The Esplanade development plan spurred two organizations to file with Pittsburgh’s Registered Community Organization Program, and a neighbors group that has seen its bid shelved now plans to “agitate, agitate, agitate.”
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“We’ve got to educate these people,” Lowe suggested to seven board members of Manchester Neighbors. The letters were addressed to residents of the neighborhood, and their intent was to alert those households that the area’s affordability could be affected by an impending $740 million development — and to enlist them to “make good trouble,” as Lowe said, quoting the late civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis. “Agitate, agitate, agitate,” he added, channeling abolitionist Frederick Douglas.
“When you’re talking about this, you have to make a choice, either move your history forward or lose it,” Lowe said.
Earlier on Jan. 2, Lowe had learned that the Pittsburgh Department of City Planning had granted a different organization — the Manchester Chateau Partnership Alliance — the status of registered community organization for the area. Manchester Neighbors seeks the same designation, and the rival groups could both theoretically be RCOs. But the neighbors group’s RCO application languishes, even though it was filed before the alliance’s paperwork.
“If you don’t have it, the city will basically ignore you.”
According to Sharonda Whatley, assistant director of City Planning, Manchester Neighbors’ paperwork will be considered this week by City Planning Director Jamil Bey after an initial application was incomplete — lacking the relevant city councilor’s endorsement — and had to be supplemented.
With that, Manchester Neighbors finds itself an unofficial player, for the moment, in the decision-making process as the city proceeds with a $740 million plan by private developer Piatt Companies to build Esplanade on the North Shore. While the seven-building Esplanade would sit in Chateau, it would abut Manchester, Pittsburgh’s largest majority-Black historic neighborhood. Manchester Neighbors has demanded a community impact study be held to determine how Esplanade will affect the area.
See a timeline of Manchester’s RCO race
In November, developer Piatt Companies won initial City Planning Commission approval for its overall plan for the site. But each of the seven structures must go through its own process, which could involve community meetings, public hearings and votes.
Community development activities meetings [DAMs] would be held by the area’s RCO or RCOs, and the Planning Commission would be officially presented with the input from those gatherings.
In an interview with PublicSource, Lowe said he was “not worried about the RCO.” But asked why Manchester Neighbors sought that designation, he answered: “If you don’t have it, the city will basically ignore you.”
A historic neighborhood with surging property values
Settled nearly 200 years ago, Manchester and neighboring Chateau became the site of locomotive construction, brass works and steelmaking. English, Irish, German and later Black households came in waves, until Route 65’s construction in the 1960s severed the residential side from the industry in Chateau, where very few people live.
Manchester was the first Pittsburgh neighborhood targeted for historic preservation by the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. Most of Manchester is now a city-designated historic district.
But the 1968 riots led to abandonment of some Manchester homes. The Manchester Citizens Corp. formed in 1971 to advocate for the neighborhood, and Lowe led the MCC during part of the 1980s. LaShawn Burton-Faulk is the MCC’s executive director now, and also serves as chair of the Planning Commission and a member of the Zoning Board of Adjustment.
Have they succeeded?
Manchester has seen its total population remain almost unchanged since 2010, but census data shows that the racial makeup has tilted. By 2020, the Black population had dropped by 435 in a decade, now comprising a little less than two-thirds of residents, while white residents have nearly doubled as a share of the total, to almost one-third.
At the Manchester Neighbors meeting, board members voiced concerns about gentrification. Echoing Zillow listings, Lowe said the area has limited live-in-ready homes listing at prices ranging from $270,000 to $670,000.
Now Esplanade is coming.
“Development will bring change, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of displacing long-term residents,” Bey, the planning director, said in an email response to questions. “Our commitment is to ensure that the North Shore development benefits everyone, including the Black community, and contributes to a more just and equitable city. It’s a complicated challenge and we welcome the opportunity to discuss these efforts in greater detail and to broaden our perspective.”
Lowe warned that the clock is ticking.
“The community will transform before affordable housing gets built,” Lowe said. “This development will attract corporate prospectors.”
He warned of a stark future for existing residents: “The way it’s being played is you’ll be bought off or give up.”
Two contestants for RCO status
Before 2019, Pittsburgh’s process for getting neighborhood input on development proposals was fairly informal. Community development corporations and other neighborhood advocates often weighed in, but had no codified right to meet with developers.
In 2019, then-Mayor Bill Peduto’s administration created the RCO program. Nonprofit groups or collaborations can now register to represent a given geography, receive notice of coming developments, craft neighborhood plans and be guaranteed DAMs with developers before Planning Commission votes.
The DAM process for each of Esplanade’s phases would allow the community to weigh in on incremental development details, according to City Councilor R. Daniel Lavelle, whose district area includes Manchester.
“There will be ample opportunities to have conversations on those developments and goals,” Lavelle said, pointing to the Lower Hill District development — in a neighborhood with multiple RCOs — as an area in which DAMs have yielded much community input.
While some neighborhoods have longstanding registered community organizations with experience at navigating such processes, until recently no organization has sought that designation for Manchester.
Last summer, with talk of Esplanade heating up, interest in being Manchester’s RCO suddenly reached a boil.
“The MCPA, while appearing as a new entity, is rooted in longstanding community work,” Burton-Faulk wrote in an email response to questions about the alliance, after declining to be interviewed.
The organizations represented — the Burton-Faulk-led MCC, the Iota Phi Foundation, Project Destiny, the Manchester Historical Society, the Manchester Academic Charter School, Manchester Youth Development Center and Manchester Bidwell Corp. — “have had a unified focus on the needs of Manchester’s residents,” she added. The alliance intends to ensure “a comprehensive and sustainable network of resources that align with the community’s needs.”
As the city embraced the idea of coalitions banding together as an RCO, the organizations “saw an opportunity to codify” their collaboration, she continued.
Asked whether Burton-Faulk’s involvement with MCPA influenced the alliance application’s relatively rapid process, Bey called it “not a fair question. Every completed application is approved.” He said he could sign it as early as Tuesday, Jan. 7.
Lowe and other members of Manchester Neighbors were quick to point out that the majority of the alliance board members do not live in the neighborhood.
Part of the process of becoming an RCO requires the local council representative’s endorsement of a group’s application. In this case, Lavelle said he endorsed both groups but only MCPA has received approval from the city. Lavelle endorsed the alliance on Aug. 14, and the neighbors on Oct. 28.
“Ours has not been approved,” said Lowe on Jan. 2. “They gave us a worksheet, told us what we needed to do, we did it, and we’re waiting for word.”
Eric Jankiewicz is PublicSource’s economic development reporter, and can be reached at ericj@publicsource.org or on Twitter @ericjankiewicz.
Rich Lord is PublicSource’s managing editor and can be reached at rich@publicsource.org or 412-812-2529.
This article first appeared on PublicSource and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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