what do you want, Alethea Sims?
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07345/840657-53.stm
Bridge vs. wedge: Is thriving Eastside corridor uniting or dividing two old city neighborhoods?
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
By Mackenzie Carpenter, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Robin Rombach/Post-Gazette photos
Top: Alethea Sims of the Coalition of Organized Residents of East Liberty believes the new development hasn't benefited the African-American community.
Bottom: Eastside developers Steve Mosites, left, and Mark Minnerly, right, say they have worked with local groups to encourage hiring as Eastside grows. Susan Bicket, Mosites' sister, who helped pull together the development, is at center.
Jessica Levine is perched on a stool behind the counter of the snazzy new Borders Bookstore she manages, pointing at a window overlooking Centre Avenue.
"That part of the store is in East Liberty," she says. Then she points to the other side, which faces a parking lot. "That side of the store is in Shadyside."
"And me,'' she adds with a grin, noting her position in the middle of the store, "I'm located in Eastside."
That's one way of figuring out the contours of one of Pittsburgh's newest, hippest and busiest retail districts, located on the southern edge of East Liberty and within shouting distance of some of the city's most affluent neighborhoods.
Eastside, as its developers, Steve Mosites and Mark Minnerly, christened it, is a branding success story that is attracting shoppers from all over the region, drawn by its Whole Foods and upscale stores that have opened nearby. More than 30,000 customers a week are clogging the site's parking lots.
The development also has caught the attention of national experts who cite it as a new paradigm for revitalizing a low-income neighborhood, in part by relying on input from grass-roots organizations and neighborhood merchants -- a far cry from the misguided, top-down '60s-era "renewal" projects that only accelerated urban decline.
Still, like all success stories, Eastside has its naysayers. While people such as Malik Bankston, director of the Kingsley Community Center in Larimer, say Eastside can only benefit East Liberty and other poor neighborhoods, other local activists contend it's just gentrification-as-usual. They say Eastside caters to the affluent rather than to the people who live in East Liberty.
"There's really nothing there for us," says Alethea Sims, president of the Coalition of Organized Residents of East Liberty. "We feel as though there is a concerted effort to remove the low-income black people who have lived here for years, to make room for these new people."
Actually, no residential relocation has occurred as a result of the Eastside development, Mr. Mosites said. The site now housing Whole Foods contained only a few businesses -- a car wash and a cab company that, he said, didn't even respond to calls from community residents.
"Nobody lived there," he said. "It was all under-utilized commercial property or business that drove no traffic to the community."
Wedged between two neighborhoods -- one affluent, the other lower-income but undergoing change -- Eastside sits on a long, wedge-shaped property bordered on one side by Centre Avenue and by the busway and train tracks on the other. It's anchored on its western end by Whole Foods, the organic food grocery chain that opened in 2002 and was so successful that other stores quickly followed.
There's now a spa, a premium state liquor store, a 5,000-square-foot Trek bike store, Starbucks, Walgreens, a T-Mobile store and Borders, which, unlike its competitor Barnes & Noble in Squirrel Hill, boasts an extensive music section, and a second-story parking deck that spills out onto Highland Avenue.
With nearly 375,000 people living within five miles, a third with an average household income of $80,000 or more, this is truly a sweet spot for retailers.
But to benefit the neighborhood, Mr. Mosites knew that East Liberty residents needed a stake in the project, so he enlisted East Liberty Development Inc. (ELDI), the local community development corporation. It not only helped Messrs. Mosites and Minnerly develop a master plan for the site and raise capital, but also leveraged the program with potential tenants to encourage local hiring for new jobs.
"We like to think we're trying to build a healthy and diverse community in terms of race as well as economics," said Skip Schwab, ELDI's program director.
ELDI and other urban planners have benefited from the mistakes of the past, including Motor Square Garden. Located directly across from Whole Foods and noteworthy for its teal-colored dome, Motor Square Garden opened as a shopping mall amid much hoopla in the 1980s but couldn't sustain enough traffic. It went bankrupt before re-emerging as the headquarters for AAA East Central.
"Motor Square was an isolated event 20 years ahead of its time," Mr. Schwab said, noting such projects need to attract other development to build a critical mass of customers and traffic to be sustainable. That's what ELDI and others are hoping to do now, with a range of other projects and renovations that complement but don't rely on Eastside.
For its part, Eastside is still a work in progress.
Besides the 5.3 acre development, which includes Whole Foods, there's a 4-acre parcel near the National Indoor Tennis center that Mr. Mosites says will be developed. A pedestrian bridge connecting Ellsworth Avenue in Shadyside and the Whole Foods parking lot is in the works, too.
Spillover from the site has been palpable. Eastside's success has emboldened other developers to buy up land nearby -- local development group Walnut Capital is building "Bakery Square," a complex of retail, business and lofts at the old Nabisco plant in Larimer.
And across from Eastside, along South Highland Avenue, new dining establishments have sprung up -- from the relatively pricey and critically praised Red Room to more affordable, minority-owned eateries and clubs such as Ethiopian restaurant Abay, the Caribbean-inspired Royal Caribbean restaurant, and clubs Ava and Shadow Lounge. City officials also are hoping to land discount retailer Target nearby.
All the growth is bringing some problems, including parking and petty auto crimes. While crime is down an average 10 percent both citywide and in East Liberty, thefts from automobiles are up 30 percent in East Liberty, noted Zone 5 Commander Rochelle Brackney, whose territory just borders Eastside.
Car break-ins "are fairly typical when you have new development in low-income areas and you get more people driving in, parking their cars and leaving stuff inside," she said. "We've seen this phenomenon before."
The city isn't moving to make Eastside an official neighborhood, but if a community is a state of mind, Eastside has definitely seized the imagination of many East End retailers, some of whom are claiming residency even though they aren't located there.
"I say I'm in Eastside because I like the idea of two communities, East Liberty and Shadyside, coming together," says Ethan "Rooster" Clay, owner of the newly opened coffee and ice cream shop Oh Yeah at 232 S. Highland Ave. Technically, he's in Shadyside, but "I don't feel that way," he says.
"From where I sit, I see a direct connection to the true East Liberty, and I like that."
Perhaps, but Ms. Sims, of the East Liberty residents group, doesn't see that connection.
"This 'Eastside' thing has a lot of the residents that I talk with upset," she said. "There's not anything over there that's truly geared to the African-American consumer. It just looks to us like the 'suits' are doing their best to make the area more appealing to white people."
Mackenzie Carpenter can be reached at
[email protected] or 412-263-1949.
...
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07345/840650-53.stm
East Liberty merchants split on Eastside
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
By Mackenzie Carpenter, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Eastside is getting mixed reviews along East Liberty's business corridor on Penn Avenue.
Guido Altun, who has owned Hip Hop City at the corner of Highland and Penn for the past for 10 years, believes all the redevelopment, starting with the tear-down of the East Mall high rise, has leached his customer base away.
All these improvements "are killing my business," he said. "They're not blending the two neighborhoods; they're just bringing Shadyside this way."
Right next door, Sam Arabian, of Sam's Bostonian shoes, couldn't agree less.
"Eastside is bringing in a lot of different customers," he said. "It's a changing atmosphere. How could you not be happy?"
Baiyinah Brookins, who works at her father's Jamil's Global Village store, which sells jewelry, candles, fragrances and exotic goods, says she happily patronizes Borders and Whole Foods. "It brings a new dynamic to the neighborhood."
But, added Ms. Brookins, 22, "I don't want to see a suburbanization of this area. I wouldn't want to see a Bath and Body Works shop here."
Todd Levine, owner of the Mo' Gear sportswear shop on Penn, said he thinks Eastside isn't "bringing these two neighborhoods together. It's pushing them farther apart.
"There's no bonding going on," he said. "You're just expanding Shadyside this way and making it an extension of Ellsworth Avenue. Rents will go up, and low-income residents will simply have to move somewhere else."
Despite the criticism, Eastside co-developer Steve Mosites remains confident in his development and the broader goal of building stronger connections between two neighborhoods by offering options everyone wants.
"The goal is to find great uses for property that everyone in the region can enjoy. The goal isn't to push out the less fortunate," he said, a point he emphasizes by noting that all the new mixed-income housing that has been built in the community in recent years is doing well.
"We already know that high concentrations of low income do not lead to sustainable communities," added Malik Bankston, director of the Kingsley Community Center in Larimer.
"I understand some people have a sense of loss about what once was here, but so much of that is shaped by looking backward, and we can't keep doing that."
It's a concept that Nicole Carter, a minority business owner who just opened Visionary Dance Studio on Penn, strongly agrees with.
"For me, Eastside is exciting," she said. "I used to run out to the mall for things, but now I can go to Walgreens, or the bookstore or even Staples," in a nearby shopping center that once housed a Phar-Mor and later, a Shop 'n Save and goes by the name of the Village of East Side.
"I teach my children, low income doesn't have to mean low quality. There's got to be a mix in this neighborhood; otherwise, our children won't ever have the opportunity to know what good quality is. They deserve to know that as much as everyone else."
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