After Decades of Promises, Pittsburgh’s Hill District Demands a Different Future

This time last year, Philadelphia was debating whether to construct the 76 Place arena in Center City. Though the Sixers would eventually change their plans after community opposition, the debate echoed the experiences of communities throughout the country—and across the state in Pittsburgh.

For generations, Pittsburgh’s Hill District, located just outside Downtown Pittsburgh, stood as one of the country’s most vital Black cultural centers. By the mid-20th century, it was home to a diverse population of Black, Jewish, Italian, and Eastern European people and a thriving network of jazz clubs, churches, Black-owned businesses, and civic institutions, including The Pittsburgh Courier, which had 250,000 subscribers at its peak. 

That history was ruptured in the 1950s, when city leaders used urban renewal powers to demolish 1,300 buildings and displace some 9,000 residents to build the Civic Arena. The plan severed the Hill District and the adjacent Uptown community from Downtown, creating a cycle of disinvestment from which those areas have yet to fully recover.

The story of these communities has become an intergenerational struggle about who gets to imagine the future and who is forced to live with its consequences. 

Today, that struggle is entering a new chapter. This past October, the Pittsburgh Penguins relinquished exclusive development rights to the Lower Hill, which they had held since 2007, when they reached a deal to stay in Pittsburgh and replace the Civic Arena with the PPG Paints Arena, which was built across the street. 

But community leaders say the handoff remains complex, and the promises made to bring investment to the area have had mixed results. Now, as Pittsburgh reconsiders the fate of some of its most historically significant neighborhoods, these leaders say the real question is whether the next chapter will finally center the people who never stopped fighting for their place in the story.

Keeping Up in a Rigged Game

Carol Hardeman, executive director of the Hill District Consensus Group, says the community’s struggle over land, housing, and development feels like what she calls a “rigged board game” rooted in generations of racial exclusion. 

After being forced out, she says, Italian and Jewish families eventually found footholds in other neighborhoods, while redlining pushed Black residents into public housing. 

“As Black people, we’ve never had the opportunity to roll the dice and move forward,” she says. “We roll the dice and lose a turn, or take four steps back.”

Seven decades later, she believes that urban redevelopment continues with the same playbook. Investment has increased gentrification, pushing long-term Black residents out while some of the new luxury apartments intentionally remain empty as a tax write-off. And the completion of the “Cap” Urban Connector Project in 2021, which, like Philadelphia’s Chinatown Stitch project, was designed to reconnect the Hill District to Downtown, hasn’t lived up to its promises.

Hardeman says she never believed the Penguins were acting in good faith. And while Hardeman sees promise in Pittsburgh’s new mayor and partnerships with universities, urban planners, and legal advocates, she insists that the community must stay ahead of developers who always seem to be in control of the game. Tools like cooperatives and community land trusts, she argues, are essential to securing land and building wealth after decades of loss.

“People are looking at us, like, why can’t we keep up?” Hardeman says. “We can’t keep up because white privilege continues to throw horseshoes around our neck.” 

But Hardeman vows to keep fighting.

“To be the winner of the game is never to give up.”

Uptown’s Struggle for Inclusion

Neighboring the Hill District, the Uptown neighborhood connects Downtown Pittsburgh with a cluster of prestigious universities across town in Oakland, but its residents have long felt sidelined in the flow of development. 

Brittany McDonald-Pierce, executive director of Uptown Partners of Pittsburgh, paints a picture of a neighborhood at the intersection of opportunity and frustration. “With the overall Hill District, over the past 10 years, there have been mixed feelings,” McDonald-Pierce says. While optimism about the prospect of new investment was high, “some groups feel commitments weren’t met and more could have been done to create real economic benefit.”

Founded in 2007, Uptown Partners initially focused on preserving historic buildings that were being torn down for arena parking instead of being repaired. The organization sought to give the community a voice in city planning decisions, particularly around major developments like the Penguins’ Lower Hill District project.

Still, despite the $1 billion in investment, McDonald-Pierce believes that Uptown has not felt the promised economic effects. Traffic, litter, and minimal community support during large events have been persistent challenges, with local residents often having to clean up streets themselves after games, concerts, and other events. 

The uneven development in the arena corridor is becoming self-defeating. “We had some really bad press when the NCAA events were held here,” she said. “Attendees weren’t pleased with the way the surroundings looked. There was no place to drink or eat.”

McDonald-Pierce highlights the importance of collaborative planning processes that include community stakeholders alongside universities, sports teams, and city agencies, to ensure that community benefit agreements are not just symbolic. “We need to bring these entities to the table to make sure they understand the community’s vision,” she says. 

In Uptown, progress is measured not just by dollars invested, but by the long-term inclusion and empowerment of the neighborhood’s residents.

Building the Pipeline for Real Opportunity

For Fr. Paul Abernathy, CEO of the Neighborhood Resilience Project, the decades-long battle over development in the Lower Hill and Uptown is less about broken promises than about a broken process. 

Athletic franchises, he argues, wield disproportionate political power in American cities. They generate revenue, civic pride, and national visibility, giving elected officials every incentive to “bend over backwards” to make them happy. In that dynamic, community voices often come last.

“When the Penguins threatened to leave, they secured the development rights to the Lower Hill,” Abernathy says. “But they weren’t equipped to facilitate that development. They are an athletic organization, not a community development organization.” 

The city, he believes, should have brokered a better partnership—one that centered community voices rather than sidelining them. 

“Who speaks for the community?” he asks. “That process was never facilitated well at all.”

The result, in his view, is a missed opportunity. He points to the new FNB Financial Center, a 26-story office building on the edge of the Lower Hill, which was built even though the office vacancy rate in Downtown Pittsburgh is 18 percent, as evidence of misplaced priorities and an absence of true collaboration.

Abernathy’s critique extends beyond development decisions. For him, the deeper question is how to ensure that Hill District and Uptown residents are prepared for opportunity when it arrives. Projects focus on minority participation quotas, he notes, without paying attention to the necessary pipeline—financial support, scholarships, skilled-trades pathways, and partnerships that leverage local innovation—that would help residents make the most of redevelopment. 

“We have to think very carefully about how we tie our community to opportunity,” he says. “We need to build the pipeline.”

Instead, investments focus on managing crises, such as community violence, rather than fostering community transformation. 

“We’re not healthy enough to sustain the opportunities being created,” he says. “We need healthy communities with healthy residents who can sustain healthy opportunities.”