East Liberty/Shadyside merger? (Pittsburgh, Highland Park: sales, foreclosure, condo)

[planejain]

Has anyone heard rumors of an East Liberty/Shadyside merger? One of my neighbors said that he had spoken to a development group and was told that East Liberty and Shadyside were going to become one official neighborhood - even combining zip codes. ELDI's ultimate mission is to raise property values and becoming a part of Shadyside would probably do it, but I just don't know if I believe this. Anyone with any inside knowledge on the matter?

[selltheburgh]

I highly doubt this. East Liberty as a name and reputation has been improving for the past 10 years, but mostly in the last 2-3.

Regarding zip codes:
-Shadyside is about 3/4s 15232 and 1/4 15206.
-East Liberty post office is 15206.

15206 also includes:
Highland Park, most of Morningside, part of Friendship, Part of Garfield, Larimer, Lincoln Lemmington.


Did you end up buying a condo in East Liberty?

[Geeo]

I don't see why there would be any need for something like this. There is really nothing to merge, unless they are talkinig about merging the Shadyside Action Coalition with East Liberty Development Corporation. And you just can't "combine" zip codes - those are post office designations.

East Liberty is coming along fine on its own. It seems to still have a somewhat negative connotation to some long-time locals, whereas new people to the city see it as an up and coming neighborhood and don't harbor those pre-conceived notions.

[BrianTH]

Sounds like a garbled version of the "East Side" concept, which is a marketing term for the area along the border of East Liberty and Shadyside.

[selltheburgh]

I haven't heard anything about this and I'm developing 2 properties in East Liberty. Also, I talk to various people from ELDI at least 2 to 3 times per week.

There is a private development wing of ELDI and it is possible that they are partnering with Shadyside Action Coalition on something, but the neighborhoods aren't going to become one big neighborhood.

Also, there are less Federal funds available to neighborhood CDC's than in the years past and ELDI is acting as the main arm for the East End property development. Friendship Development Associates is folding eventually and at least one of their properties is going to foreclosure, Bloomfield Garfield Corp is doing a lot with new construction in Garfield, the new street face of Penn Ave and their career development center, so they are stretched thin. The Larimer group has become incredibly large, but they don't have the capital to purchase properties. ELDI is one of the few CDC's that still buys properties to develop or to option to developers.

There's probably some sort of merger of groups, funds, or something, but I highly doubt zip codes or actual boundaries.

[pman]

sounds like a realtor scheme

[planejain]

@selltheburgh I did buy the condo!! So far, everything is going great. The location is so convenient - you really can't beat it! One of my new neighbors was the one that mentioned the "merger" to me. He said that he had a conversation with someone from Walnut Capital and was told that our homes would soon be in Shadyside. It sounded a little far-fetched in my opinion, too.

[Joe Magarac]

My guess is that your neighbor talked to someone at ELDI, who indicated that ELDI would start doing development work outside of East Liberty (i.e., in Shadyside, Friendship, and Larimer) in coming years.

Right now, almost every Pittsburgh neighborhood has its own community development corporation, or CDC, which is eligible for certain federal funds. Some of the CDCs are large and have professional staffs (like ELDI); some are just groups of neighbors with maybe one staff person; some are in between. All of the CDCs in Pittsburgh get their funds from PPND, which gets the money from the federal government and then decides how to distribute it among the various groups in the city. PPND has been saying for years that it would like to have fewer CDCs that are each larger and have more professional staffs, so that PPND gets more detailed requests for money and can better track how the money is used. The city CDCs have generally resisted this - each neighborhood still wants its own CDC - but in time there will likely be some consolidation. In your case, this could mean that the CDCs for Shadyside and East Liberty would merge, with the merged CDC having responsibility for both neighborhoods.

Note that this is very different from saying, as you did in your post, that the neighborhoods themselves would somehow merge. They won't! A neighborhood's boundaries are not officially designated; they are subject to opinion. Some people in Bloomfield think that Bloomfield extends all the way east to Graham Street, but people in Friendship think that Bloomfield ends at Gross Street and that Friendship starts at that point. You'll get different answers depending on who you talk to. Few people think that "Shadyside Honda" on Liberty Avenue is in Shadyside, but they call themselves that anyway. Realtors will likewise list a house as being in a prestigious area if they can get away with it.

The city's neighborhood map is not official: it uses census tracts as defined by the federal government to determine neighborhood boundaries. Census tracts are not intended to define neighborhoods, so the city's map is always a bit off from actual neighborhood opinion.

Update: I see now that your neighbor talked to someone at Walnut Capital, who predicted that someday, people would call your street Shadyside (whereas I guess they now call it it East Liberty). It's possible. If you look at old neighborhood maps, you will see that the borders have changed over time. Friendship did not exist as a neighborhood until the 1990s; before that it was considered part of Bloomfield, Garfield, East Liberty, or Shadyside.

[Geeo]

And at one time the business districts of Highland and Ellsworth avenues were in East Liberty. Now they're in Shadyside.

[selltheburgh]

Originally Posted by pman

sounds like a realtor scheme

Realtors in the past would list properties South of Stanton as "highland park" but over the past year or so they've been listed as "east liberty" because research showed that there are a lot of buyers who search for homes in east lib. there's been a lot of solid sales in that area and more development under way.