Low Income housing on Civic Arena site? (Warren, St. Clair: home, neighborhoods)

[simetime]

[quote=szug-bot;32467511]we will have to agree to disagree. ive debated this in past years in this forum.. you make good points, eschaton, but i feel you look at it in hindsight. the city was in decline and foresaw population loss and loss of the tax base years before it actually went broke. pittsburgh tried to keep its vitality with these things.
quote]

I will have to agree with eschaton, the city took peoples homes for the sake of putting a the Civic Arena. That area before the Arena was vibrant with shops and small businesses (blacks were discouraged from going into town) and if left alone it would have became something special. The city's population did not start to decline until recently (late 90's). As late as 1980 there were 12 Pittsburgh Public city schools and now I think that there are about 5. There are still people who can still remember the "Wylie Avenue days" where people came from all over the country to listen to jazz at the Crawford Grill and other popular hot spots.

[Uptown kid]

Memory Lane (which is the largest sector of the Bedford Hills Mixed-Income Apartment complex) replaced residential houses & vacant lots. To my knowledge if Memory Lane was now the formerly named Somers Drive, no public housing units were on that street. That place is basically a failed mixed-income housing turned housing project... A group of about 30+ misled teenaged boys run that place and are running it to the ground.

[simetime]

Originally Posted by I_Like_Spam

Didn't the city rename Somers Drive stupidly as "Memory Lane"?

I wonder who had the bright idea of using a cliché as an actual street name.

I don't think so since the connecting street is Somers St. They proably nicknamed it that because of the number of elderly that lives there.

[I_Like_Spam]

[quote=simetime;32518201]

Originally Posted by szug-bot

I will have to agree with eschaton, the city took peoples homes for the sake of putting a the Civic Arena. That area before the Arena was vibrant with shops and small businesses (blacks were discouraged from going into town) and if left alone it would have became something special. The city's population did not start to decline until recently (late 90's). As late as 1980 there were 12 Pittsburgh Public city schools and now I think that there are about 5. There are still people who can still remember the "Wylie Avenue days" where people came from all over the country to listen to jazz at the Crawford Grill and other popular hot spots.

Certainly, if the Civic Arena, as well as the other projects on the lower hill, Washington Plaza and Chatham Center, had not been completed- the present state of the area would be a lot different today.

But there are a lot of moving parts here, things wouldn't likely have remained the same as they never do. If the lower hill remained center of nightlife, perhaps Station Square would have never been developed as it was, the South Side wouldn't have evolved to what it became, perhaps US Steel would have chosen a different site to build its headquarters.

[simetime]

[quote=I_Like_Spam;32521638]

Originally Posted by simetime

Certainly, if the Civic Arena, as well as the other projects on the lower hill, Washington Plaza and Chatham Center, had not been completed- the present state of the area would be a lot different today.

But there are a lot of moving parts here, things wouldn't likely have remained the same as they never do. If the lower hill remained center of nightlife, perhaps Station Square would have never been developed as it was, the South Side wouldn't have evolved to what it became, perhaps US Steel would have chosen a different site to build its headquarters.

Hmm, I did not think of that. Also from what I was told by my elders Squirrel Hill would not have become a Jewish onclave since many of them lived in the Lower Hill before the arrival of the Civic Arena

[Moby Hick]

Originally Posted by simetime

Hmm, I did not think of that. Also from what I was told by my elders Squirrel Hill would not have become a Jewish onclave since many of them lived in the Lower Hill before the arrival of the Civic Arena

That move was started back in the 1920s, well before the Civic Arena.

Squirrel Hill Historical Society: Squirrel Hill History

[simetime]

Originally Posted by Moby Hick

That move was started back in the 1920s, well before the Civic Arena.

Squirrel Hill Historical Society: Squirrel Hill History

But there was a large Jewish population that live in the lower hill at the time

[Moby Hick]

Originally Posted by simetime

But there was a large Jewish population that live in the lower hill at the time

In the 1920s, certainly. I don't know how many remained there when the demolitions started to be planned, but Squirrel Hill was a well-established as the main Jewish community in Pittsburgh before 1950.

[szug-bot]

there were a number of jews in the upper reaches of the expanding greenfield section, as well.

simetime, you are incorrect. pittsburgh (city) population loss did not start in the 1990s. this city's population peaked in the 1940s, and since then, has declined. some decades saw significant decline.

the lower hill was not the most desirable place in the inner city of pittsburgh in 1960 - not by any stretch of the imagination. one of my parents lived there for a short while and worked there as well. im not saying it was gangland exactly, but it was decayed and run down. of course it had shops - there were MANY shops in other places, too, before suburbanization helped kill small businesses.

someone stated:

how would you feel if you were displaced from your community & forced to shift around from hostile section 8 community to hostile section 8 community. Don't these people who got displaced by the city have a right or should have a fair opportunity to return to the Hill?

that was over 50 years ago. are those same people still around? probably some are, but most are not.

[Uptown kid]

Originally Posted by szug-bot

someone stated:

how would you feel if you were displaced from your community & forced to shift around from hostile section 8 community to hostile section 8 community. Don't these people who got displaced by the city have a right or should have a fair opportunity to return to the Hill?

that was over 50 years ago. are those same people still around? probably some are, but most are not.

I'm glad you brought this up. I know I wasn't clear enough but I wasn't refering to the Urban Renewal era... I was talking about people getting displaced from the project communities of Elmore Square, Allequippa Terrace, Francis Street, as well as Reed Roberts, Dinwiddie Street, and the newly redeveloped blocks of Bedford Ave.
The former Reed Roberts Manor residents recently held the Reed Roberts Reunion.
Whiteside Road has a reunion & does the "Flackside Projects" (was once gang turf on Warren Court, Robinson Court, Burrows Street, the "Mad Circle" in Allequippa Terrace. I think there was also senior housing on Blackenridge Street). There's even a Francis Street Reunion. What I'm saying is when your poor there's a greater need for being around a community... When these people were displaced many residents who didn't find space in the Hill were separated from one another, but to them this yearning for reuniting and moving back to the Hill Ditsrict still exist (as unusual/insensible as it seems to most city data residents who don't live in rough neighborhoods such as the Hill).

So IMO its only fair that former project residents, who were recently displaced, either get a fair opportunity or become the priority group to move into the proposed Mellon Arena housing.