A hillside in Hazelwood slopes up from beyond Hazelwood Green’s Mill 19 business center and Second Avenue on Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2023. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
As the region’s major universities look to transform an aging mill site into a pioneering biotech and robotics center, local residents want to ensure their voices shape the conversation.
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Hazelwood may be a food desert, but in the neighborhood’s partly vacant commercial corridor, you can still enjoy a “little taste of France” at a bakery occupying the site of a former grocery store.
The nearest grocery store is a Giant Eagle a mile and a half up the hill in Greenfield, and some longtime residents like Saundra Cole-McKamey, 58, wonder who the bakery is for.
“We didn’t ask for that at all,” she said. Developers “come in our community. They don’t ask what we want.”
Similar concerns apply to the future of a large land tract just north of the business district that, at least for now, sits largely undeveloped. The grassy swath of land, known as Hazelwood Green, is historically tied to the adjacent Hazelwood neighborhood and will likely shape the course of its future.
This fall, the University of Pittsburgh plans to begin constructing a biomanufacturing facility, known as BioForge, that it says will transform “Steel Valley” into “Bio Valley.” Pitt plans to present the project before the City Planning Commission in September, with the commission’s approval required before the university can move forward with construction. The commission process will eventually include a public hearing that could showcase differing neighborhood views on Pitt’s community engagement.
And Carnegie Mellon University, which already operates a Manufacturing Futures Institute on the Hazelwood Green site, received city approval last month to build a Robotics Innovation Center.
Both universities have met with the residents to discuss their development plans and say they’re using feedback from residents and community organizations to bring opportunities from Hazelwood Green to the neighborhood. But, so far, some residents are unaware of what’s happening on the site, or feel they’ve been left out of the conversation and may not be served by the development.
In step with the region, Hazelwood is adapting and changing to new economic realities. Decades after the collapse of heavy industry, the Hazelwood Green site has garnered millions in funding from foundations and brought a promise of community revitalization.
“If our community knew that [Hazelwood Green] land was valuable, we could have bought it ourselves,” said Terri Shields, a lifelong Hazelwood resident who founded JADA House International, a local organization that provides space to at-risk teens and women.
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