Long-stalled plans for a public art installation outside Consol Energy Center that commemorates Hill District life got a boost Thursday as the city-county Sports & Exhibition Authority voted to seek grant money for the $1.9 million project.
SEA's board voted to apply for as much as $250,000 from Allegheny County's Community Infrastructure and Tourism Fund, which is budgeted to provide $6.6 million in grants this year.
“It's a step in the right direction, but money still needs to be raised,” said Carl Redwood, chairman of the Hill District Consensus Group, a nonprofit community advocacy group.
The public project is called Curtain Call. As part of negotiations that led to the $321 million construction of Consol Energy Center, the Penguins agreed to incorporate public art into the project.
In May 2009, a committee chose California-based artist and landscape architect Walter Hood to design a walkway connecting Centre and Fifth avenues that featured rain gardens and sculptural steel curtains to frame thousands of images of Hill District people, places and history. Hood did not return a message.
Redwood said the Hill House Association led a months-long process to collect images, scanning photographs that people brought in from family photo albums and personal collections. SEA said about 2,500 images were collected.
“The project was put forward to get community buy-in for the (Consol Energy Center) project, but once the Penguins got all the funding they needed for the building, they seemed to forget about Curtain Call,” Redwood said.
The Penguins declined to comment, other than to say that the team is committing $500,000 to Curtain Call.
In an audit of the SEA released in December, city Controller Michael Lamb urged the SEA — along with the city's Urban Redevelopment Authority, the Penguins and elected officials — to ramp up efforts to get the funding.
“Since the selection and designing of Curtain Call, the Pittsburgh Penguins and SEA have both claimed lack of available funding for the project,” Lamb wrote. “Given the willingness of local foundations to aid in the process, the SEA and URA should work with the Penguins to finally obtain funding for this project. All elected officials, especially the Mayor and City Council, should increase support and pressure for funding.”
SEA Executive Director Mary Conturo said Curtain Call “has been a high priority project ... we are continuing to look for ways to fund it.”
SEA secured a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and plans to seek additional funding from local foundations, the Michigan-based Kresge Foundation and New York's ArtPlace America.
SEA expects to learn by this year's third quarter whether it will receive a grant from the county's Community Infrastructure and Tourism Fund.
Redwood said the Curtain Call project is particularly important to him because it would “forever link the area to the Lower Hill District.”
That connection, along with the Lower Hill itself, was wiped away about 60 years ago. Construction of the Civic Arena resulted in the demolition of 1,300 buildings in the Lower Hill, which displaced 8,000 people and 400 businesses from the predominantly black neighborhood.
Tom Fontaine is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 412-320-7847 or tfontaine@tribweb.com.
