Local officials and members of the East Liberty community gathered Thursday in a new housing development to celebrate $27 million worth of affordable housing units in the neighborhood.
The ceremony marked the completion of one development — Mellons Orchard South — and the groundbreaking of a second — Harvard Beatty Street. Both include an affordable housing element and are being developed by TREK Development.
Trek Development is hosting an opening for Mellons Orchard South and groundbreaking for Harvard Beatty Street housing developments, which include a combined 89 total housing units, 62 of which are affordable and 18 housing choice voucher units.@danielgilman: pic.twitter.com/7NsfpbbxHX
— Julia Felton (@JuliaFelton16) October 28, 2021
Both projects were developed with community partners and in keeping with the East Liberty Community Plan, which calls for measures like redeveloping vacant land close to the business district, providing diverse housing choices and offering priority housing preferences for previous residents of Penn Plaza. Some have said razing the Penn Plaza apartment complex in 2017 forced a massive displacement of Black residents.
“We have to find them and bring them back home,” Maelene Myers, executive director of East Liberty Development Inc., said of their push to welcome former Penn Plaza residents to the new development.
Myers said she wanted to ensure those who had lived in Penn Plaza could return to their community in East Liberty — and said she hoped Pittsburgh officials would ensure such scenarios weren’t replayed.
“We have to be better,” she said. “We have to do better.”
Fourteen former Penn Plaza residents are living in Mellons Orchard South already.
Construction for Mellons Orchard South — a $13.6 million project comprised of 47 mixed-income, multi-family units — began in 2019 and was finished this year. The development includes 35 apartments, 12 townhouses and a community room, which hosted Thursday’s ceremony.
Of the units, 37 will be affordable, 10 will be market rate and eight are reserved for HACP project-based voucher holders. There are six handicap-accessible units and one unit for people with a sensory impairment.
Officials also broke ground for the Harvard Beatty Housing new construction development, which is replacing a parking lot at the end of the East Liberty business district directly across from Mellons Orchard.
The $14.3 million development will include 42 apartment units. Of those there will be 33 affordable units, nine market rate units and eight units for HACP project-based voucher holders. Again, priority will be given to former Penn Plaza residents.
Those units should be completed by late next year.
The project was awarded a 9% Low-Income Housing Tax Credit by the state.
“When you talk about the LIHTC, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, and you see it work, it’s what builds neighborhoods in this city,” said Dan Gilman, chief of staff for Mayor Bill Peduto.
The development was one of six LIHTCs awarded to Pittsburgh in 2020, which was a record number of those tax credits, Gilman said.
“It’s important to have partners work together to achieve the vision of our communities and to meet the needs they define like East Liberty did in their community plan,” Peduto said in a statement. “These projects represent the brick-and-mortar affordable housing we need. But they also represent investment in our most important assets — our people, our businesses and their visions.”
The community, Gilman said, played an active role in working with the developer and other local officials to ensure the development met their needs.
“The most important process of this is community participation,” said Caster Binion, executive director of the city’s housing authority. “They help us to rebuild this city.”
The East Liberty neighborhood is changing, said Diamonte Walker, deputy director of the Urban Redevelopment Authority. She said that makes it all the more important that residents have a voice in the neighborhood’s future.
“It is very important this change is happening with the community, not to the community,” she said.
She also noted that 20 of the units in the new development are earmarked for people making 50% of the average median income — which is around $29,700.
This initiative, Councilman Ricky Burgess said, is one example of how the community can rally together to improve the city.
“We’re rededicating ourselves to rebuilding Pittsburgh,” he said. “This gives us a glimpse of what we’re able to do when good men do good things and when good women do good things.”
Julia Felton is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Julia at 724-226-7724, jfelton@triblive.com or via Twitter .
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2 development projects bring $27M in affordable housing units to East Liberty - TribLIVE
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