenue,” said city press secretary Olga George. “Currently, Finance and [the Office of Management and Budget] are watching how real estate collections are processing.”

The mayor’s 2024 budget does not forecast a drop in real estate tax revenue. This year’s budget plans for a number slightly higher than last year’s, and the city’s five-year plan projects increases each year.

George said the city is assessing new valuations and deciding whether to contest them in court. 

Peter McDevitt, the budget director for Pittsburgh City Council, said it’s too early and there are too many variables to “hit the panic button,” but the city could eventually be forced to find new revenue or cut services. “Raising millage is not the only avenue, but it’s the most viable one” to raise revenue, he said. 

The county’s $1.1 billion operating budget, which relies on property taxes for around 37% of its revenue, is not in danger of a shortfall, according to county spokesperson Abigail Gardner.

Reassessment vs. ratios

Experts including Briem and Gambino say the fix for the county’s assessment woes lies in conducting routine, countywide reassessments — a concept Innamorato has endorsed, as long as it can be done with new protections for vulnerable taxpayers. 

Gardner confirmed that Innamorato continues to believe “that a reassessment would be a more fair and equitable way to determine values,” adding that “there are no immediate plans to engage in a reassessment.” The real estate market is shifting, she wrote in response to questions, prompting “a reimagining of how to keep our Downtown thriving.”

The last time the county reassessed all its properties was in 2013,after a judge ordered then-County Executive Rich Fitzgerald to do so. Fitzgerald never did so again.

Pennsylvania allows counties to leave decades-old assessments in place, subject to appeals where there’s evidence of rising value. 

In counties that use this “base-year” approach, properties without improvements or recent sales generally keep the same assessments each year. Where there’s evidence of a change in value, the owner or a taxing body can file an appeal.

When an appeal is filed in Allegheny County, the Board of Property Assessment Appeals and Review assigns a new fair market value. That value is multiplied by the common level ratio [CLR] to come up with an assessment.

The CLR is meant to adjust appeal-generated assessments to resemble those last set in the base year. But a lawsuit revealed that the county submitted flawed data for the calculation of the CLR, and a judge forced its reduction. 

For appeals filed in Allegheny County this year, the fair market value will be multiplied by 0.545 to determine the assessment, meaning a property with a post-appeal value of $100,000 would be assessed at $54,500. By contrast, for appeals filed in 2021, the ratio was 0.875, meaning that same property would have been assessed at $87,500. 

Property owners whose assessments were boosted in prior year appeals may appeal now, and use the lower CLR to push their assessments down. The ratio, though, won’t help owners whose property values have soared.

Your tax depends on when you bought

Despite the change in the ratio, tax bills in Allegheny County continue to be driven less by the value of the property than the date of purchase. The wild variances in assessments are evident on the streets of the current and prior county executives.

Fitzgerald arguably benefits to the tune of thousands of dollars per year from his decision not to reassess.

He bought his house in Point Breeze in 1989 for $202,000. Because the county doesn’t regularly reassess, his tax bill has remained static, even as property values have soared.

A next-door neighbor bought a similarly sized house in 2021 for $970,095. That price drew an assessment appeal by the Pittsburgh Public Schools, and a resulting fair market value of $616,000.

The neighbor’s total annual tax bill — county, city and school district — is around $3,000 higher than Fitzgerald’s.

Innamorato could lose out financially under the scenario she proposed during her campaign for executive. She has said she'd like to reassess all properties, while increasing existing tax breaks for homeowners and seniors and adding protections for longtime owner-occupants.

Innamorato bought her row house in Upper Lawrenceville for $71,000 in 2015. On the same side of the same block is a house that’s around 20% larger (though it’s not a row house). Purchased during the Lawrenceville real estate boom, it is subject to a tax bill around five times higher.

Gambino said the current system, with no reassessments and one CLR for the entire county, is unfair because different areas have appreciated at different rates since 2013 — meaning homeowners in low-appreciation markets are subject to the same ratio as those in high-appreciation areas.

The base-year system is “something Robin Hood’s evil twin would condone,” Gambino said. “All this talk about reduction and refunds, these are all symptoms of a sickness called the base-year scheme.”

Plight of boroughs

Seth Abrams feels conflicted. On a personal level, a countywide reassessment would cost him money. He bought his home 13 years ago and said it has appreciated significantly since the last time the county assessed its value.

But Abrams is the borough manager for Munhall, a place that stands to lose a lot of money in pending appeals. Just one appeal, by the Lowe’s hardware store in the Waterfront, has already cost the borough $50,000 in annual revenue, enough to wipe out a cushion he had planned for the 2024 budget.

Now, the possibility of a millage increase weighs on him as more appeals, including some from U.S. Steel, are pending.

“If [U.S. Steel] got something along the lines of what Lowe’s got and they got their assessment cut in half, that’s another $60,000 or $70,000 loss that I’m trying not to factor into things right now,” Abrams said. “That would mean that we would have to dig into the reserves, we would have to look at all of our fees and our taxes.

“People will see increased costs if this trend of losing taxable value continues.”

Despite the implications to his personal tax bill, as a professional, Abrams wants to see a reassessment. 

“I need to look out for the needs of an entire community. In Munhall, I’m looking at 5,000 or 6,000 residences. For me, I’m looking at one.”

Assessed values dropped from 2022-2024 in numerous Mon Valley communities near Munhall, showing Abrams’ problems are shared by his peers in other towns. Many of those municipalities and the adjacent school districts already have some of the county’s highest millage rates, giving them less margin to raise the levy.

Clairton will have to deal with the outcome of 32 parcels under appeals filed by U.S. Steel, which operates the Clairton Coke Works there. Clairton Mayor Rich Lattanzi told PublicSource in April that the steelmaker accounts for about one-third of its tax base, and the revenue loss from appeals could “be catastrophic for the City of Clairton.”

Charlie Wolfson is PublicSource’s local government reporter and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org.

Rich Lord is PublicSource’s managing editor, and can be reached at rich@publicsource.org.

This story was fact-checked by Delaney Rauscher Adams.

The post Property tax appeals erode budgets as assessment burden shifts appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

This story was originally published by NEXTpittsburgh, a news partner of PublicSource. NEXTpittsburgh features the people, projects and places advancing the region and the innovative and cool things happening here. Sign up to get their free newsletter.

Pittsburgh’s Downtown will soon see an expanded space dedicated to starting and accelerating Black businesses through mentorship and networking.

The Greenwood Plan, a Black-founded and Black-led nonprofit committed to advancing economic justice for Black communities through education, networking and resources, recently acquired the Pitt Building on the corner of Smithfield Street and Boulevard of the Allies through Greenwood Smithfield LLC, its subsidiary company. 

Founded in 2021 by Khamil Bailey and Samantha Black, the Greenwood Plan developed from a one-week Black entrepreneurial conference called Greenwood Week. That program began in 2018 and brought local entrepreneurs together to share experiences and resources.

“People believed that, ‘If someone comes from the same place as me and had similar hurdles, I could also do that thing,’” says Bailey, the executive director. “From that, we decided to expand into year-round programming, and that’s how the nonprofit came to be.”

The Black Business Conference, Greenwood Week, occurs each October. The conference includes networking, performances and classes that fall under five pillars of health: environmental, physical, mental, financial and spiritual. 

“It’s almost our pep rally for the year,” Bailey adds. “Everybody gets riled up about starting a business, running a business and exploring business.”

The Greenwood Plan focuses on intentional resource redirection, economic justice, business growth and sustainment and socioeconomic guidance. The aim is to eliminate barriers for Black entrepreneurs.

In addition to its Greenwood Week conference, the Greenwood Plan hosts industry-specific summits and recently added an arts organizing program for creative entrepreneurs. It also provides $500 mini-grants to Black businesses to alleviate business costs.

It works with the state’s Department of General Services to help Black businesses win state contracts. It also collaborates with the Urban Redevelopment Authority and Bridgeway Capital.

Shannel Lamere first attended a Greenwood Week conference in 2019 and began doing film and photography for Greenwood. She now owns and operates Shannel Lamere Films.

“She has grown with us over the past four years,” Bailey says. “People will give their talent, their treasure and come to us when they need things that we can provide, which a lot of the time is audience.”

Permanent space for Black business acceleration

Bailey received a LinkedIn message shortly after founding the Greenwood Plan in 2021 from the manager of the America’s Club co-working space, formerly in the Pitt Building. The club was looking to bring in more diverse entrepreneurs. After a tour, the Greenwood Plan became a member.

“We found ourselves making coffee, straightening up and tidying the space, and just greeting people when they came in the door,” Bailey says. “So we took a bit of ownership in it.”

In November 2021, the Greenwood Plan took out a lease on the space, renaming it Emerald City Pittsburgh. The 12,000-foot co-working space is dedicated to boosting Black entrepreneurship and wealth. That is when Bailey learned of other vacancies in the building. 

“We thought if we’re going to fill up the vacancy, we probably should just own the building,” she adds.

The effort received $1 million from the state’s Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program. The space will become an incubation and accelerator space with commercial storefronts, mentorship programs and networking opportunities for Black business owners. 

Russell General Contracting, a Black-owned family business, is leading the consulting for renovating the building.

In addition to Emerald City, the three-story building has a Cricket Wireless store and a mutual aid nonprofit. The third floor, which is currently a gym, is slated to become an event and assembly space.

“It has vaulted ceilings and breathtaking skylights,” Bailey adds. “We always knew this would be the next space for the building because people need to get their eyes on it.”

Third-floor renovations are scheduled to begin in February. 

Pittsburgh has a rich history of Black entrepreneurship. Bailey says that is at the forefront of creating the new space and ensuring that business leaders get the support they need.

“We want to remind people of the history that has already existed here,” Bailey says. “Black entrepreneurship is not new. Out of necessity, Black entrepreneurship has thrived.

“We’re at a point now where it is necessary again for Black entrepreneurship to grow to be able to take care of the communities that exist here.”

Ethan Woodfill is a freelance journalist interested in telling the stories of people doing great things to build community and sustainability.

The post Greenwood Plan to bring business accelerator Downtown to aid Black enterprises appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

On a Tuesday afternoon in December, around a dozen public housing tenants facing eviction filled a waiting room in McKeesport, where Magisterial District Judge Eugene Riazzi asked each if they could pay their delinquent rent. 

If so, the tenant agreed to pay the amount owed, plus court costs of more than $150. Unless they pledged to pay, Riazzi ruled in favor of the McKeesport Housing Authority, starting a process that can lead to the tenant’s removal within weeks. Tenants who said they couldn’t pay were referred to a county human services worker who waited in the lobby to help them apply for rental assistance. 

A similar scene plays out on many Tuesdays in McKeesport. 

Since the end of the pandemic-era moratorium on evictions in 2021, all three housing authorities serving Allegheny County have filed numerous eviction cases, but none has done so with the same vigor and frequency as the McKeesport Housing Authority [MHA]. These legal actions come as county human service officials and advocates cement a rental assistance network created through pandemic-era federal funding that’s helping tenants of the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh and the Allegheny County Housing Authority. 

The McKeesport authority, by far the smallest of the three agencies with the fewest number of housing units, has filed 562 landlord/tenant cases against its tenants from the start of 2021 through early December. Pandemic-driven curbs on most evictions ended in 2021.

The Allegheny County Housing Authority [ACHA] filed 131 cases and the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh [HACP] filed 263 in that same time period, according to court data gathered by Anne Wright of Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab, who tracks eviction cases.  

Wright noted that tracking eviction filings for Pittsburgh’s housing authority can be difficult because the organization often uses various names when filing evictions against tenants. Eviction filings also do not necessarily correlate with actual evictions, as some tenants are able to gather the money and stay after a filing.

McKeesport Housing Authority solicitor Jim Creenan wrote in response to questions that the three housing authorities are structurally different. The MHA, he said, has limited resources, so it needs a consistent stream of federally required rent from tenants. He also noted that the authority has a “substantial waiting list” of families wanting to move into its communities.

Pittsburgh’s and Allegheny County’s housing authorities also have waiting lists for the units they manage.

County human service officials said that the Pittsburgh and county housing authorities are using partners including Just Mediation Pittsburgh to prevent evictions, while MHA has largely declined to use these resources. 

“Prior to the pandemic, the largest filers of evictions were the housing authorities, and at least two of the three housing authorities here are using mediation as a first step to avoid evictions. So that drastically reduced the number of filings we’ve seen in the county,” said Chuck Keenan, an administrator of the Office of Community Services within the Allegheny County Department of Human Services [ACDHS].

Keenan said the MHA used the county’s eviction prevention services at the beginning of 2023 to mediate around 20 tenant cases. Keenan said the housing authority has since stopped using mediation and returned to filing evictions against their tenants. 

“They’re not really using mediation as much as we would hope,” he said. “We would encourage all landlords to use mediation as an alternative to filing — including the housing authorities.” 

McKeesport’s Creenan said the authority “has entered payment plans and we have facilitated hundreds of applications for each stage of the COVID-era rental assistance.” In most cases, those tenants continued to rack up delinquencies, he said.

He added that each mediation requires hours of staff time and the resulting delays in payment did not “align with our limited resources and contributed to the arrears” owed the authority.

Fewest units, most landlord/tenant cases

Ziara Wright, a mother of two in McKeesport who is facing eviction and owes several months of rent, said she was still making partial rent payments last year before the housing authority took her to court. She fell behind in part because of a paperwork problem that led to her losing access to her food stamps, forcing her to spend more money to feed her family. 

After a ruling against her and a judgment of $2,417, she filed an appeal. The eviction process and filing for an appeal has been stressful, she said.

“You got to go through that while you’re juggling everything else. You got to pay your bills out there. You got to go to work every day,” she said. 

Speaking broadly, Creenan said that with all of the protections afforded to tenants — including appeal rights and rental assistance — only about 20% of the first-time evictions the authority files against tenants lead to a judge’s order for possession, entitling the authority to remove the tenant.

“Many tenants appear to be gaming the system,” he said, “as the number of tenants filing late appeals and other delay-type motions to the Court of Common Pleas have increased dramatically in the past two years.”   

Local housing advocates urge inexpensive mediation before court filings. Landlord/tenant complaints result in fees and legal stains that can hurt the tenant’s ability to find rental housing in the future. 

The McKeesport Housing Authority has 1,021 housing units, and last year it filed a landlord/tenant case for roughly 1 out of every 4 of its housing units. In contrast, the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh brought cases against around 4.6% of its tenants, or about 1 in 20. The county’s housing authority, with 3,839 units, filed cases against 2.6% of its tenants last year. 

MHA’s Executive Director Steve Bucklew declined to discuss its eviction policies with PublicSource and WESA, citing unspecified, ongoing litigation. He referred reporters to a published report by the Public Housing Authorities Directors Association, citing ongoing rent collection difficulties for housing authorities. 

In an interview with PublicSource in 2022, with pandemic-era rental aid expiring, Bucklew said too many tenants were delinquent in their rent. 

“We’ve never experienced delinquencies like this,” he said at the time. “There’s groups trying to delay evictions, but I feel that the only way the message will be communicated to tenants that they have to pay rent is by filing evictions.”

Pittsburgh and Allegheny leaning against eviction

The county Department of Human Services has been working with ACTION-Housing, Rent Help PGH and Just Mediation, among others, to divert landlord/tenant disputes to mediation, rather than court.

The county and those agencies have learned a lot since 2021, when pandemic-driven rental assistance started, said Keenan. He said the county in 2023 provided rental assistance to more than 1,100 households, totaling upward of $14 million, whereas pre-pandemic spending was $2 million to $3 million a year.

Pittsburgh and Allegheny County’s housing authorities try to avoid court.  

“Eviction prevention has become a standard operating procedure for the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh,” said Anthony Ceoffe, senior director of asset management for HACP.

Ceoffe said HACP worked with Just Mediation Pittsburgh and Rent Help Pittsburgh to help mediate cases with its tenants who are facing problems paying their rent. As a result, he said, the authority didn’t evict any tenants in 2023 because of nonpayment of rent. (Some evictions did take place for issues including safety violations, he said.) 

Ceoffe said the authority also has used a partnership with a third party to connect its tenants to budgeting classes, financial literacy and ongoing case management.

“So just because somebody has received rental assistance, that does not mean that the eviction prevention coordinators are done with them,” Ceoffe said. 

Landlords and tenants in mediation have access to available rental assistance — so landlords are still able to eventually get the funds owed to them. 

HACP officials said the book “Evicted,” work by local foundations and advocates, and lessons from the pandemic have contributed to a shift away from eviction filings.

“We are in the business of providing housing,” said Michelle Sandidge, chief community affairs officer for HACP. “To evict a bunch of people just … adds to the homeless situation. That is not something that we’re trying to do.” 

Rich Stephenson, chief operating officer for the Allegheny County Housing Authority, said the agency has invested money and time in preventing evictions through mediation and financial literacy classes for tenants.

“We try to identify the problem,” Stephenson said, “because if someone’s behind in their rent, there’s usually an underlying problem.”

Eric Jankiewicz is PublicSource’s economic development reporter, and can be reached at ericj@publicsource.org or on Twitter @ericjankiewicz.

Kate Giammarise is a reporter at 90.5 WESA, Pittsburgh’s NPR News Station, covering housing and social services.

This story was fact-checked by Rich Lord.

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This story was originally published by Technical.ly, a news partner of PublicSource. You can sign up for their newsletters at technical.ly/subscribe.

In the final weeks of 2023 and first weeks of 2024, Technical.ly asked Pittsburgh founders and execs what trends they were anticipating for the local tech space.

Some leaders expect regulatory bodies to emphasize cybersecurity, while others anticipate more students considering their sector as a career possibility. Now, two weeks into this new year, here’s some of what Pittsburgh founders are thinking (or hoping) will happen next.

Cybersecurity will be prioritized across industries

In 2023, cybersecurity experts told Technical.ly that even when the worst happens and companies have to downsize, they usually don’t cut corners in the area that keeps company secrets safe.

For Vigilant Ops CEO Ken Zalevsky’s part, he anticipates that regulatory agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration would take an increased interest in cybersecurity. Having worked in the field himself, Zalevsky said being vulnerable to attacks can be costly in any industry — and when it comes to healthcare, a lack of cybersecurity can compromise patient safety. The FDA requires cybersecurity measures to be built into medical devices; Zalevsky expects other industries will follow suit.

“We’re already seeing that energy and others who are trying to look at legislation and ways to make their products within their industries more secure, requiring security documentation, like the software bill of materials and others,” Zalevsky said. (Vigilant Ops makes an automation platform for the generation, maintenance and authenticated sharing of certified software bill of materials.) “I think we’ll just kind of see that trend continue as the year [progresses].”

The commercial space industry will expand

Away from healthcare and into galaxies far away, Astrobotic CEO John Thornton told Technical.ly in December that 2024 could bring the commercial space industry more NASA collaborations. He cited NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative as one indicator — especially because it’s a program the North Side space tech company is participating in via its Peregrine Mission One, which launched on Jan. 8. The team’s efforts to gather payload data have been fruitful, but due to a propellant leak on Jan. 9, the spacecraft is now expected to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

Additionally, Thornton imagined that companies might be willing to take more risks — but if the payoffs weren’t worth it, this could lead to fewer successful missions.

“One risk I see to this model’s success is that companies may be willing to bet everything on an opportunity to participate in the burgeoning space industry,” Thornton said. “If companies do this by underbidding future commercial contracts without having a strong financial footing, we may see a decline in mission success that could affect the industry as a whole.”

Robots will aid the manufacturing workforce, in more ways than one

Even when the world is in turmoil, things still need to be made. Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute Senior Outreach Manager Livia Rice said she believes the need for manufacturers will remain — yet robotics will be increasingly incorporated into the sector to fill workforce gaps. In addition to the ARM Institute’s outreach efforts, Rice expects robotics will be used to do the more dangerous parts of a given job, which will further incentivize young people to consider manufacturing as a viable career.

“I think that’s going to be a huge trend in really trying to influence the next generation of people to consider careers in manufacturing,” Rice said. “I’m sure when we were kids, no one was talking to us about manufacturing … but it really is a very vibrant career. So focusing on that, and then the integration of AI into robotics and manufacturing, I think that’s going to continue to be a very important trend.”

Autonomous ground vehicles will be used in government defense efforts

For Neya Systems Division Manager Kurt Bruck, the theme of 2024 is speed. The Warrendale-based company develops advanced autonomous solutions for unmanned systems and was recently selected for part of a $14.8 million U.S. Army contract along with Carnegie Robotics and Robotic Research Autonomous Industries. The Department of Defense, Bruck said, often needs its vehicles to go 80 miles per hour to effectively navigate jungles or forests.

Additionally, he thinks navigating with cameras as opposed to LIDAR-based navigation will become a trend due to the expense and the fragility of night vision cameras. He also imagines that drones and autonomy will become a priority in the name of speed and creating fewer risks for soldiers.

“The Department of Defense has been fielding drones for a decade, but ground vehicles have never been fielded. I’ve never seen autonomous ground vehicles actually working with soldiers, because it’s just more of a difficult, different challenge,” Bruck said. “But fielding these systems for the first time [will be] a key trend and overarching trend. I think in the next three years, we’re going to start to see many, many more autonomous brand vehicles working with soldiers and various missions being kind of like a tool in the toolbox that they use daily.”

Atiya Irvin-Mitchell is a 2022-2023 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Heinz Endowments.

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The City of Pittsburgh’s incorporation of climate-change projections into its stormwater-control regulations have been highlighted by the latest National Climate Assessment as an example of how a city can prepare itself for the bigger, more frequent rain storms produced by the changing climate.

The federal document cited the former steel capital for its work requiring developers of new properties covering about a quarter of an acre of land, or with impervious surfaces of about an eighth of an acre, to install various kinds of green infrastructure so that their projects don’t worsen runoff.

The city is an early adopter of stormwater rules based on the expectation of increased future rainfall, which threatens worsening floods unless new development enhances the ability of land to absorb and store water rather than just deflecting it as runoff.

The rules “require new developments to plan for projected increases in heavy rainfall under climate change rather than building to historical rainfall amounts,” according to the assessment, published on Nov. 14. It also noted that Pittsburgh committed in 2021 to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

While bigger cities like New York, Boston and Philadelphia are making “extensive” climate preparations, Pittsburgh is an example of an “innovative” approach to climate planning taken by a geographically, economically and politically diverse sampling of mid-sized cities, the climate assessment said.

“Their efforts generally receive less visibility, but the need among similarly sized cities in the [Northeast] region — to learn about best practices and lessons learned in developing and implementing climate action plans to inform their own efforts — can be significant,” the assessment said.

Pittsburgh’s existing stormwater rule was updated in April 2022 to include rainfall projections calculated two years earlier by Carnegie Mellon University and the Rand Corporation. Although the forecasts for more-likely but less-damaging storms were similar to projections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the CMU/Rand forecast predicted even greater increases in rainfall than NOAA. 

For example, a so-called 100-year storm — that which is expected to occur only 1% of the time — is expected to dump 6.4 inches of rain on Pittsburgh in a 24-hour period, or about a sixth of what the city typically gets in a whole year, according to the CMU/Rand forecasts. That’s about two inches more than projected by NOAA, according to Kyla Prendergast, a senior environmental planner with the city.

By contrast, a more-likely “one-year storm” would mean 2.1 inches of rain fell on the city in 24 hours, similar to the federal projections.

“The rainfall depths are a bit higher than the NOAA ones, and that helps us to ensure that we’re holding developments to a higher standard, and whatever we’re building now is actually going to be able to manage the rainfall that we know we are going to be seeing in the next 10, 20, 50 years,” Prendergast said.

Myron Arnowitt, Pennsylvania director for the nonprofit Clean Water Action, welcomed the city’s inclusion of climate projections into its stormwater rules as a change that is much more likely to protect the city from flooding than an earlier version of the rule.

“What Pittsburgh is doing is making sure their regulations will actually work so that they reflect the reality of the climate crisis we’re in,” Arnowitt said. “If you’re writing stormwater rules, and you’re using rainfall amounts based on what happened in 1900 to 1950 before climate change really took off, you’re going to be controlling much less water than if you base it on what we expect rainfall to be like in the next 10, 20, 50 years. It makes a lot of sense.”

NOAA’s National Weather Service is working on an update of a regional estimate of precipitation frequency. The new report, called NOAA Atlas 15, will use climate-change information to “derive precipitation frequency estimates” when it is published in 2026, said NWS spokesman Michael Musher. 

NOAA said the new estimates will provide “critical information to support the design of state and local infrastructure nationwide under a changing climate.”

Climate scientists predict an increasingly warm, wet future and widespread disruption of historic weather patterns worldwide as a result of trapped greenhouse gases. The latest National Climate Assessment, the fifth in a series of the Congressionally mandated reports, said the United States has cut carbon emissions from their peak in 2007, and has done more to adapt to the effects of climate change in the last five years, but it urged much stronger action to lessen severe effects including flooding, wildfires, heat waves and sea-level rise.

In Pittsburgh, the latest rule blames more runoff for a range of ills including erosion and sedimentation, exceeding the carrying capacity of streams and sewers, increasing public costs to control stormwater, and threatening public health with the backup of raw sewage in basements.

“A comprehensive program of stormwater management, including regulation of development and activities causing accelerated runoff, is fundamental to the public health, safety and welfare,” the rule says.

To ensure that new developments lessen or at least do not increase runoff, developers can incorporate a variety of techniques such as rain gardens, green roofs and “construction wetlands” — areas that restore a landscape’s capacity to absorb rainfall, she said.

Projects that disturb at least 10,000 square feet of land or create 5,000 square feet or more of impervious surface are now required to submit their plans to the city’s stormwater permitting process, and to show that the project would not increase the amount of runoff during a rainstorm.

So far, the city has approved about 50 projects that include the new rainfall forecasts although none are yet under construction, so there’s limited evidence so far on the effectiveness of the new standard, Prendergast said.

But she argued that incorporation of the new climate projections into the development plans, and the city’s approval of them, already show that the standard is working.

The new rules will inevitably increase costs for developers, Prendergast said, but that would be less than the cost of reacting to future flooding based on outdated precipitation forecasts. There has been some pushback from developers since the rules were introduced but the pace of development hasn’t slowed, she said. The city has produced a “design manual” for developers, explaining the rule and the reasons for it.

Pittsburgh, located at the confluence of three rivers, and with many populated hillsides, is especially vulnerable to flooding, and has suffered loss of life during the worst storms. In 2011, a downpour left waters that overtopped cars and left drivers standing on their roofs or wading through chest-deep waters, Prendergast said. Four people died in that storm.

“We do have a lot of water in the city,” Prendergast said. “Historically, Pittsburgh has tried to fight against the water; we have a lot of streams that have been paved over, and turned into pipes. It worked for what we’ve seen in the past but as we move forward, we see that it’s not the most resilient approach to managing water. We’re hoping that with this code and other policies, we are going to be able to work with the water rather than against it.”

This article originally appeared in Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for the ICN newsletter here.

The post Pittsburgh is a poster child for climate-conscious planning appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Pittsburgh’s Uptown will be getting a new residential development titled Phoenix on Forbes that, in the words of the developer’s consultant, looks very similar to much of the new development being constructed across the city and country. 

But it will have a unique wardrobe.

GSX Ventures presented the City Planning Commission with the design of their planned six-story building covering almost a city block. It requires the demolition of three buildings on the 1600 block of Forbes Avenue to make room for 211 units, 10% of which will be reserved for people making 60% or less of the area median income. 

The building will be largely covered in architectural paneling, contributing to the generic aesthetic.To offset that, designers plan on covering the panels with as many as 10 banners from artists that will be chosen by a panel of art advocates. 

The demolition plan and building proposal won commission approval unanimously. 

“All the buildings in Pittsburgh and the country are starting to look the same,” said William Kolano, whose firm Kolano Design is consulting with GSX Ventures on the wall art. 

Kolano said the art concept was inspired by GSX Ventures’ founder and President Jon Grant’s desire “to make something that looked different and, oh my God, can it evolve over time rather than be static.”

He said that he attended Carnegie Mellon University with Grant, and Grant wanted to create something that would set the building apart from other modern developments. 

Kolano explained that technology has recently allowed for the creation of large canvases printed with art work that can easily be added and removed from the building facades. 

“This concept of adding artwork from the very beginning is forward-thinking. It’s not like adding a mural at the end because there’s a blank wall,” Kolano said, adding that murals are often added “as an afterthought.”

“There’s a return to adding ornaments to buildings,” he said.

“By putting the art as changeable every five years, the building is allowed to evolve over time,” Kolano said. “And with this project and others like it, Uptown, too, is likely to change and evolve over time.”

Two courtyards will include an in-ground pool. The building will also be located along the planned Bus Rapid Transit route, which was a significant draw for the building’s planners. The site is in the city’s EcoInnovation District, prompting the inclusion of solar panels on the roof. 

Grant told the commissioners that the ground level will have office space, and they will be  leasing 1,200 to 1,500 square feet of retail space to be used by a “food service tenant or small grocery store, things that would essentially benefit the residents and community.”

The building will also feature a fitness center filled with aerobic and weightlifting equipment. Along with public transportation options, there will also be a 72-space parking garage that will be served by a valet to handle higher density parking.

The building’s designers told the commission that they have maintained communications with the four overlapping registered community organizations serving Uptown, along with Council President Daniel Lavelle’s office. Lavelle represents the area.

Eric Jankiewicz is PublicSource’s economic development reporter, and can be reached at ericj@publicsource.org or on Twitter @ericjankiewicz.

The post Uptown residential development seeks to adorn generic design with ‘museum-quality’ art  appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

When Zakary Littlefield bought a home on a small dead-end street overlooking Pittsburgh’s South Side, he didn’t suspect that he’d be forced to sell it just three and a half years later. 

He noticed the cracked pavement when he purchased the property. The road had cratered and the asphalt was, inch-by-inch, crumbling down the hillside. 

Unable to navigate the shrinking, craggy edge, standard city garbage trucks soon stopped picking up his trash, later replaced by smaller refuse vehicles. Drivers no longer delivered to his doorstep. In the back of his mind a thought persisted: “My road may be gone tomorrow.”

Littlefield’s home, recently renovated and nestled along Newton Street in the South Side Slopes, is one of 11 properties on that street that the City of Pittsburgh intends to buy and then retire in an effort to mitigate the risk of landslides. 

In Pittsburgh and throughout northern Appalachia, the combination of a soft, clay-laden geology and a precarious, tilted topography raise the likelihood of landslides. With more frequent and intense rainfall expected in a warming world, the probability of damage to property and people is likewise expected to swell.

The home buyouts, funded with $1.2 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA], are one way that local governments can counter potential catastrophes. In other parts of South Pittsburgh, nearly $10 million in additional FEMA funds, plus millions more from the city, will be spent this winter to reinforce slopes deemed worth saving.

Maintaining Mount Washington

The slopes of Mount Washington have for years attracted concern from city officials.

In February of 2018, setting off what would become one of the wettest years in recent record, a landslide destroyed a home on Greenleaf Street in Duquesne Heights, spilling debris onto Route 51 and closing the thoroughfare. To the east, Mount Washington’s William Street has been closed and crumbling since 2018 and now resembles a narrow walking trail rather than the two-lane roadway it once was. At the bottom of Reese Street, the hillside is slowly sliding down a steep incline above a walking trail in Emerald View Park and Norfolk Southern’s railroad tracks. 

“There’s a lot of transportation infrastructure that has been impacted or could potentially be impacted by some of these landslides,” said Eric Setzler, the chief engineer at Pittsburgh’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure. 

Some of the existing  landslides on Greenleaf, William and Reese streets have been temporarily stabilized and the supports have been holding, Setzler said. But by the end of the spring, these three failing slopes will be permanently buttressed by the FEMA investment. 

The point of the stabilization projects, Setzler said, is to secure the hillside to protect residents, their homes and transportation infrastructure that could be damaged should a catastrophic event occur, ideally, “ensuring stability for decades to come.”

The city, which is contributing $3 million to the $13 million total project cost, anticipates work will begin this winter after the construction contracts are settled. The work is expected to finish by April 2025, and Setzler said the most noticeable disruption will be the closure of Greenleaf Street for much of the duration.

More rain, more slides, more costs

“Ten years ago, this wasn’t really even an issue that was on the city’s radar,” said Jake Pawlak, deputy mayor of Pittsburgh. That’s not because city administrators weren’t attentive, he said, but “because we weren’t having nearly so many landslides, which have really emerged as a major infrastructure challenge and safety challenge in the past decade.”

Now the number of potentially unstable slopes far outweighs the city’s capacity to fix them.  

“It’s a real challenge,” Pawlak said. “It’s a risk to people. It’s a risk to our economy. It’s a risk for infrastructure.”

In 2018, when historic rains drenched Southwestern Pennsylvania, the city spent more than $12 million on cleanup from landslides. “We want to be more proactive,” said Setzler. 

He’s targeting imminent or ongoing slides in Elliott, Riverview Park, Morningside, Perry North and South and the Hill District. If heavy rains persist, more could follow. 

The city has begun to allocate more money to fixing and preventing landslides. The 2024 budget calls for $4.6 million for slope failure remediation and $8 million next year. After that, the budgeted numbers taper to $2.3 million and $2.5 million and $2.7 million from 2026 and 2028. The decrease in 2026 does not represent a de-emphasis on landslides, but rather a normal ebb and flow of project funding cycles, Pawlak said. He expects more funding to be allocated to the budget in the years to come.

Even as more money flows to landslide prevention, the investments that these projects require, Pawlak said, could not be met without state and federal partnerships. 

The Mount Washington-area projects and partnership with FEMA, which pays 75% of the bill, he said, is a “great first step in what we hope to be an ongoing relationship in addressing these issues.”

Building buyout

When Littlefield met with city officials about his home on Newton Street, they told him the risk was higher than they’d like for people to be living there, and the cost of repair too high to justify.

“The outcome of that meeting was effectively that it would be cheaper to buy the houses there from residents that were on the road than to fix the road,” he said. 

The city offered fair value, Littlefield said, about the same amount that he paid for it, and he took the offer. “It would be impossible for me to sell the house to anyone else, so I kind of felt like it was the only reasonable option,” he explained. 

The city applied for another grant from FEMA to acquire the houses, through a program designed to eliminate high-risk properties, but the agency hasn’t yet confirmed the funds. With options limited for protecting private property, the buyouts allow city government to mitigate private risk through acquisitions and demolitions. 

“It’s an opportunity for people whose homes are at risk or severely damaged to start fresh and also for the government to reduce the risk by eliminating that property,” said MaryAnn Tierney, the regional administrator for FEMA.

When the federal funding was announced in December, Tierney toured the city’s at-risk hillsides.

“As we think about climate change and we think about areas that are at risk for climate change, it’s not just coastal communities,” Tierney said. “It is communities like Pittsburgh, where you see the effects of concentrated rain on these very significant and steep slopes.” 

She applauded Pittsburgh for its efforts, but recognized the remaining challenges.

“The city is doing all of the right things,” Tierney said. “They’ve prioritized this. They’re seeking grant dollars. They’re putting their own money behind it. They’ve had a massive engineering effort to think about this. … They should be commended for recognizing and trying to take proactive steps to address it.”

Photographs by Quinn Glabicki.

Quinn Glabicki is the environment and climate reporter at PublicSource and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at quinn@publicsource.org and on Instagram and X @quinnglabicki.

This story was fact-checked by Sarah Liez.

The post Slip sliding away: Federal funds buy out Pittsburgh homes under threat from landslides appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

SparkleDragon’s Magical Emporium is a place in Beechview where witches, heathens, pagans and locals can meet to find incense, books and other items of the occult. 

Beechview Points of Pride
PublicSource maps and chronicles the strengths of diverse communities

Joyce Crock, a self-described witch, envisioned her Broadway Avenue business to be a meeting place where people who feel like they don’t belong in so-called “normal” places could build a community when she opened it in 2015.

“I feel that my place is really important to the pagan community,” Crock said. “We have a lot of LGBTQ+ people in the pagan community and they don’t always feel comfortable everywhere. I’ve had people of color come in and tell me how welcome they feel cause I’m not judgmental. That was a real slap of awakening.”

Crock said that many of the businesses around her have seen dwindling customers. And while she welcomes anyone into her store, as of late she said she too has been struggling to attract them.

“I’ve been in business for so long and I’ve never made a profit,” added Crock, who also sells the work of local artists, on consignment. “I don’t know how I’m still open, I really don’t. Some people are so supportive of the shop. I get a lot of people who come in just to talk. I almost run a little mental health clinic.”

Beechview’s business district hasn’t fully recovered from a massive fraud scandal in the early aughts even as it is buoyed by an influx of new residents, many of whom are Latino. Business owners are hoping the neighborhood’s accessibility and growing immigrant population will solidify the turnaround. 

“The business district was decimated. The Latino influx helped revive the community after everything happened with Bernardo Katz,” said Charlene Saner, a Beechview resident, referring to a developer who bought numerous properties, promising to invest in the area with the help of city Urban Redevelopment Authority funding. 

Instead, Katz absconded from the country, drawing federal charges of wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy and leaving debt that tied up many of the commercial properties he bought in Beechview. According to reports, Katz owned 80% of Beechview’s business district and promised a $2.6 million revitalization. 

Businesses catering to the Latino population have helped to fill the vacuum.

The area is home to numerous Latino-owned eateries as well as a grocery store and barbershop. The Pittsburgh Hispanic Development Corporation, headquartered on Broadway, houses a business incubator that’s promoting Latino entrepreneurs in the South Hills and across the region.

Guillermo Velazquez, executive director of the development group, said that his organization works with everyone but specializes in helping Latino people looking to start businesses. 

“It is good for Beechview because they’re incubating here and they have a business address with us during the incubation period,” Velazquez said. “There’s activity, and people come here for meetings. We increase the traffic in a positive way to Beechview.”

Velazquez said that since the organization began in 2018 they have helped more than 126 businesses open up in the region, at least one of which is in Beechview. 

He said that he hopes Beechview’s business offerings will continue to grow and bring with them a variety of industries like technology and research. Eventually, he thinks the neighborhood would benefit from an annual festival on Broadway. 

“Who knows what it would have looked like without that [Latino] influx,” said Saner, who also works for City Councilor Anthony Coghill. Some of Broadway’s immigrant pioneers struggled. “The businesses that spearheaded all of that are no longer there. But they left a really powerful legacy. They encouraged other Latinos to come to the area.”

Huddle gone, engagement promised

The Huddle restaurant on Broadway was in operation for 47 years, run by the politically influential Wagner family, before shutting down this summer.

The neighborhood is “completely different now and it’s also a completely different world,” said Peter Wagner, 78, who ran the business. “We have to move on.”

He said the neighborhood has “all gone to hell because of code enforcement. … Code enforcement officers refuse to enforce code rules that are on the books. There’s a lot of absentee landlords in this area.”

As a result, the once-strong housing stock has deteriorated, he said.

“Today you see overgrown lots and boarded-up windows and you see people just don’t take care of their properties and in most cases it’s absentee landlords and if you don’t ride them and come down on them you can’t win in a community,” Wagner said.

Pittsburgh has three environment enforcement officers who are each responsible for 30 neighborhoods, according to city spokesperson Olga George. Since September, the inspector covering Beechview has written 191 criminal complaints, of which 24 went to district court.

“The team philosophy is educate, investigate and [as a] last resort litigate,” George said. Code officers “speak with residents directly or via letters when a violation takes place. Sometimes, when they go for an inspection, the violation has already been cleared.”

Wagner said he has been trying to find a buyer for his restaurant but so far hasn’t found anyone he was satisfied with, though he’s shown it to potential buyers from Maryland and New Jersey. 

Some business district properties haven’t found buyers.

A former Katz property on Broadway Avenue was recently demolished by the city.

“It’s bittersweet because there’s this gaping hole in the business district. And now there’s going to be a methodical plan for what may go there,” Saner said. “We don’t want no more monopolies. No more one person owning multiple properties. With community engagement now, everybody will have a strong voice.” 

Saner said that community engagement is stronger because of the neighborhood’s history with bad investors like Katz. 

“Because of [Katz], more community groups emerged as a way of preventing this kind of thing from happening again,” she said. “And we’re stronger now for that.”

Signs of promise

A former Katz property on the corner where Beechview Avenue merges into Broadway Avenue is now a Dollar Eagle. 

On the other end of the business district sits Slice on Broadway, a pizzeria that has expanded into six locations across the city. Owner Rico Lunardi said he opened the business in 2010 after returning from Philadelphia with a business degree. 

“Pizza is a big deal here,” Lunardi said, noting that the area boasts legendary pizza joints like Fiori’s Pizzaria and Badamos. “There’s a lot of competition.” 

Despite the saucy competition, Lunardi said his business did well and “took off” after winning some local awards. He attributed the businesses success to high quality ingredients and the regional novelty of selling pizza by the slice.  

“There’s a Pittsburgh style of making pizza and we’re not that,” he said. “Pittsburgh pizza has a thicker crust, sweeter sauce and way more cheese. We’re a little different and there weren’t as many options for pizza by the slice when we started.” 

Lunardi said that he hopes to be able to franchise his business. 

“This neighborhood is great but it’s had its ups and downs,” he said, referring to Katz’s failure. “We thought we’d get more development here but that’s not the case.”

He said that the above-ground trolley, known as the T, holds the possibility for the area to attract more people looking to commute into and out of the city. 

Crock also said that the public transportation access can help revitalize the neighborhood. 

“I want to see Beechview grow and become vibrant as it should be. We have the advantage of the T line right here,” she said. “I hope to see Beechview become a city [neighborhood] like Lawrenceville or Bloomfield, without the gentrification.”

Guillermo Velazquez, who was interviewed for this story, serves on the PublicSource Board of Directors.

Eric Jankiewicz is PublicSource’s economic development reporter, and can be reached at ericj@publicsource.org or on Twitter @ericjankiewicz.

This story was fact-checked by Ladimir Garcia.

Translation by Zulma Michaca, a bilingual professional living in Riverside County, Calif., with family ties in Pittsburgh. She can be reached at z.michaca123@gmail.com.

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SparkleDragon’s Magical Emporium es un lugar en Beechview donde las brujas, los idólatras, los paganos y los locales se pueden reunir para encontrar inciensos, libros, y otros objetos de lo oculto. 

Beechview Puntos de Orgullo
FuentePública (PublicSource) mapea y relata las fortalezas de comunidades diversas.

Joyce Crock, autodenominada bruja, visualizaba su negocio en la Avenida Broadway como un lugar de reunión donde las personas que sienten que no pertenecen a los lugares denominados “normales” puedan construir una comunidad, cuando lo abrió en el 2015. 

“Siento que mi lugar es muy importante para la comunidad pagana,” Crock dijo. “Tenemos a mucha gente LGBTQ+ en la comunidad pagana y no siempre se sienten cómodos en todas partes. Hay personas de color que han venido a decirme cuán bienvenidos se sienten porque yo no los juzgo. Eso fue cómo una bofetada para despertar.”

Crock dijo que muchos negocios a su alrededor han visto disminuir su clientela . Y mientras ella da la bienvenida a cualquiera en su tienda, últimamente también se le ha hecho difícil atraer clientes. 

“He tenido mi negocio por mucho tiempo y nunca he generado ganancia,” agregó Crock, quien también vende obras de artistas locales, por consignación. “No sé cómo todavía sigo abierta, en realidad no lo sé. Algunas personas dan mucho apoyo a la tienda. Hay varias personas que entran solo para platicar. Casi tengo una pequeña clínica de salud mental.” 

El distrito de negocios de Beechview no se ha recuperado completamente de un escándalo de fraude masivo a principios de la década del dos mil, incluso cuando es impulsado ahora por la afluencia de nuevos residentes, muchos de ellos Latinos. Los dueños de negocios tienen la esperanza de que la accesibilidad del vecindario y la creciente población de inmigrantes van a solidificar la transformación.

“El distrito de negocios quedó diezmado. La afluencia de los Latinos ha ayudado a revivir la comunidad después de todo lo que paso con Bernardo Katz,” dijo Charlene Saner, una residente de Beechview, refiriéndose a un desarrollador que compró numerosas propiedades, prometiendo invertir en el área con ayuda de la fundación de la Autoridad de Renovación Urbana (Urban Redevelopment Authority).

En lugar de eso, Katz huyó del país, con cargos federales de fraude electrónico, fraude bancario y conspiración, y dejó una deuda atada a muchas propiedades comerciales que compró en Beechview. De acuerdo con informes, Katz poseía el 80% del distrito de negocios de Beechview y prometió una revitalización de $2.6 millones.   

Los negocios que atienden a la población Latina han ayudado a llenar el vacío. 

El área es hogar de numerosos restaurantes de dueños Latinos, así como un supermercado y una peluquería. La Corporación de Desarrollo Hispano de Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh Hispanic Development Corporation), con sede en Broadway, alberga un programa de incubación de empresas que promueve emprendedores Latinos en South Hills y en toda la región. 

Guillermo Velazquez, director ejecutivo del grupo de desarrollo, dijo que su organización trabaja con todos, pero se especializa en ayudar a personas Latinas que quieren empezar negocios. 

“Es bueno para Beechview porque se están incubando aquí y tienen una dirección postal de la empresa con nosotros durante el periodo de incubación,” Velazquez dijo. “Hay actividad, y las personas vienen aquí para reuniones. Incrementamos el tráfico en una manera positiva en Beechview.” 

Velazquez dijo que desde que la organización empezó en el 2018, han ayudado a abrir más de 126 negocios en la región, y al menos uno de estos está en Beechview. 

Él dijo que espera que la oferta de negocios continúe creciendo y que traigan con ellos una variedad de industrias, como de tecnología y de investigación. Piensa que con el tiempo el vecindario se beneficiaría de un festival anual en Broadway.

Quien sabe cómo se hubiera visto sin esa afluencia [Latina],” dijo Saner, quien también trabaja para el Concejal de la Ciudad Anthony Coghill. Algunos inmigrantes pioneros de Broadway tuvieron dificultades. “Los negocios que encabezaban todo eso ya no están allí. Pero dejaron un legado muy poderoso. Ellos animaron a otros Latinos a venir al área.” 

Huddle cerrado, participación prometida

El restaurante The Huddle en Broadway operó por 47 años, dirigido por la familia Wagner, políticamente influyente, antes de cerrar este verano. 

El vecindario es “completamente diferente ahora y también es un mundo completamente diferente,” dijo Peter Wagner, de 78 años, quien manejaba el negocio. “Tenemos que seguir adelante.”

El dijo que el vecindario se ha “ido todo al infierno por la aplicación de los códigos… Los funcionarios encargados de hacer cumplir los códigos se niegan a aplicar las reglas de códigos que están escritas. Hay muchos propietarios absentistas en esta área.” 

Cómo consecuencia, se han deteriorado las acciones  de las viviendas que una vez fueron sólidas, él dijo. 

“Ahora se ven lotes descuidados y ventanas clausuradas con tablas, y ves que la gente simplemente no cuida sus propiedades y en muchos casos son propietarios absentistas y si no los buscas y les presionas no puedes ganar en una comunidad,” Wagner dijo.  

Pittsburgh tiene tres funcionarios que velan por el  medioambiente, cada uno es responsable de 30 vecindarios, de acuerdo con la vocera de la ciudad Olga George. Desde septiembre, el inspector que atiende a Beechview ha reunido 191 denuncias, de las cuales 24 fueron a la corte del distrito.

“La filosofía del equipo es educar, investigar y [cómo un] último recurso litigar,” dijo George. Los funcionarios “hablan con los residentes directamente o por carta cuando ocurre una infracción. A veces, cuando van a una inspección ya se ha resuelto la infracción.” 

Wagner dijo que ha tratado de encontrar un comprador para su restaurante, pero hasta ahora no ha encontrado a alguien con el que esté satisfecho, aun cuando se lo ha mostrado a posibles compradores de Maryland y New Jersey. 

Algunas propiedades del distrito de negocios no han encontrado compradores. 

Una propiedad que fue de Katz en la Avenida Broadway fue demolida recientemente por la ciudad.

“Es agridulce porque hay un vacío enorme en el distrito de negocios. Y ahora va a haber un plan metódico de lo que irá allí,” dijo Saner. “No queremos más monopolios. No más de que una persona sea dueña de múltiples propiedades. Con participación comunitaria ahora, todos van a tener una voz fuerte.” 

Saner dijo que la participación comunitaria es más fuerte por el historial del vecindario con malos inversionistas como Katz. 

“Por [Katz], emergieron más grupos comunitarios cómo una manera de prevenir que ese tipo de cosa pase de nuevo,” dijo. “Y ahora somos más fuertes por eso.”

Señales prometedoras

Una propiedad que antes fue de Katz, en la esquina donde la Avenida Beechview se une con la Avenida Broadway, ahora es un Dollar Eagle.

En el otro lado del distrito de negocios está Slice on Broadway, una pizzería que se ha expandido a 6 locales en toda la ciudad. El dueño Rico Lunardi dijo que abrió el negocio en el 2010, después de regresar de Filadelfia con un título en administración de empresas. 

“La pizza es una gran cosa aquí,” dijo Lunardi, destacando que el área presume de pizzerías legendarias cómo Fiori’s Pizzaria y Badamos. “Hay mucha competencia.”

A pesar de la competencia sabrosa, Lunardi dijo que le ha ido bien en su negocio y “despegó” después de ganar algunos premios locales. Él atribuyó su éxito comercial a ingredientes de alta calidad y a la novedad regional de vender rebanadas de pizza.

“Hay un estilo Pittsburgh de hacer pizzas y nosotros no somos eso,” él dijo. “La pizza de Pittsburgh tiene una masa más gruesa, salsa más dulce y mucho más queso. Nosotros somos un poco diferentes y no había muchas opciones de conseguir rebanadas de pizza cuando empezamos.”

Lunardi dijo que espera poder franquiciar su negocio.

“Este vecindario es genial, pero ha tenido altibajos,” dijo, refiriéndose al fracaso de Katz. “Nosotros pensábamos que íbamos a tener más desarrollo aquí, pero eso no es el caso.”   

Él dijo que el tren de superficie, conocido cómo el T, trae la posibilidad de que el área atraiga a más personas que buscan trasladarse a diario hacia dentro y fuera de la ciudad. 

Crock también dijo que el acceso al transporte público puede ayudar a revitalizar el vecindario. 

“Quiero ver a Beechview crecer y hacerse más vibrante, como debe de ser. Tenemos la ventaja de la línea T aquí mismo,” dijo ella. “Espero ver a Beechview convertirse en una ciudad [vecindario] cómo Lawrenceville o Bloomfield, sin la gentrificación.”

Guillermo Velazquez, quien fue entrevistado para esta historia, forma parte de la junta de directores de FuentePública (PublicSource). 

Eric Jankiewicz es un reportero de desarrollo económico de FuentePública (PublicSource), y puede ser contactado en ericj@publicsource.org o por Twitter  @ericjankiewicz.

Los hechos de esta historia fueron revisados por Ladimir Garcia. 

Traducción de Zulma Michaca, profesional bilingüe experta viviendo en el Condado de Riverside, Calif., con familia en Pittsburgh. Para contactarla: z.michaca123@gmail.com.

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It is a fitting end for United States Steel that its long history as a corporate behemoth ends with plans to be acquired whole by Japan’s Nippon Steel. Once a world leader, the steelmaker has long been in decline, and locally it has long been more a part of the region’s self-image than a partner in regional development.

Few places have retained an indelible moniker for as long as Pittsburgh has been known as the Steel City. It makes sense that a city and region that were the home to an unparalleled cluster of metals industries since long before the Civil War would be known for what they produced and exported to the world. 

But the painful truth is that U.S. Steel, long the dominant local player in the industry, has never had anywhere near the commitment to Pittsburgh as Pittsburgh had to the corporation. And now a company that became moribund in strategic direction and management practices will be acquired by one from a country — Japan — that had no modern steelmaking when Andrew Carnegie first built the Edgar Thomson Works at Braddock, but continued to innovate long after U.S. Steel stopped doing so.

Born in NYC, U.S. Steel’s marriage to Pittsburgh was fraught

When first contrived by J.P. Morgan and his collaborators, the behemoth U.S. Steel was not a Pittsburgh-based firm at all, even if the core of its assets were formed from Andrew Carnegie’s plants clustered along the Monongahela River. Like many a financier since, Morgan valued proximity and made the Empire Building in lower Manhattan the home of the new corporation. Decades would pass before U.S. Steel officially moved its headquarters to Pittsburgh in 1931, where it remained for further decades — but not forever.

Just a few years after U.S. Steel was created, the new conglomerate built its largest steel works in Gary Indiana, prompting questions about its future in Pittsburgh. By the end of World War II, it was almost heretical to question steel’s role in Southwestern Pennsylvania. But as postwar demand for steel increased, U.S. Steel looked east and built its most modern plant, the Fairless Works, outside of Philadelphia in the 1950s. 

Nonetheless, Pittsburgh looked the part of the nation’s steel capital. For the last half-century, downtown Pittsburgh’s tallest building has been the steel-clad skyscraper originally built as U.S. Steel’s headquarters. Before rust became a symbol of decline, the entire building was intentionally transformed by the company’s patented weathering steel giving it an oxidized sheen visible to the horizon. 

Yet a few years after the 64-story U.S. Steel Tower opened in 1971, the company placed full-page advertisements in local newspapers asking, “Did we make a mistake locating our headquarters in Pittsburgh?” The unambiguous threats stemmed from local efforts to regulate the nearly unabated pollution that remained endemic to carbon steel production. U.S. Steel may have wanted to move, but a century of sunk investment made any such move inconceivable at the time. Pollution from the plants remained, an artifact of the failure to make sufficient investments to keep many of the company’s legacy plants in Southwestern Pennsylvania competitive into the future.

By contrast, as Japan emerged from World War II it built a steel industry around modern basic oxygen blast furnaces, a technology US Steel eschewed until it was too late.

Closing in Pittsburgh, moving to Houston

At the beginning of the 1980s, U.S. Steel was quick not just to shut down, but to deconstruct much of its Pittsburgh-based production. 

The corporation vigorously opposed attempts by employees to acquire plants and continue production as employee-owned firms as steelworkers at nearby Weirton Steel were able to do in 1984. Laid-off workers at U.S. Steel’s Duquesne Works went so far as to set up round-the-clock sentries at the plant to keep the corporation from taking vital equipment away from the site. Saving jobs or preserving the communities that had literally been built around its steel plants were never a corporate priority.

The corporation’s goal was to rapidly write-off the remaining value of its legacy plants, no matter the cost to workers and the communities they lived in. Shuttering plants facilitated a rapid shift away from steel production, and from Pittsburgh. Even as the corporation generated large net cash flows in the 1980s, the historic tax write-offs enabled U.S. Steel to purchase Marathon Oil in 1981, and then Texas Oil and Gas in 1985. The firm not only renamed itself, but then later in the 1980s did the unthinkable and moved its headquarters to Houston, until U.S. Steel was spun out of USX in 2002.

As a region, Pittsburgh has fought hard to keep its core steel production in operation, but those efforts have come at a cost. Faced with an undeniable loss of competitiveness in modern steel production, efforts to keep legacy plants in operation have only made a final reckoning that much more painful. 

That U.S. Steel’s future was far from Western Pennsylvania has been clear for years. Not only has the company canceled major investments in its regional plants – investments that were vital to their future – but recent investments have been concentrated in locations such as Alabama and Arkansas.

Though it has been decades since any steel has been produced within the limits of the City of Pittsburgh proper, nostalgia for what steel production means, and in particular what U.S. Steel means, has long exceeded its reality in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Steel is not entirely gone from Pittsburgh, but what remains of that industrial heritage is a shadow of its former scope. U.S. Steel Tower has long since been sold to real estate investors. The city and region has been forced to shape a future that doesn’t rely on heavy industry, making U.S. Steel’s final demise a symbolic epilogue to a longer story of decline.

Following the sale, a trace of steel production will likely remain in close proximity to Pittsburgh, at least for now. Nippon Steel has announced that U.S. Steel will continue to exist as a wholly owned subsidiary, presumably still based in Pittsburgh. The few U.S. Steel plants still in operation in Western Pennsylvania — the coke works at Clairton, and production facilities in Braddock and West Mifflin — will likely continue operating, for the time being.

But an important — and perhaps irreplaceable — piece of the region’s identity will be gone.

No future industry will remain as fixed in place as long as steel remained in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Arguably, steel existed in Pittsburgh longer than any new industry may ever remain concentrated in any one region ever again. Successful regions in the future will have to adapt and change much faster than before, and be willing to move beyond their pasts before reality undercuts identity.

Christopher Briem is a regional economist with the Urban & Regional Analysis program at the University of Pittsburgh’s University Center for Social and Urban Research [UCSUR]. He can be reached at cbriem@pitt.edu.

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