Urban Redevelopment Authority seeks future for Allegheny River shoreline

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - April 28, 2009
By Jeremy Boren

A 12-foot-tall cinder block wall prevents Hector Corante and his pit bull, Caesar, from reaching the banks of the Allegheny River a few hundred feet from their Lawrenceville rowhouse.

It's one of many man-made reminders to shoreline city dwellers that warehouses, vacant lots and rusting scrap yards dominate a roughly 6.45-mile strip of riverfront stretching from Downtown to Highland Park.

"It would be great if there was at least some access to the river. A lot of people here feel that way," said Corante, 41, a commercial photographer who's working with a group of local dog owners to set aside land under the 40th Street Bridge for an off-leash dog park.

Corante's ideas and those of many others will become part of a public study set to begin today when the Urban Redevelopment Authority meets with landowners and neighborhood representatives on the site of a once-rotting Tippins International Inc. steel fabrication plant near the 62nd Street Bridge.

"It's a call to action to have the community become engaged," said URA spokeswoman Megan Stearman.

Instead of developing an isolated housing development on the cleared 22-acre site — as the authority did at Washington's Landing in the 1990s — officials are gathering input from businesses owners and residents who want to rehabilitate the riverfront, said authority Executive Director Rob Stephany, who lives in Lawrenceville.

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