Memorials marking spots where murder victims died are gone from the Hill District’s Addison Terrace, replaced by a neighborhood that officials say will provide safe and healthy living options for public housing residents.

Stringent screening of residents and security controls will prevent Addison — now Skyline Terrace — from reverting to the drug- and crime-infested place of the past, officials said Thursday.

“We will do everything necessary to provide residents with a safe community,” said Caster Binion, executive director of the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh, which owns the site.

Binion and other officials dedicated 186 town homes with one to four bedrooms, built with $90 million in public subsidies, on the spot where Franklin D. Roosevelt opened Addison Terrace in 1940. Officials plan construction phases to add about 214 residences on Bentley Drive and elsewhere in the Hill. The total cost for 400 units is estimated at $160 million.

Lillie Mosley, 80, of East Liberty, who lived in projects on Bentley during the late 1960s, said the Italianate architectural style of homes is vastly different from the two-story walkups that once dominated.

“I can’t believe I’m seeing this,” Mosley said, gazing at duplexes and triplexes with trimmed lawns and mulched flower beds. “If my daddy and all of them could see this place, they wouldn’t believe it.”

City Councilman Daniel Lavelle, D-Hill District, said minority- and women-owned businesses participated in 53 percent of the project.

Developer Keith B. Key, owner of Columbus, Ohio-based KBK Enterprises Inc., said three minority contractors built three triplexes for $1 million apiece through a sub-general contractor program.

Lavelle said the program proves that minority-owned businesses can be players in development in and around Pittsburgh.

Binion answered critics who complained the housing authority is replacing Addison’s 734 apartments with 400 residences, leaving a gap of more than 300.

“By 2020, we’re going to build over 1,000 units of affordable housing in the city of Pittsburgh,” he said.

Police were called to Skyline Terrace on Friday because someone fired three shots that struck one of the new town houses.

Binion declined to comment on the incident, but said KBK is evicting three families.

“You work with the police and your partners to get the bad apples out,” he said.

Mike Manko, spokesman for District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr., who has expressed concern about Hill District violence, said staff members who attended the dedication were impressed that Skyline Terrace will be equipped with 100 surveillance cameras and patrolled by a private security company supported by city police.

The Rev. Victor Grigsby, pastor of Central Baptist Church in the Hill, said Skyline Terrace signals a new era for the neighborhood.

“We pray that these homes would be a place where dreams are birthed, families are safe, people are loved, children are free, streets are clean, (and) drugs are forbidden,” he said.

Bob Bauder is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-765-2312 or bbauder@tribweb.com.

---

Copyright ©2026— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)

---