A rendering of the proposed Colwell Street development presented to the City Planning Commission on July 25, 2023. The Housing Authority of Pittsburgh got the commission’s permission to begin development of their vision of affordable housing in the Hill District.
The City Planning Commission gave its approval to affordable apartments in the Hill District and Uptown, plus a place in Hazelwood for robots and their handlers.
by Lucas Dufalla, PublicSource
The Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh [HACP] got the go-ahead Thursday to begin making its new vision of affordable housing in the Hill District a reality.
On Thursday, the City Planning Commission approved plans for a three-structure, 123-unit mixed-income development on Colwell Street as a part of the authority’s larger blueprint to redevelop Bedford Dwellings, the city’s oldest public housing community.
The 4.98 acre site sits south of Bedford Dwellings, and is meant to take in an unspecified number of households who will be relocated during the redevelopment.
“There’s folks that are anxiously looking forward to moving into a new unit. That’ll free up space for future phases of development,” said Joe Hackett, a principal at landscape architecture firm LaQuatra Bonci.
Last week, news broke that HACP won a competitive $50 million Choice Neighborhoods grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Under the plan, all 411 units in Bedford Dwellings will be completely demolished and rebuilt to make way for more than 800 mixed-income units on and around the existing public housing community.
The project will begin construction in September and is set to be completed by 2025.