On Tuesday, Pittsburgh’s Planning Commission decided to put the next phase of the Lower Hill development on ice for two weeks, citing community concerns and a lack of communication.
“What we have is a little bit of a trust issue,” said Commissioner LaShawn Burton-Faulk.
The commission was slated to take two separate votes on the future of the Lower Hill: One made a number of changes to the overall development framework for the 28-acre site, while the other was a proposal to build a live music venue and 900-space parking garage on a parcel known as “Block E.”
But the discussion was waylaid by concerns stemming from a 101-page report that developers for the Pittsburgh Penguins, who are overseeing the project, dropped on the commission as the meeting got underway.
The report presented a series of updates on how the developers say they’ve been fulfilling promises made to the community during the course of the project. The Planning Commission began requiring such documentation after approving the First National Bank tower in 2021. As a a condition of that approval, any time developers add a new project – like the music venue – they must report on how the development has fulfilled commitments that range from public art to employment opportunities to housing stabilization money.
But commissioners objected that they’d been given no time to digest the report before they were expected to vote at Tuesday’s meeting.
“We’ve got 101 pages that say something,” Burton-Faulk said. “And I’d like the community to understand what that says and I want to know what that says.”
Any development in the Hill District takes place against a historic backdrop in which the community suffered for decades after the construction of the former Civic Arena decimated the largely Black community. And Burton-Faulk said the late release of the report underscores an ongoing lack of communication between the current developers and the Hill District community.
“Whose fault is that?” she asked. “I don’t know and frankly I just think we just have to get better. … I mean, shame on everybody, let’s put it that way.”
Commissioner Holly Dick agreed.
“Ignorance leads to fear,” she said. And whatever the contents of the document, “If people have not read it, they’re afraid of it, and afraid of what it may mean. We as a commission as well as the general public in the Hill needs to read this first.”
Bill Sittig and Dusty Elias Kirk, lawyers for the developers, said the report mostly contained material the commission had seen before: updates on how the developers are fulfilling promises made to the community.
“It really doesn’t have to do with either the [proposed] amendments … or Block E,” Sittig said. “It’s just an update that the commissioners wanted – up-to-the-minute progress with the neighbors.”
Other representatives of the development team urged the commission to see the broader goals of the project.
“We hope that in addition to a compelling place to live and to work, we’re creating an environment where you can meet a friend, you can make a friend, you can buy a t-shirt,” said Craig Dunham, who works for the Penguins’ development arm, Pittsburgh Arena Real Estate Redevelopment LP. “We’ll have some events in the evening, yoga in the afternoon, and hopefully everybody comes together to celebrate the Penguins next Stanley Cup victory.”
The commission approved an original development framework – the Preliminary Land Development Plan, or PLDP – in 2014. A PLDP gives city agencies and the public a general sense of what a place will be like, with final plans presented for each separate phase of a project. But the Penguins and their team have made a number of changes to the general vision in the last eight years, including changing traffic patterns and adding open space – which would be privately owned but, they stressed, publicly accessible during business hours.
But concerns about the 101-page report dominated the meeting. Several Hill residents raised concerns about what the document might hold, and urged the commission to delay a vote. Marimba Milliones, who leads the Hill Community Development Corporation, and City Councilor Daniel Lavelle, voiced additional concerns, including how the public will be able to interact with privately-owned open space.
Milliones and Lavelle also urged that another agreement reached with developers in 2014 – a pledge to meet distinct targets in areas such as home ownership and wealth building – be attached to the PLDP itself.
Members of the Department of City Planning, which advises Planning Commission members, said that such requirements were outside the commission’s purview as a body focused on land use. But to give themselves more time to read the report on the developers’ efforts, commission members decided to delay action on the new proposals until their next meeting, which is slated for Jan. 24.
In the meantime, Sittig said, “We’ll keep working.”
