“Demolition of Bethel AME Church, Wylie Avenue and Elm Street, Lower Hill District, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 24, 1957.” (Photo by Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris/Carnegie Museum of Art/Getty Images)
Talks between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Bethel AME Church are nearly “solidified” even as the club’s developers head into a contentious process on the Live Nation site.
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The Pittsburgh Penguins have tentatively agreed to return part of the Lower Hill District to Bethel AME Church, whose original home was demolished in the 1950s to make way for the Civic Arena.
Movement toward a deal between the Penguins and Bethel AME comes as the slow-moving redevelopment of the Lower Hill approaches a milestone: the potential sale by public entities of a parcel that would host a Live Nation concert venue. That prospective sale will spur public processes starting with a meeting tonight at which the development team is expected to pitch their vision to a community that has mixed feelings about progress to date.
Bethel AME Pastor Dale Snyder, in a Sept. 30 email to scores of people, wrote that the church and the hockey club’s development team have agreed that:
- The church will have the opportunity to move back to the Lower Hill from its current location in the Middle Hill, though not necessarily to its precise former location
- The former location will be, at the very least, commemorated with historical markers
- The church will own its new parcel and hold development rights
- Details were to be worked out around the end of October.
Bethel AME Church was founded in 1808 and until the 1950s it served as a congregation and center for learning and social activism.
The church was demolished in 1957 by the Urban Redevelopment Authority [URA], which took it using eminent domain. Since then, Bethel AME’s congregation has sought justice, potentially in the form of land or development rights.
According to Kevin Acklin, president of business operations for the Penguins, the hockey club and church reached an agreement to return an unspecified parcel of land to the church during a recent meeting. The meeting was convened by the mayor’s office, according to city Press Secretary Maria Montaño.
According to Rev. Snyder’s email, if the historic location of what he called “Old Big Bethel” isn’t available then the church will move to a location within the Lower Hill that is of the same size as the church’s original footprint.
“We troubled heaven, worked our faith, and God answered our prayers,” he wrote.
“We have a historic opportunity to do something great together on the Lower Hill development with Bethel AME church,” Acklin wrote in an email to PublicSource. “And we appreciate the leadership of Mayor Ed Gainey and Chief of Staff Jake Wheatley. We are still working out details together, but expect to have a definitive plan solidified in the next few weeks.”
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