More than most city neighborhoods, Hazelwood absorbed the brunt of the steel industry’s decline. It is fitting, therefore, that a $1 billion conversion of the former LTV coke works there offers so much potential for the neighborhood’s future.
The owners’ commitment to sustainability is additional reason to celebrate, for it promises to position the 178-acre site — and Hazelwood — for a prominent role in a reinvented Pittsburgh.
The tract along the Monongahela River is the city’s last brownfield, a vestige of its industrial and polluted past.
The property owner, Almono LP, a consortium comprising the Heinz Endowments and the Benedum, Richard King Mellon and McCune foundations, wants to put more than 2 million square feet of office and research space and up to 1,200 units of housing there.
Almono recently announced that it had retained Perkins and Will, a Chicago architectural firm considered a national leader in green design, to guide the work.
Don Smith, president of Regional Industrial Development Corp., the site manager, said Almono wants the development to be not only the “most sustainable” in Pennsylvania but “really a global leader in terms of sustainability.” To that end, the architects will incorporate environmentally friendly building materials and “green” approaches to stormwater management and energy use, among other features, into the design plans.
City Councilman Corey O’Connor, who represents Hazelwood, is right to be impatient with the timetable for a project that’s been a long time coming. As it stands, infrastructure work could be completed by early 2016.
To be sure, civic leaders never gave up on a neighborhood that lost population, jobs, schools and other amenities in the decades since steel’s downturn. This year alone, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh opened a bigger branch there, and officials pursued plans to repurpose a former G.C. Murphy Co. store.
But with its scale and progressive approach, the Almono project is a game-changer. Hazelwood, long associated with the city’s smokestack heyday, stands to be at the forefront of a more livable and vibrant Pittsburgh.
First Published: January 2, 2015, 5:00 a.m.