East Liberation

There was no wrecking ball and no grand implosion, but the rumbling began long ago.

The crane at East Mall Tower in East Liberty sliced through the high-rise, crumbling one apartment at a time so as not to disturb traffic on Penn Circle below.

"I'm extremely happy to see it come down," said Denise Archer, manager of Rainbow Kids, a children's supply store that sits a block down Penn Avenue from the demolition. "It was an eyesore. It was people pollution. It was a drug building, everybody knows that, and now it's gone."

Demolition began last month on the East Mall and Liberty Park apartment buildings, high-rises notorious for crime activity and symbolic of the failed urban renewal project of the 1960s. Much tension surrounded the forced removal of tenants who gave up their homes to have the high-rises built in the first place, but many believe that with the towers coming down, people finally can envision East Liberty anew.

"To some people, East Mall Tower has been a barrier between communities because it's such a wall, to others it signifies blight and, to others, it was home," said Ernie Hogan, director of residential real estate for East Liberty Development Inc. "With the elimination of the high-rises, East Liberty is now being viewed as a neighborhood on the move."

First came Home Depot, which opened along North Highland Avenue in 1999 and put 300 people to work. Then, in 2002, Whole Foods opened along Centre Avenue. Now the "crack stacks," as some residents called the public housing towers, have fallen.

It's as though the old adage were flipped: What goes down, must come up.

George Tanner, who has owned Liberty Video along Penn Avenue for 16 years, has a simple request.

"I want it to become a place people are not afraid of when they hear about it," he said.

Bob Gradeck, policy analyst for the Center for Economic Development at Carnegie Mellon University, said the retail success of neighboring communities benefits East Liberty.

"There's really no more room in Shadyside, and Shadyside's so expensive," Gradeck said. "Home Depot and Whole Foods have been successful in East Liberty, and it might send a signal to folks that it's not as risky as they once thought it was."

Construction already has begun on the new Eastside development along Centre Avenue. Anchored by Whole Foods Market on one end, Eastside will host a Walgreen's, Starbucks, banks, a spa and a Wine and Spirits Superstore. A pedestrian bridge, built in part with a $1 million PennDOT grant, will further merge the two neighborhoods of Shadyside and East Liberty.

Some of the shopper spillover has been venturing to Shadow Lounge, an eclectic coffee bar along Baum Boulevard. Kelly's Bar and Lounge, too, has transformed into a 20-something hot spot, especially Tuesday nights when local DJs spin.

Jesse "Ronndon" Gregory, 26, tends bar at Kelly's, and while he's happy to see progress in East Liberty, he doesn't want it to lose its neighborhood character.

"I hope the street vendors don't disappear," Gregory said. "I like the flavor they bring. I like being able to buy my hip-hop CDs on the street and airbrushed stuff. I don't want to see it become richy-rich stores with $50 pairs of socks. I've seen a lot of interesting drags turn into Diesel stores and Starbucks."

One of the main ways ELDI plans to transform the neighborhood is by building new housing.

In August, ELDI plans to break ground near the East Mall site for the new Penn Manor apartments, a 56-unit apartment complex that will stand just three stories high and look more like townhouses. By November, ELDI expects to break ground on the Negley Avenue Neighbors project, which will add 49 units of affordable housing. Both housing projects will have tiered rents that range from $423 (one-bedroom adjusted rate at Penn Manor) to $859 (three-bedroom market rate on Negley).

But Ronell Guy of the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania does not want people to forget what was lost.

"East Mall was people's homes," Guy said. "Despite common opinion, people enjoyed and loved living there. It was convenient. It was close."

When the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development foreclosed on the Penn Circle high-rises in May 2003, all the tenants, many disabled and with special needs, had to relocate. They were given housing vouchers and the promise that when new housing came available, they would have priority and the right to move back to East Liberty.

Guy said the master list of displaced residents has not been kept updated by the Urban Redevelopment Authority, which keeps the information confidential to protect privacy.

When the Housing Alliance sent out a mailing to contact the displaced tenants, it used the URA's list and one-third of the letters were returned, Guy said.

"I don't think there will be an earnest attempt to find those families and see they are housed," Guy said. "These properties were full for a reason. These are people who needed support, who needed help with managing their lives. I just wish there was a way to balance progress with people's quality of life."

Wheelchair-bound Raymond Davis, 62, lives in Penn Circle Apartments, the final high-rise set to be demolished in the next few years. Even though he knows he will be asked to move out, he supports the changes. He simply asks that the new homes are built before he is forced out.

"A lot of people think they lost their homes, but they're getting better ones," Davis said. "Our hope is that they build first. That was their promise, or we won't know where to go. There's a lot of skepticism, and you don't get straight answers. Everybody's living on pins and needles."

This tale of three towers elicits both excitement and doubt. What protects this decade's redevelopment from falling into the same traps of the urban renewal of the '60s, the massive makeover that bulldozed a million square feet of land and ultimately drained life of the neighborhood once known as Pittsburgh's second downtown?

"Who knows• In 20 years, someone might look at it that way," Hogan said. "But in the end, we think East Liberty will be a destination. It will be a destination that serves everyone and meets the needs of people who want to come for dinner, who want to live here, work here or raise a family here. It starts to become this really cool, eclectic neighborhood."