The May 1928 photograph shows Penn Avenue from Center Avenue to Shady Avenue, looking east from the 9th floor of the East End Savings Bank building. That building no longer exists, and is now the site of an apartment complex. | Archives & Special Collections / University of Pittsburgh Library System
Before East Liberty had Target, it was home to Sears, and before that, there was the East Liberty Market (now Motor Square Garden) alongside many other businesses and retailers that made the neighborhood a shopping and entertainment destination. At its peak in the 1940s and 50s, East Liberty was home to more than 500 local businesses and was the third largest retail district in Pennsylvania, behind only Center City Philadelphia and downtown Pittsburgh.
Yet many of us know the familiar story—after the peak came the downfall. Urban renewal and its poorly designed streets and walking mall began a two-decade-long decline in both East Liberty’s downtown and residential areas. By the 1970s, only around 125 businesses remained and over 15% of the residential enclaves were vacant. East Liberty became known for blight and crime.
This decline was further compounded by the collapse of Pittsburgh’s steel and manufacturing industry, and in the mid-90s, any planning or growth seemed impossible. However, East Liberty residents created a vision that “A new mixed-income population will create a market for housing, services, and shopping. Economically secure households, along with the changing neighborhood image, will attract larger markets for retail development and business expansion.”
Today, East Liberty has seen this vision come to life with a growing and diverse population, renewed retail shopping, jobs in the neighborhood, new parks and housing, and a dramatic drop in crime. While we’ve come a long way—attracting large retailers like Target and Whole Foods while retaining legacy businesses like Ace Lock and Tana Ethiopian Cuisine—we recognize that there’s still more work to be done. That’s why we’ve enlisted the help of long-time ELDI partner Stefani Danes to help shape a new plan for East Liberty’s commercial core. The goal is to set up structures that will ensure the vibrancy of our business and cultural district well into the future.
Danes is an adjunct professor of architecture at Carnegie Mellon University and an instructor at their Urban Design Build Studio who has a long history in community planning. Working with ELDI since 1979, she knows the neighborhood in and out and has a deep understanding of its evolution.
We sat down with Danes to talk about this new project for East Liberty’s downtown. Learn more about her history in the community, what we hope to achieve, and how we aim to get there in our conversation below.
To start, can you tell us about your background and how you got connected to ELDI?
I am an architect who has always been particularly interested in community and urban design. In other words, the context of buildings, rather than just the buildings themselves. When I moved to Pittsburgh in 1979, I was really interested in what was going on in the East End. I live in Friendship, and I had been an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer in Southern Appalachia for two years, so I wanted to see what kind of community development work was happening. I was also teaching at Carnegie Mellon University, so I had a connection with the other faculty there. This was at the time when ELDI was hiring its first executive director, and a couple of us on the faculty put together a proposal for an urban design revitalization plan for the core business district. The big feature of that plan was our recommendation—which at the time was considered very radical—to eliminate Penn Circle and integrate it back into the street grid. That was the start of my relationship with ELDI. Over the years, I have worked with many of ELDI’s executive directors and staff members and have been a real supporter of everything that the organization has been undertaking.
Tell us about this new project. What are the goals?
This is the ongoing work that ELDI has been doing for several decades now. While the downtown has certainly come a long way from its post-Urban Renewal days, there’s still work to be done. There’s an opportunity for businesses and developers who are already invested in the community to come together and work toward a common goal. We are deliberately reaching beyond just ELDI and its partners so that we can build a broader and deeper leadership group in the community that will help ensure that improvements in the district are more sustainable.
What do you mean by “more sustainable?”
We’d like to think that there’s a “done” with community development, but in fact, change is a constant in all neighborhoods. So there has to be more investment than disinvestment, to put it in economic terms, but investment also in a personal way. That means ensuring people care about the community, that people take care of their property and respect the property that’s there, but also that people connect with others so that there’s a strong network that can see the community through whatever ups and downs may come. Our goal is to bring together a diverse group of people who are committed to seeing East Liberty thrive—and thrive in a way that broadens opportunities—not just for those who are currently invested but also for new businesses, organizations, people, and customers. That’s how the community will continue to flourish and grow for the next 20 to 30 years.
“There’s an opportunity for businesses and developers who are already invested in the community to come together and work toward a common goal.”
How will you foster this community?
We’re starting by reaching out to people who’ve been in East Liberty for some time or who have a significant commitment already in the community, just to understand their perspectives. Once we do those individual interviews, we’ll have a better sense of what people are bringing to the community today and those who would be willing to commit to a longer-term leadership role. We’re going to take some time to do this because we don’t know everybody we need to talk to right now. We’re asking people to recommend other people, and hopefully, through this process, we will get very different perspectives.
Once we’ve talked to enough people, we’ll reach out to those who expressed an interest in being in a leadership group. That group is going to then meet with us over a period of months as we begin to formulate some specific improvement plans. Our goal is to identify some short-term improvements and also long-term goals that the group will work toward. This leadership group will be just as, if not more important, than the plan itself—bringing a group of people together and building cooperation is probably going to be the most important thing that comes out of this project.
So the vision is that later on this group would help spearhead and implement any needed changes to East Liberty’s downtown?
Yes. Of course, it always takes many partners to implement changes, so in a way, I think of this as a pebble that’s dropped in the water to start a ripple effect. That’s the goal, because when we start implementing the plans, it’ll take more people. There are a lot of different kinds of roles that people can take, and a lot of it will be continuing the good work that’s already going on.
“Bringing a group of people together and building cooperation is probably going to be the most important thing that comes out of this project.”
What kind of community members are you looking for?
We’re looking for people who represent different aspects of the East Liberty community, including business owners, property owners, developers, organizational and school leaders, etc. There are around five or six different categories of perspectives that we’ve identified so far. We’re also talking to the Village Collaborative of East Liberty, which will have a vital role in this as well.
What are some of the key issues that this project will work to tackle in East Liberty’s downtown area?
Maelene [ELDI’s Executive Director] is reflecting some concerns that she’s heard from the community, including public safety as well as finding the best uses for property, as many buildings have vacant space. That’s an unfortunate situation, because there’s so much more that East Liberty could offer, and those building owners could benefit from more active use of their property. We’re also always looking at the question of access, to make sure that the business and cultural district is a good, walkable, and safe area for people. We’ve got the benefit of the East Liberty Transit Center, which gives us tremendous access to the region, but we also have to make sure that there is availability of parking for people who are coming to shop or to events.
Additionally, there are upcoming projects anticipated by some developers, and we want to make sure that those projects support the businesses and community. We will also be paying a lot of attention to identifying and supporting locally-owned businesses and organizations, because the research is very convincing that a community benefits much more economically, and also socially, from more locally-owned enterprises. They hire more local people, they are more likely to be sustained during economic downturns, they bring money back into the local economy, etc. And we know that there are some excellent models out there for fostering local ownership, including from ELDI’s spin-off Catapult Greater Pittsburgh, which is supporting local businesses and entrepreneurs, so we’ve already got some really great resources.
Is there an estimated timeline for this project?
It will hopefully be finished by next spring or early summer. However, there’s a very blurry boundary between this project and the work that continues to get done, so we consider it as more of a launching pad.
