Another Side of East Side
Posted July 9, 2009 // 0 Comments // add yours
By Kate Snyder
By Philip Hallen and Mark Bibro
The recent Post Gazette article on East Liberty’s renewal (East Liberty becomes a vibrant community, PG 6/8/09) is a welcome notice to the larger Pittsburgh community about the transformation and continuing innovation of the area. This transformation is a model of public private partnership which has been the hallmark of so much of Pittsburgh’s progress over the last several decades.
The forward-looking collaboration between ELDI and East Liberty Presbyterian Church in developing East Liberty Town Square is another example of how the spirit and culture of a neighborhood, decimated by an ill-conceived sixties renewal effort, can be recaptured, recreated and realized in new forms, based on neighborhood need and sound planning ideas. .
There is another sector which increasingly takes a role in this remarkable renewal and it represents a large and viable – and almost invisible – piece of what is happening in East Liberty. The approximately 50 non profit organizations based in the 15206 zip code account for an aggregate payroll of almost $95 million dollars. When viewed from an economic impact perspective, this group of human service and educational organizations contributes in a major way to the vitality of East Liberty.
One of these non profits, East End Cooperative Ministry, an inter-faith, multi-program, social and human service agency, is joining the new physical face of East Liberty by building Community House, a new 58,000 square foot neighborhood center at the corner of Penn Circle East and Penn Circle North. This building joins the green infrastructure initiative of the Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighborhood Development and is planned as a Platinum Level LEED certified addition to East Liberty’s array of new buildings.
Settlement houses or neighborhood centers have been a part of Pittsburgh’s history for decades, as its immigrant populations, both individuals and families, adjusted to the new industrial society of the day. Sarah Heinz House, Hill House, Kingsley House, and Hosanna House are some of the historic examples of how the non profit sector rallied to solve educational and family problems in the racially and culturally diverse neighborhoods of Pittsburgh. In these welcoming places, people learned languages, found new job skills, learned how government systems worked, found cultural enrichment through music and theater and learned to strengthen family ties and relationships.
Now East End Cooperative Ministry will add a similar space to the East End. EECM’s 14 program locations will be centralized in a physical and cultural community center designed to compliment the growing renewal efforts in the neighborhood. After 40 years of service to the homeless, the hungry, distressed children and families, EECM will be able to provide a new level of dignity, compassion and efficiency to its long record of service to East Liberty.
We proudly join with the enlightened retail and business community, the dozens of non-profit organizations, the hundreds of homeless and hungry, the countless children and families, and the thousands of volunteers, each doing a special task, each making a special contribution to the larger renewal. East Liberty is not only “becoming a vibrant community” as the Post Gazette says; it always has been one, in spite of hard times. These new times are full of hope – built on mutual commitment, sound planning, and community support rich with promise.
( Philip Hallen is President Emeritus of the Falk Foundation. Mark Bibro is Executive Director of the Birmingham Foundation. They are, respectively, President and Vice President of East End Cooperative Ministry’s Board of Directors)
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