Pedestrians and drivers make their way along Smithfield Street between Oliver Avenue and the Smithfield Street Bridge on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
The city’s once-premier shopping corridor is plagued with vacancies and decline, and was not a focus of the Downtown revitalization announcement. But it’s poised for a rebirth.
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Heading to Downtown’s vibrant shopping corridor meant the nice coat, baby-doll shoes and tights, dressing in “your Sunday’s best to go buy some new Sunday’s best,” she recounted this fall.
Long after the heyday of multi-floor department stores, her childhood outings in the late 1990s and early 2000s were still big events: Kaufmann’s for school shopping, Burlington Coat Factory for winter, window decorations for the holidays.
“Going to the Smithfield Street stores — that was the first time I ever went to a [make-up] counter or went to a LUSH store,” said Davis-Jones, hospitality host at the Emerald City coworking and event space established in 2021 on Smithfield’s 200 block. The street “was truly a hub.”
Today, some two dozen street-level storefronts sit vacant along Smithfield, a roughly 10-block canyon that bisects Downtown from Fort Pitt Boulevard to Liberty Avenue. Two of the empty spaces — in the Frank & Seder Building at Forbes Avenue and One Oxford Centre at Third Avenue — span a block each, forming dim caverns amid century-old landmarks.
For public and private interests fighting Smithfield’s decline, the spaces represent a rare chance to revamp the historic thoroughfare and help anchor a Golden Triangle makeover.
They expect a yearslong haul.
Those persistent vacancies, perceptions of Smithfield as dirty or dangerous and other post-pandemic challenges demand sustained cooperation from city government, developers and investors to build on store openings, improvements in Mellon Square Park and other strides in the past couple of years, advocates said. To some business operators, much of the street hasn’t captured the public attention heralded in areas like Market Square.
“We’re the forgotten end, I think,” said Dan Means, owner of Sports World Specialties on Smithfield near Liberty Avenue. Closures of adjacent businesses like the well-known Smithfield Cafe began years before the pandemic.
Means sees many people asking for help on the street. He buzzes in customers at his front door. He does a lot of business online and would hate to depend only on walk-in traffic for sales, he said.
People “come Downtown for food and theater, but they don’t come down for shopping,” Means said, adding that free parking and more sidewalk cleaning would probably help.
Situated at opposing ends of Smithfield Street, S.W. Randall Toyes & Giftes and the Emerald City coworking space represent two keys for the Downtown thoroughfare: active retail space and creative reuse of landmark buildings. (Photos by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
A delayed project to widen sidewalks, modernize infrastructure and encourage street life should buoy interest in Smithfield, with construction likely to finally start in the first quarter of 2026 and last 18 months, according to city and Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership [PDP] officials. Longtime developers cheered the plan.
Smithfield “needs a much more concerted effort to be successful,” said Herky Pollock, a longtime Downtown real-estate broker and president and CEO of Legacy Realty Partners. While Pittsburgh has renewed urban corridors, “Smithfield has fallen behind in that transformative process.”
Pollock called for “all hands on deck” and a “cohesive effort” across public and private sectors to rejuvenate the street. Hurdles range from general disrepair and retail closures to pandemic setbacks like a diminished market for office space and dormant blocks just waiting to “set the tone for the next renaissance,” he said.
When Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced a 10-year effort for more than $600 million in Downtown revitalization, officials promoted a three-piece strategy for state money supporting public spaces: Point State Park, Market Square and the planned 8th Street Block Civic Space in the Cultural District. But the fanfare in October made little mention of Smithfield, “the fourth leg that stabilizes Downtown,” Pollock said.
“It’s the main artery that goes from river to river,” he added. “In essence, if you don’t fix it, it leads right to the heart of Pittsburgh — and it will continue to have a hole in the heart.”
Changes are coming
The Smithfield story is familiar to small- and medium-sized U.S. cities. As suburbs began pulling away shoppers after World War II, urban department stores closed as early as the 1950s and ’60s.
Now smaller stores, offices, apartments and other functions tend to occupy buildings like the old Gimbels at Smithfield and Sixth Avenue, which closed in 1986 and is now the Heinz 57 Center office building (leased largely by UPMC). Kaufmann’s at Smithfield and Fifth Avenue became Macy’s in 2006 before closing in 2015. Its occupants now include a Target, a Burlington and a Five Below, all retailers opened since 2022.
Named for British landowner Devereux Smith, Smithfield Street has been important to Downtown since the 1800s — a central connecting point to neighborhoods south of the Monongahela River. (Historical photo credits on last slide)
Nationally, a slew of businesses on old shopping boulevards ceased as federal pandemic relief ran out, although entrepreneurship is now surging, with the number of new business applications outpacing those in 2019, said Dionne Baux, chief programs officer with the Chicago-based Main Street America nonprofit. Downtown development groups serve an important role in attracting small businesses to these corridors and connecting local entrepreneurs to city and philanthropic resources, she said.
Many find themselves drawn to those thoroughfares like Smithfield Street.
“These commercial corridors have a sense of identity that’s distinct in the traditional central business district,” Baux said. “It creates that destination and that sense of place that individuals want to visit.”
Main Street-type thoroughfares also generate “that place of belonging for all residents — and community — regardless of our affiliation,” she said.
Smithfield wasn’t a principal target in the revitalization announcement in October because the street is already in line for public support targeting the infrastructure work, said Aaron Sukenik, vice president of district development for the nonprofit PDP.
Plans feature improvements across the three blocks from Forbes to Sixth avenues, including reconstructed sidewalks — wider by 1 to 8 feet in places — along with landscaping, better lighting and intersection bump-outs to help pedestrians cross traffic. Once expected in 2022, final designs should be ready for review by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation by early 2025, said Michael Panzitta, a senior project manager with the City of Pittsburgh Department of Mobility and Infrastructure.
Factors such as the pandemic, analyses of complex underground infrastructure and agreements with building owners pushed back the timeline. The PDP partnered with city hall on the roughly $9 million project. Federal money funneled through PennDOT should cover some 80%, Panzitta said.
Drawings also include a new set of bus shelters for Pittsburgh Regional Transit riders. About 2,500 people board and disembark at Smithfield’s five bus stops on a typical weekday; the stop at Sixth Avenue is among the system’s most used, according to the agency.
Together, the changes should improve visits for everyone who uses Smithfield, especially walkers, Panzitta said. Part of the approach should lead people into Mellon Square Park, a historical plaza built in 1955 atop the Mellon Square parking garage between Oliver and Sixth avenues.
A triangular sidewalk aesthetic will mimic visual cues in the park, where the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy has led a $10 million restoration and maintenance effort. The conservancy’s new light display — Aurora: Illuminating the Holiday Magic of Market Square — extends seasonal program offerings “that celebrate the park’s character and the diversity of our city,” conservancy President Catherine Qureshi said.
“We believe improvements to Smithfield Street will enhance the entire district, benefiting Mellon Square as well as the broader Downtown area,” she said in a statement.
Pollock described the park’s rebound from dilapidation as “a microcosm of what could transpire across Smithfield and all of Downtown.” The PDP promoted Mellon Square lunchtime concerts through the summer.
Beneath the plaza, boarded-over storefronts fronting Smithfield are in line for renovations and permanent public restrooms, according to the city. That work should begin after the relocation of the only remaining occupant: the Reaching Out on the Streets [ROOTS] team that helps people in crisis.
Back at the PDP, Sukenik called the Smithfield infrastructure reconstruction a generational investment that will amplify the street’s ongoing recovery, a top priority for the Downtown partnership. The city is collaborating with state and federal authorities to line up second-phase work, which probably will extend similar improvements from Forbes Avenue to the Smithfield Street Bridge, Panzitta said. A final phase eventually would center on the stretch from Sixth to Liberty avenues.
“The appearance and function of Smithfield is going to be a big decision factor in investments that come in and around Smithfield,” Sukenik said. “As the saying goes, the first 20 feet can sell the next 200,000. That means people’s first impression at that ground level is really what can close the deal on a choice to locate in the upper floors.”
From pop-ups to homes and dorms
Over the past year, Sukenik estimated, the partnership invested upward of $95,000 to facilitate Smithfield business development, pop-up attractions, public art, planters and facade improvements through several grant programs.
Some facade upgrades are near Fort Pitt Boulevard, not far from the old House Building that overlooks the Monongahela River. The revitalization strategy announced by Shapiro will support a partial conversion of the 12-story brick tower, with some office space to become 46 market-rate and affordable residences called the Smithfield Lofts.
The Downtown strategy will add close to 1,000 new residential units in all — a third tagged affordable — largely by overhauling unused office buildings. In October, weekday workers in the Golden Triangle numbered about 57% of pre-pandemic levels, according to PDP data.
Given the pattern and shrinking footprints for longtime office tenants, the partnership anticipates Downtown may see as much as 8 million square feet of office space in need of repurposing. New residents will be instrumental in attracting new businesses — especially restaurants and retail — to Smithfield, Sukenik said.
A pedestrian-first focus is another key, said Lucas Piatt of the Piatt Companies, a real-estate developer and management group. The CEO envisions outdoor dining, condo and apartment residential, more shopping, brighter walkways and an easier time for walkers as infrastructure improvements take root.
His company’s Lumière Residences high-rise condominiums, at the former Saks Fifth Avenue at Smithfield and Oliver Avenue, were about 85% sold out by mid-November. The project counts 86 units.
“Smithfield should be our showcase street, and I think it does have the potential to do that,” said Piatt, a former PDP chairman.
Fulfilling the potential will take property owners “willing to put in sweat equity” to create a sense of place, he said. “Big spaces are tough to divide from a constructability standpoint. You’ve got to find the right use.”
The old Kaufmann’s building could be Exhibit A. In addition to stores on its lower levels, the 13-story landmark houses 311 apartments, an EVEN Hotel with 160 rooms and an expansive rooftop with a swimming pool, a bar and a basketball court that turns into an ice-skating rink for the winter.
On the next block, Piatt sees the former Mellon Bank building from Fifth to Oliver avenues, owned by PNC Bank and briefly a Lord & Taylor department store, as “a huge opportunity” for businesses, retail and new residents to expand onto Smithfield.
The street could also be attractive to Point Park University, said Ted Black, senior vice president of institutional advancement and strategy at the urban school.
“It’s a lot easier to convert a building for a dormitory than it is for [other] residential just because you don’t have to plumb as much,” Black said. Situated less than a block from Smithfield on the Boulevard of the Allies, Point Park will evaluate real-estate options as the university grows, he said.
Turning around perceptions
Point Park students have become Target regulars since the chain opened its Downtown outpost in summer 2022 — 22,000 square feet with a front entrance near the landmark Kaufmann’s Clock at Smithfield and Fifth Avenue.
Its foot traffic contributes to growing activity and has helped settle the street since the height of pandemic unrest and closures, Downtown workers said. The Smithfield corridor had become notorious for drug activity, high-profile crime and public urination and defecation.
Staff at Wiener World, a Smithfield hot-dog destination since 1965, reported daily urination around their storefront and bleached the doorways every morning accordingly. In June, the restaurant finally decamped for the U.S. Steel Building.
Across Strawberry Way, the Smithfield United Church of Christ took much blame for Smithfield’s condition, congregation President Jon Colburn said. The church hosted an Allegheny County-funded homeless shelter until the county closed it in June 2023.
Guests became “easy prey for drug dealers” when the roughly 140-bed facility would close during daytime hours, Colburn said. “Smithfield became kind of an open-air drug market.”
He defended the church’s work as part of “our mission to provide housing for the unhoused and food for the hungry. There’s some scripture about that, you know.”
Many people “who considered this home [now] have no home,” Colburn said. “And I don’t know where they are.”
People have continued migrating to the church’s front steps, even more than a year after the shelter closed. Exactly how much the street has changed depends on who’s talking.
“I see drug deals happening not on a daily basis but pretty much out in the open” on Smithfield, said Anthony Durzo of Mount Washington, a Point Park junior. “I don’t think a lot of them are really scared of the police.”
Durzo, who uses the Smithfield-Liberty parking garage, said drug activity tends to cluster around empty storefronts. “It just brings negative energy to the street.”
In a widely reported June incident, an assailant on Smithfield attacked a woman who was interning Downtown — punching her in the head, dragging her by the hair and breaking her nose, the Tribune-Review reported.
But most Smithfield regulars interviewed for this story agreed it feels at least somewhat more calm and clean over the past year or more. In 2023, the PDP expanded power-washing and alley-cleaning work across the Golden Triangle. In February 2024, the city opened a police station a block from Smithfield on Wood Street.
In October, Viridis, a vegan takeout restaurant, opened in the old Wiener World space. Average daily visits by residents, employees and visitors in Downtown reached 97,000 that month, up from about 78,000 for the same period in 2021, PDP estimates show.
Downtown arrests also appear to be up this year, numbering 904 from January through October, city police data show. That’s up by more than 100 over the arrests reported in a similar period in 2023.
“We’re kind of getting to a more calm atmosphere,” said Taylor Lee, library services manager at the nearby Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh — Downtown, by Sixth Avenue. The branch serves in part as a connection point for social services and gathering place for those in need, many without permanent homes.
Security issues have subsided at the library and usage has been steady, with total visitor counts ticking up when Downtown gets busier on Wednesdays and Thursdays, Lee said. Recent monthly visits are ranging from about 15,000 to 18,000.
“If we do ever have to call the cops or there’s ever an incident, it’s probably a medical emergency and not even an overdose,” Lee said.
The library sits on the opposite end of Smithfield from the Allegheny County Human Services Building, at Fort Pitt Boulevard. Positioning these public resources on the same street with high-end retail and condos could look like a conflict, but it doesn’t have to be one, Colburn said.
To his eye, the focus on Downtown redevelopment is a chance to cultivate workforce housing for people who have jobs in the area but might not afford a car.
“There’s ample opportunity for mixed-income development in any building,” Colburn said.
‘Rowing’ toward 20,000 greater Downtown residents
A bigger Downtown residential population would foster more consistent service demand and revenue to support more businesses, Piatt said. He hopes for 20,000 people living in and on the walkable fringes of the Golden Triangle — up from fewer than 7,000 Downtown residents today.
Pollock pointed to the historical Triangle building at Smithfield and Liberty as a redevelopment success story. He’s working with developer Hullett Properties, which has fully leased 15 residences at the 1885 landmark and is trying to secure first-floor retailers or a restaurant.
The winning formula there merged modernization with beautification, all honoring the building’s distinct layout, Pollock said. He is also exploring redevelopment possibilities for the Frank & Seder Building, across Smithfield from Target and owned by Cleveland-based Stark Enterprises.
Pollock believes the street needs more intensive study to inform a rebirth, but he voices optimism. In his 40 years in commercial real estate, “there’s never been a time like today where everyone is rowing in the same direction and solely focused on the redevelopment of Downtown.”
He urged a proactive approach.
“I don’t believe in sitting back and waiting,” Pollock said.
Adam Smeltz is a contributor to Pittsburgh Magazine and can be reached at asmeltz@gmail.com.
This story was fact-checked by Virginia Linn.
Pittsburgh Magazine and PublicSource extend special thanks to Historic Pittsburgh, the Heinz History Center and the Pittsburgh City Archives staff for their time and support for this reporting project.
This story was produced through a partnership between Pittsburgh magazine and PublicSource with support from the Pittsburgh Media Partnership.
This article first appeared on PublicSource and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
