East Liberty

Historically, East Liberty had been a rural outpost along the Forbes Road (Figure 2, right) between Fort Duquesne (present-day Downtown Pittsburgh) and more developed settlements to the east (Pittsburgh Neighborhood Alliance 1977). By the 1800s it had become a fashionable country destination for Pittsburgh’s well-to-do elites. The Pennsylvania Railroad linked the area with Downtown in 1860, and it was annexed into the city in 1868. Around the turn of the 20th century, East Liberty ranked among the wealthiest suburbs in the nation, home to names including Carnegie, Heinz, Mellon, and Westinghouse (East Liberty Development Inc., n.d.). Later, it developed into a bustling urban neighborhood.

At its peak in the 1950s (Figure 3, right), it boasted more than 500 businesses and was the third-largest commercial district in the state of Pennsylvania, behind Center City Philadelphia and Downtown Pittsburgh (Dept. of City Planning 2012). 

After a failed midcentury attempt to revitalize the neighborhood through urban renewal (Figure 4, right), East Liberty entered a state of decline, becoming known for drugs and crime rather than a thriving commercial center.

By 1980, the neighborhood lost half its population (Dept. of City Planning 2012). 

In the 2000s, the neighborhood's fortunes began to turn around, and what was once a disinvested urban center plagued by poverty has become the trendy spot to be. Between the 2009-2013 and 2014-2018 ACS 5-year estimates, the white population increased by nearly 57%, while the Black population declined nearly 24%. 

Over that same period, the population with a bachelor's degree increased by 98% and with a graduate/professional degree by 152%. Housing for low-income residents (Figure 5, right) has been vacated for chic restaurants and Whole Foods and more than one juice bar to take its place.

As new, high-end development has proliferated, fears of displacement have created tensions among the community about who the neighborhood is for, and whether those who lived in East Liberty during its darkest days are still welcome.

This caused massive upheaval for the communities of residents and businesses that called East Liberty home. Bulldozers rolled into East Liberty and destroyed 1,200 homes and one million square feet of commercial space in an effort to usher in an era of modernity (Figure 10, right; Fitzpatrick 2000). 

Ultimately, this did not have the desired effect of bringing suburban shoppers to support local businesses. Not only was it not an inviting environment for business, but it made it more difficult, not less, for motorists to access the commercial district, and much easier for them to simply drive around East Liberty rather than to or through it (Figure 13, right).

This only hastened the decline of the neighborhood, as it threatened the livelihoods of the businesses that survived the urban renewal process. East Liberty became known as a center for crime and blight.

Built between 1969 and 1971, the high-rises were not originally intended to primarily house low- and moderate-income families. However, the developer, Florida-based Federal American Properties, took advantage of the then-new Section 236 mortgage-based subsidy program to build the East Mall and Penn Circle Towers. In the 1970s, all three complexes joined the HUD-Assisted Multi-Family Housing program (Lord 2003). While the public perception was that the three towers were public housing, a notion perpetuated by media coverage that referred to them as such, they were privately owned and operated (Santoni 2009). Liberty Park was only partially subsidized, and included more than 100 market-rate units. The three towers were as follows:

• East Mall, a 17-story, fully-subsidized 161-unit building at 98 Penn Circle West, which straddled Penn Avenue;
• Liberty Park Apartments, a 20-story, partially subsidized 158-unit building at 47 Larimer Place (the complex also included 174 townhouse units); and
• Penn Circle Towers, a 20-story, fully-subsidized 152-unit building at 6207 Penn Avenue.

Figure 16 (right) shows Liberty Park and Penn Circle Towers among the East Liberty skyline.

Two lower-rise complexes were built as part of the urban renewal project on the western edge of the neighborhood, and have persisted into the modern era without the stigma associated with the high-rise towers. Both were built at the intersection of Penn and North Negley Avenues.

Pennley Park Apartments (Figure 17, right) opened in phases starting in 1965 on the northeast corner, eventually encompassing 314 units in total (Fagan 1997, Johnson 1964).

The second, Penn Plaza, featured 312 units on the southeast corner (Post-Gazette 1966). Opened in December 1966, it received an FHA-backed mortgage in 1968 (Post-Gazette 1968).

In the southern end of East Liberty, adjacent to affluent Shadyside, the big-box trend continued with the opening of the region’s first Whole Foods Market in 2002 in a new development called Eastside (Figure 20, right). As the name suggests, the intent was to bridge the gap between the two neighboring communities. The addition of big-name, big-box retail worked, and the neighborhood began to shift its image away from one of crime- and drug-ridden subsidized housing towers and toward one of a revitalized retail destination.

Along with the influx of new retail, East Liberty has seen adaptive reuse of historic structures in its revitalization. The most notable example is Bakery Square (Figure 21, right), a former Nabisco factory that operated from 1918 until 1998. (Bakery Square, n.d.) The city declared the property as blighted in 2006 and set the stage for redevelopment: a local developer bought the bakery and converted it into a mixed-use development, opened 2010, featuring office space, retail, a hotel, and apartments. Further expansions have added additional office space, apartments, townhomes, and parking facilities. The largest tenant of the office space at Bakery Square is Google.

In 2005, the East Mall and Liberty Park towers were demolished, along with the Liberty Park townhomes (Figure 24, right).

Subsequent developments in the area tried to counteract the concentration of poverty that resulted from the high-rises. They focused on smaller buildings than the towers: low-rise complexes and garden apartments, as well as townhomes. They also emphasized mixed-income housing and a higher quality of construction.

In place of East Mall, three housing developments have been constructed: East Liberty Place North (Figure 25, right), East Liberty Place South, and Penn Manor. All were partially funded by low-income housing tax credits. East Liberty Place North & South are both mixed-use, mixed-income developments. East Liberty Place North contains 6 retail spaces and 54 apartments, 38 of which are affordable (Nelson Jones 2013). East Liberty Place South has 11,000 square feet of retail and 52 apartments, of which two-thirds will be affordable. Penn Manor contains 55 units, all affordable.

The Liberty Park site was developed into Fairfield (Figure 26, right), a mixed income apartment and townhouse complex (Nelson Jones 2007). Opened in 2007, it includes 124 units, mostly for low-income residents. Fairfield was developed with Low Income Housing Tax Credits. 

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Pennley Park Apartments were rebuilt and renovated as a new, mixed-income apartment and townhouse complex known as New Pennley Place (Figure 29, right; Ove 1997).

The project involved the addition of new amenities like a community center, and reconnecting streets severed by the original construction. Old buildings received new facades to make them more harmonious with both the street and the new buildings in the development. 130 units were demolished without replacement, in order to reduce the site’s density (Barnes 1997).

Though it appears to have started on a rocky footing, the effort involved significant community input, and other communities pointed to it as a model for input on other future redevelopment projects (McNulty 1998, Toler 2002).

The project was completed in phases. Phase 1 renovated 64 apartments and added 38 townhomes, and won an award from National Association of Home Builders for Best Multi-Family Rehabilitation. Phase 2 added 34 townhouses and apartments. Phase 3, dubbed “Pennley Commons” added a 3-story, 38-unit senior apartment building, funded by HUD’s Section 202 Capital advance program (Ackerman 2000).

In addition to the Section 202 funding, New Pennley Place was partially funded by the sale of Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, and receives project-based assistance from HUD. It had previously accepted Section 8 vouchers until 1994, though it is unclear if it currently does (Heltzel 1994).

New Pennley Place is one positive example of how affordable housing was maintained and renovated in East Liberty, using new mechanisms to transform a rundown apartment complex into a mixed-income community (Figure 30, right).

In contrast to the redevelopment of Pennley Park into New Pennley Place, its urban renewal sister project and neighbor across the street Penn Plaza has become a symbol of gentrification and displacement in East Liberty and Pittsburgh as a whole, serving to galvanize community opposition to the swift changes that were taking place in East Liberty.

In 2015, residents at Penn Plaza received 90-day eviction notices. The City of Pittsburgh intervened, negotiating more time for residents to find new housing. By 2017, more than 200 residents had relocated, some many miles away from East Liberty (Vrabel 2018). Many residents were elderly, and some relied on Section 8 vouchers to pay their rent (Deto 2015). Penn Plaza did not receive project-based assistance, and was a source of “naturally occurring affordable housing”, charging below-market rates. The owners of Penn Plaza, LG Realty Advisors, sought to redevelop the land into a high-end retail and office complex anchored by a Whole Foods Market (Figure 31, right). While negotiations between residents, city officials, and the developers stalled the project for a few years, the buildings were demolished in 2017. Whole Foods pulled out of the development in 2017 amid the controversy, but rejoined the project in 2019 (90.5 WESA 2019). The store opened in 2022.

Though it was not the largest loss of affordable housing in the area, the demolition of Penn Plaza came at a time of rising tensions around who was welcome in East Liberty, and for whom the “new” neighborhood would be built moving forward (Figure 32, right). It certainly did not help that the anchor tenant was a supermarket known for its high prices and catering to a highly upscale and affluent demographic—the opposite of Penn Plaza.

In a vein more similar to Pennley Park than Penn Plaza, the East Liberty Gardens complex (Figure 33, right) and Hamilton-Larimer public housing in the adjacent Larimer neighborhood were redeveloped into a new mixed-income community as part of a HUD Choice Neighborhoods project. 

East Liberty Gardens was a 136-unit townhouse complex developed for low-income families by a group of local churches (Post-Gazette October 1968). Financed through the FHA’s Section 221(d)(3) program in 1967, it suffered from maintenance issues and neglect (Post-Gazette 1967, Gemperlein 1979, Haynes 1995).

Hamilton-Larimer was a 28-unit public housing project opened in 1963 in neighboring Larimer (Post-Gazette 1963). In 2002, the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh was awarded a $1.6 million HOPE VI demolition grant for Hamilton-Larimer, though the redevelopment never occurred. (HUD 2004)

The City and the housing authority received a $30 million HUD grant to develop 334 units of mixed-income housing on the border between East Liberty and Larimer (Figure 34, right). The site features extensive green infrastructure as well as a 25 acre park. The initiative also includes homeowner assistance in the form of a facade enhancement program for Larimer homeowners to upgrade their properties to blend in with the new development.

Choice Neighborhoods is a new program from HUD, the successor to HOPE VI, aiming to create thriving mixed-income communities through holistic community planning. It represents the next step in HUD’s evolution away from high-rise public housing and the concentration of poverty.

Aggregating sales data from Zillow over the past three years (2019-2022), the market for homebuyers has gotten considerably more expensive over this period (Figure 37, right).

The median sales price jumped from $275,000 in 2020 (55 sales) to $330,000 so far in 2022 (55 sales as of December 5, 2022). The median price for 2019 was $251,500, though this figure is only reflective of 9 sales. In 2022, the median property was in the market for only 13 days. Average sales prices from all years except 2019, when data was limited, were quite a bit higher than the medians, likely skewed somewhat by newer construction homes fetching premium prices with their modern amenities.