Uphill Battle Uphill Battle
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uphill Battle The lasT Time PiTTsburgh Public officials builT a sPorTs-enTerTainmenT arena in The ciTy’s mosTly black hill DisTricT, bullDozers uPenDeD a vibranT neighborhooD anD DisPlaceD ThousanDs. fifTy years laTer, wiTh a new arena rising, hill leaDers use founDaTion supporT To forge a novel agreemenT anD reclaim Precious grounD. by Jeffery fraser An overflow crowd anxiously waits outside a Pittsburgh Planning Commission meeting to learn whether the panel will approve a master plan for a new hockey arena in the city’s Hill District. The plan was passed after the meeting last January, despite objections from residents seeking a contract for how the development would benefit the neighborhood. 13 uphill Battle The lasT Time PiTTsburgh Public officials builT a sPorTs-enTerTainmenT arena in The ciTy’s mosTly black hill DisTricT, bullDozers uPenDeD a vibranT neighborhooD anD DisPlaceD ThousanDs. fifTy years laTer, wiTh a new arena rising, hill leaDers use founDaTion supporT To forge a novel agreemenT anD reclaim Precious grounD. by Jeffery fraser Dylan Vitone 14 t was the first monday of last year. reporters had gathered at the hill house association building in Pittsburgh that cold evening to hear what hill District neighborhood leaders thought of an unexpected offer from city and allegheny county officials to attach certain community benefits to the development of a new hockey arena. The reporters were about to get a response tailor-made for the cameras. Hope had been building in the beleaguered nego tiator for the One Hill Community Benefits neighborhood for months. In 2007, thousands Agreement (CBA) Coalition, which represented of volunteer hours were spent organizing and the Hill District at the bargaining table. At that canvassing. There were heated debates over the moment, it became clear that nothing short of a issues. And very public negotiations began with legal contract spelling out negotiated benefits the city, county and Pittsburgh Penguins over a and giving residents a voice in shaping the future contract to ensure that jobs and other benefits of their neighborhood would prevent community would flow to the Hill District from construction opposition to the arena and help mend lingering of a $321 million hockey arena, financed largely wounds inflicted by a failed urban renewal project with public funds, along with a hotel and other some 50 years earlier. devel opment. “That was a turning point,” says Gabe Morgan, Now, out of the blue, came this unilateral a veteran Service Employees International Union agreement from the city and county — released negotiator and co-chairman of the nonprofit through the news media — that was neither a Pittsburgh UNITED, an alliance of union, com- product of those negotiations nor the legally munity and political groups that was part of the binding contract neighborhood leaders had sought Hill District bargaining team. “The community’s from the outset. “I don’t anticipate any significant reaction convinced everyone at the table that adjustments,” Mayor Luke Ravenstahl had told this was just going to have to get done.” reporters. “The proposal we put forth was a Eight months later, the city, county, Penguins fair one.” and One Hill CBA Coalition signed a legally But on that January evening, with television binding community benefits agreement — the first cameras rolling, lifelong Hill District resident of its kind successfully negotiated in Pennsylvania. Brenda Tate held up a copy of the city and county’s It includes funds to establish a job center, money offer and asked: “Anybody got a match?” Someone to attract a grocery store to the neighborhood and put a lighter to the three-page document, and it other benefits related to the development of a new went up in flames. arena and an adjacent 28-acre tract of land. The “We’re standing here collectively as a deal also enables the coalition and neighborhood community to say that what was put on the elected officials to participate in drafting a master table is unacceptable,” said Evan Frazier, the Hill development plan for the Hill District. House Association’s executive director and chief Jeff Fraser is a Pittsburgh-based freelance writer and frequent contributor to h. His last article, published in the Fall issue, was about the new education-and-research center that Pittsburgh’s Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens is constructing to be a “living building,” the pinnacle of green design. t was the first monday of last year. reporters had gathered at the 15 hill house association building in Pittsburgh that cold evening to hear what hill District neighborhood leaders thought of an unexpected offer from city and allegheny county officials to attach certain community benefits to the development of a new hockey arena. The reporters were about to get a response tailor-made for the cameras. But perhaps most important, the agreement “From our point of view, it was very important reveals how a community found the will and a to be supportive, but not directive,” says Endowments way to begin healing the wounds from evictions President Bobby Vagt. “I think that is an absolutely and bulldozers five decades earlier. By rejecting a critical distinction.” politically expedient deal, neighborhood leaders And it was a challenging line to draw given that gained a document that has the power to breathe several Endowments staff members had personal new energy into the Hill District and offers ties to the neighborhood. promise for its future. One of the Hill-connected staffers, Bomani By measure of endurance alone, arriving at Howze, who works in the Innovation Economy a settlement was an achievement. The difficult section, draws on family history in describing the negotiations took nearly a year to complete, and significance of the benefits contract. “The Hill was everyone involved faced challenges. It required politically and economically disenfranchised under government officials and the developer to shed segregation when my grandparents and parents traditional top-down tactics and accommodate were forcibly removed from the 28-acre site,” he the community will, championed by the One Hill says. “Today the community is striving to leverage CBA Coalition, an amalgam of some 100 Hill its political representation and grassroots organizing District organizations, unions and other supporters. to translate into community revitalization.” It required Hill District leaders to navigate neigh- For all parties, successfully negotiating the borhood politics, build a coalition, galvanize community benefits agreement required over- support, draft a bargaining platform and speak coming the weight of history. In the late 1950s with one voice during the negotiations. and early 1960s, much of the Lower Hill District It meant a group of local foundations had to was demolished to make way for new cultural avoid influencing, as much as possible, such amenities, including a municipal arena with a sensitive issues as community representation, retractable dome. The late Mayor David L. bargaining goals and negotiations outcomes — Lawrence’s grand vision of a cultural center on even though they had introduced the benefits the hill overlooking downtown was abandoned agreement concept to the region and their grants after the 1962 opening of the arena, known today helped provide the community with legal and as Mellon Arena — but not before some 100 acres other technical support. Led by the Falk Foundation, of houses and businesses were razed and 8,000 the collaboration included The Heinz Endowments, residents displaced. The neigh borhood’s business The Pittsburgh Foundation, POISE, and the Women core was left crippled. Population fell steadily and Girls Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania, and steeply. Crime and widespread poverty and marked one of the nation’s first local philan- emerged as inexorable problems. thropic efforts connected with such agreements. 16 Researchers have found that the destruction for affordable housing and $1 million from of large established neighborhoods inflicts psycho- the developer to provide community park and logical wounds much like the traumatic stress recreation amenities. The deal was the genesis response seen among victims of hurricanes, of a national movement, which has since led to tornadoes and floods. For individuals, the loss of agreements in places such as San Diego, Denver, a neighborhood can be disorienting and disruptive New York and Chicago. to their senses of attachment and identity. For a In Pittsburgh, the first written demands for community, social disruption, including an community benefits from the arena development increase in violence, is often seen when such severe were presented to city and county officials in April stress is coupled with inadequate resources for 2007 by a group of about 20 Hill District ministers managing it. and business leaders led by Marimba Milliones, “It doesn’t just tear the social fabric. It destroys a community leader and businesswoman, and the it,” says Columbia University psychiatry professor Rev. Johnnie Monroe, pastor of Grace Memorial Mindy Fullilove, who has studied the impact of Presbyterian Church. urban renewal on neighborhoods, including the Hill. The benefits they sought included a $10 million She writes about the consequences in her book development fund to be paid up front, annual “Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods contributions thereafter, a share of the arena reve- Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It.” nues and a pledge to hire minority workers to fill A community benefits agreement is an 30 percent of the jobs created by the arena and emerging strategy that attempts to prevent such nearby development. Their stand drew widespread devastation. It is a legally binding contract that news coverage as did disagreement among political developers, government officials and coalitions of factions, which surfaced immediately. Tonya Payne, neighborhood organizations negotiate to ensure the Hill District’s city councilwoman, characterized that communities share in the benefits of major the group’s approach as smacking of entitlement devel opment projects, particularly those that receive and criticized them for presenting demands that significant public subsidies.