They used to call it “Little Downtown,” before urban renewal created Penn Circle and destroyed East Liberty’s thriving business corridor in an effort to create an urban mall.
Last week, more than 40 years later, local, regional and national leaders gathered to cut the ribbon on a $150 million transit center development that could return East Liberty to its Little Downtown status.
“Look around you,” said Urban Redevelopment Authority Executive Director Robert Rubinstein. “What you see represents $750 million of investment. It’s generating millions upon millions of dollars of tax revenue, and it’s helping to drive Pittsburgh’s economic resurgence. The linchpin of everything you see is the transit center.”
East Liberty Development Inc.
Kingsley Association
Pittsburgh Public School Board
Around him—and Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, and representatives from the governor’s office, the Federal Transit Administration, the developer and East Liberty stakeholders—stood what will soon be 43,000 square feet of mixed commercial space, 360 units of market-rate housing, a 554-space shared-use parking facility, a new street connection, a new pedestrian bridge, a 120-space bike garage, lighting, streetscape improvements, landscaping and plaza facilities that connect Penn Avenue transit users to MLK Busway facilities.
Peduto said the Center will help development and generate funding for affordable housing through a tax abatement plan. A percentage of taxes generated by construction in East Liberty and Shadyside will go into a fund to affordable housing in and around East Liberty.
“The disinvestment that’s happened in East Liberty and Homewood and Larimer has driven families out of those neighborhoods for 50 years,” Peduto said. “What we’re seeing now is an investment that’s coming back, and we want (those families) to be a part of it.”
Mark Minnerly, director of real estate for the Mosites Co., the project developer, said residents will start moving into the housing portion of the development in just weeks.
“We’re not even halfway to seeing this neighborhood come back,” he said.
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