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Could Hazelwood, 4MR be on the Pittsburgh 2025 chopping block? | The Homepage
- jmartinez5135
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
By Ann Belser
Eighty people were gathered around tables at the Energy Innovation Center in the Hill District on Oct. 22, talking very seriously about the future of Pittsburgh.
The discussions were about three possible scenarios to guide the Pittsburgh 2050 Comprehensive Plan. Those three scenarios gave the attendees a choice: Do they want a plan that makes the city better by focusing on housing, or jobs, or climate resilience?
The third option would move people from low-lying, flood prone areas, like Four Mile Run, and from hillsides that are prone to landslides, like parts of Hazelwood. That plan would also divert resources like transportation away from the areas that are more affected by hazards from climate change.
The housing-first plan would focus on creating jobs near population centers with a fairly interconnected transportation network throughout the city.
The economy-first plan would focus on creating jobs in existing economic centers, like Downtown and Oakland with housing near those job centers and transportation designed around transporting people to and from work.
The three scenarios are the latest phase of the $5.9 million comprehensive plan that is asking residents to make tough choices about Pittsburgh’s future.
Engagement goal: 10%
So far, 6% of the city’s population, or 18,500 people, have weighed in on what they want to see in the plan.
The engagement effort has been led by LaTrenda Leonard Sherrill, the principal of Pittsburgh-based Common Cause Consultants. The engagement represents $2.645 million of the overall effort with the technical development of the plan coming in at $3.255 million.
Ms. Sherrill said her team’s goal is to get input on the proposed plan from 10% of the city. So far, 113,600 people have been exposed to the plan through emails, social media, and by people tabling at public events. Members of the engagement team have gone to community meetings and held workshops. They went to community days, festivals and farmers markets.
Ms. Sherrill said the surveys taken by participants thus far have helped develop a shared vision for the city.
The initiative also engaged two New York-based consulting firms, Urban American City and HR&A, to look at the technical issues like flood plains, landslide-prone areas, substandard streets, retail corridors with vacancies, and areas that have poor access to transit and health care facilities.
Some of the technical findings have led the engagement team to ask tough questions to residents about whether to continue to build along flood plains or on hillsides prone to landslides. Low-income areas of Greenfield, South Oakland, South Side Slopes, Spring Hill and Hazelwood are all affected by these factors. Many of those areas also have bus routes that run infrequently or have no bus service at all.
It all leads to what the consultants are calling “tough choices,” like whether to try moving people out of established neighborhoods. Should the city plan for more neighborhood-based development or centralized business districts like Downtown and Oakland? Should the city concentrate on better sidewalks and bike lanes or upgrading the transit system around commuting to work?
There is still time to comment and more phases of the plan to comment on. After gathering information about Pittsburgh in the early phases of the plan, the consultants developed the three possible scenarios and will be seeking more community input before drafting the plan, which will include policy recommendations, implementation guides and accountability measures.
Residents can download 20 topic books on the PGH2025.com website. These cover areas like economic opportunity, environmental justice, food, mobility, land use and zoning, public health and safety, stormwater management, and urban design.
The project documents state that the consultants are also working from past studies, like the Housing Needs Assessment, the city’s Climate Action Plan, and the state’s 10-year Strategic Plan for Economic Development in Pennsylvania.
The final draft of the plan is slated to be issued in August 2026 when it can then be adopted by city council and the mayor’s office; however, there will be new members of city council and a new mayor.
Missed technical details
The technical consultants missed some of the details of Pittsburgh. For instance, though the maps of the city marked medical facilities, it neglected to note the Alma Illery Medical Center on Hamilton Avenue in Homewood, designating the neighborhood as a place with limited health care resource access. An email reply from the consultants said it was a clinic, not a hospital.
The economic analysis of the area conflates numbers from statistics that do not go together. For instance, the Pittsburgh workforce draws from the entire county and includes the counties of Beaver, Butler, Washington and Westmoreland. But the population cited as Black is only the city population, so when the booklet handed out by the team states that 9% of the workforce is Black but 23% of the population is Black, while 62% of the population is white but 83% of the workforce is white, it ignores that, according to the state, Allegheny County is 13.5% Black, and 79.1% white, so closer to parity with the city statistics.
In an email, Ms. Sherrill said, “We understand that the city’s workforce draws from the entire county. At the same time, we believe the statistic still stands as it shows that much of the city’s Black population has to commute outside of the city for jobs at a higher rate than white residents.”
A map that designated residential zones in bright yellow had areas such as East Liberty, Homewood, Squirrel Hill South and Shadyside as large residential zones with walkable streets and homes that faced the sidewalk. Point Breeze was in a lighter shade of yellow, along with South Side Slopes, Beechview and Brookline. Squirrel Hill North joined Downtown, North Oakland and the Strip District as not being considered a residential zone.
In another map, the consultants, working with data from the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy study, showed areas where residents have to walk more than 10 minutes to a park. This included areas near Davis Avenue in Brighton Heights, ignoring the pedestrian bridge that recently opened over Woods Run Avenue, connecting Davis Avenue to Riverview Park. In an email, they said the bridge opened after the analysis was done.
To learn more about the public engagement process, contribute your feedback on the plan and help determine the future of the city, visit PGH2050.com.
Ann Belser is the publisher of Print, the community newspaper serving Pittsburgh’s East End. An earlier version of this article was published in the October issue of Print and is reprinted with permission.