Park Place Blog

Election InformationThe local primaries are coming May 15th, and our local City Council district 9 is hotly contested. It is often challenging to stay informed about local candidates. The campaigns generally have smaller budgets, and the outreach must rely more on personal outreach.

The Greater Park Place Neighborhood Association is hosting a Meet The Candidates event this Thursday, May 3rd, starting at 7:00pm. It will be held at the Church of the Nazarene, 300 Peebles Street, corner of Waverly and Peebles. We have invited all city council district 9 candidates to come speak and answer questions from the community. This will be your opportunity to get to know your likely next city council representative, and decide for whom to vote in the primary.

We are also collecting questions ahead of time from the community. If you have any that you wish the candidates to answer, please send them to info@parkplaceblog.com.

Please come out!

See PhotosBraving the chilly and soaking spring rain, twenty-one volunteers from Park Place showed up Saturday, April 28, 2007 to represent Park Place in the Squirrel Hill/Point Breeze/Homewood Redd-Up Coalition. Armed with gloves, vests, bags for trash and recycling, and free coffee from Startbucks- the volunteers were able to cover most of the streets in Park Place.

Streets covered by
clean-up volunteersIndividuals, couples, children, and the occasional accompanying dog took to the streets and alleys to amass a huge pile of trash which the city picked-up later that day at points along Edgerton Street. Old bicycle tires, hub caps, bottles, and other trash made its way from street to bag.

A big thank you to everyone that turned out to help!

Join GPPNA in to help clean up Park Place. As part of the local and state clean up campaigns, we are hosting our local clean up day, Saturday, April 28, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon.

Register in front of the Waverly Church, Forbes and S. Braddock Avenues, to pick up your materials and choose your area to clean up litter. Gloves, bags, coffee and bottled water provided.

Sponsored by Redd Up Council and GPPNA.

Waverly Presbyterian Church is holding a flee market and bake sale as a fundraiser event.
Saturday, May 19th, 9am - 2pm
Waverly Presbyterian Church
590 South Braddock Avenue

Stop by to shop and visit the Bake Sale Table!

This is a fundraiser for funding Mission projects in the community. People are welcome to donate, call Joan Stone at 412-242-2874 to arrange for pick up. No clothing please.

Large numbers of community members from Park Place and a host of other local community organizations and non-profits have worked hard beginning in 2005 and throughout 2006 to protect our neighborhood from bad development, winning important concessions from Walgreens and Paradise Development. The final agreement between GPPNA and the developers stipulates among other things that the developers:

• are permitted to take only the one house closest to the commercial lot on Braddock Avenue
• must purchase and make specific renovations to the remaining adjacent homes and sell them as residences
• must pay for $10,000 in street trees

You may see the details and full agreement here:
Agreement between GPPNA and Paradise

This is a great outcome for the community— we gained input over the commercial development of our own neighborhood and we also can stabilize the adjacent residential properties through direct investments and deed restrictions.

The most important factor in our success was the significant level of participation from community members at protests, community input meetings, and hearings— all of which had tremendous impact in the development’s rather political process. In addition to that critical support from our own community, we also had help from all of the following organizations which provided letters of support and/or sent representatives to city council and planning commission hearings:

• 14th Ward Democratic Committee
• ACORN
• Nine Mile Run Watershed Association
• North Point Breeze Development Corporation
• Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation
• Regent Square Civic Association
• SPUR Consulting
• Young Preservationists Association of Pittsburgh

Thank you to everyone for all the hard work and tremendous participation throughout this process. This conflict with our city officials and Walgreens lasted well over a year, but the final outcome is a good one for our community. We have influenced the development process into one that accommodates the specific needs of our community, strengthening an important entrance to the neighborhood. We also have shown, to our elected officials, future developers, and ourselves, the strong commitment that out friends and neighbors have for our community.

A Message from Park Place Neighbor Josh Bellin

Dear Friends,

If you care about the environment (and I know you do!), you’ll want to be involved in this. On April 14, 2007, Step It Up 2007, a nationwide day of events dedicated to pressuring Congress to pass legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, will be held. (See their website, http://stepitup2007.org/). I’ve decided to host a local event, and I need your help! The event, which I’m calling the Park Place Climate Action Rally, will be held from noon to 2:00 on April 14th at lower Frick Park (corner of Forbes and S. Braddock). Plans are still in flux, but I’m hoping to have a rally, letter-writing campaign, information booths, and (for families) a park clean-up. Here’s how you can help:

1. Obviously, attend the event yourself, and bring as many friends, family members, and co-workers as possible!

2. Spread the word! In your workplace, your place of worship, your email address book, get the news out to as many people as you can think of. I’ll be putting together flyers in the next couple days, so if you can think of good places to distribute them, please let me know.

3. Volunteer to help with planning, set-up, clean-up, etc.  There’s a lot to do–contacting local media, organizations, and politicians; posting flyers; making signs and banners; and so on–and only a month to do iit. So any help would be greatly appreciated!

Please be back in touch to let me know if you have any thoughts about this or if you’d like to help. And thanks to all of you in advance for supporting this truly earth-shaking cause!  Josh Bellin jclj@juno.com

Join GPPNA in to help clean up Park Place. As part of the local and state clean up campaigns, we are hosting our local clean up day, Saturday, April 28, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon.

Register in front of the Waverly Church, Forbes and S. Braddock Avenues, to pick up your materials and choose your area to clean up litter.

Sponsored by Redd Up Council.