PITTSBURGH — Room for new businesses is being made in Pittsburgh’s Beechview neighborhood, where a blighted building is being torn down.
If you walk through the neighborhood’s business district, you’ll find empty buildings, closed storefronts and virtually no one around.
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“We want everyone in our community to have a business district of some sort,” Didiano said.
Phyliss Didiano, a Beechview resident and president of Beechview Area Concerned Citizens, said she’s working to change that.
She said the first step to revitalize business is to identify blighted buildings and tear them down.
On Friday morning, a crew was tearing down a building on Broadway Avenue.
“We have been trying to be redeveloped for quite a few times, and hopefully this will be the start,” Didiano said.
In 2016, the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh was working with Atlas Development on a $4 million proposal to bring new businesses to Beechview. However, Didiano said that funding fell through.
“We have not had a lot of investment. It’s a small community. We are on a ridge, it’s on a hillside, which is scary in this day and age, so it’s hard to tear down buildings and then you have issues that you have to deal with to remediate,” Didiano said.
Now, four years later and with the help of URA funds, buildings are being demolished.
Didiano hopes this will breathe new life into her beloved neighborhood.
“It’s been so long since we were functioning as we could have. It would be nice to have a complete community once again,” Didiano said. Two other properties have been identified for demolition, but a timetable for when they will be torn down has not been set.
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