About
The site's history
A HISTORIC PURCHASE AND A COMMUNITY PLEDGE
In 2002, the Almono partners, which initially included the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, The Heinz Endowments, the McCune Foundation, and the Richard King Mellon Foundation, came together to collectively purchase a 178-acre brownfield site along the Monongahela River.
After decades of industrial use, land that was once the home of Jones & Laughlin Steel was heavily degraded and littered with crumbling relics of its steelmaking past. The former mill site was cut off from the neighborhood, its land and riverfront inaccessible and unsafe. At the time of purchase, various uses for the brownfield had been proposed, ranging from a towing impoundment lot for City of Pittsburgh vehicles to a lot for warehouses and salt storage.
The foundations had a bigger vision. That is, to create a center of global innovation and sustainability, strongly knitted to the surrounding community, while at the same time, investing deeply in stabilizing and strengthening the Greater Hazelwood neighborhood to ensure that development would progress without displacement.
Twenty years on, the Almono partners have kept that pledge. At the site, patient capital, extensive environmental remediation, and careful, collaborative planning are forging a national model for place-based development. In the surrounding neighborhood, sustained philanthropic investment is supporting affordable housing initiatives, workforce and career training, small business development, K-12 education, arts and cultural programming, and more. A community once left out of Pittsburgh’s post-industrial revival has a new story to tell, with many new chapters yet to come.
INDUSTRIAL PAST
Up to the 1950's
Originally purchased in 1758 from Native Americans in the Stanwix Treaty, the site saw little development until 1861, with the first railroad through the area. Shortly thereafter, Jones & Laughlin Steel Company (J&L Company) built their first industrial plants along the Monongahela River in 1883. With plants along both sides of the River, on the South Side and in Hazelwood, the site became an industrial hub. Further development of the area included important infrastructure investments, such as the construction of the Hot Metal Bridge in 1884 to connect the two plants owned and run by J&L Company. During WWII, the area was producing so much steel that the Hot Metal Bridge was the second most heavily guarded piece of infrastructure in the United States. Three key artifacts will be carried forward with the site’s future use and programming: the Roundhouse, the Mill 19, and the Pump House, built in 1887, 1943, circa 1870, respectively.
DECLINE OF THE STEEL INDUSTRY
FROM 1950 TO 1998
During its peak, J&L had roughly 12,000 workers between their South Side and Hazelwood sites, with the adjacent Hazelwood neighborhood growing to reach a peak population of 13,000 residents in 1960. Following the decline of Pittsburgh’s steel town heyday, Hazelwood Works employed only 3,600 workers when Ling-Temco-Vought Incorporation (LTV) purchased the site in 1974. Despite the sale, the plants closed and ended operations just over two decades later, in 1997, signaling the end of old industry on the site. By 1998, only 6,000 residents remained in Hazelwood.
NEW OWNERSHIP
1999 to 2002
Evolving from the 1999 Riverlife Task Force vision to create a master plan for Pittsburgh’s urban waterfront, the foundations realized an opportunity to ensure the success and revitalization of a huge portion of the city’s waterfront through the large, vacant brownfield site. In 2002, Almono LP was formed by four Pittsburgh foundations (today, Almono is comprised of three foundations) to purchase the Hazelwood site from a bankrupt LTV for $10 million. This incredible foresight, ensured that the site could be land banked for a thoughtful redevelopment vision that could benefit the neighborhood, city, and region as a whole.
STUDIES, PLANNING, & REMEDIATION
2002 to 2015
From 2002 to 2015, RIDC served as the sole member of Almono LLC, the general partner. During this time, a significant amount of environmental remediation and site prep occurred on the site, to ensure Act II compliance and meet clean-up requirements. Additionally, roughly a dozen studies, neighborhood plans, and vision plans were been developed for the site. Resulting in the City approved Preliminary Land Development Plan (PLDP) in 2013. The PLDP was submitted as part of the creation of a Specially Planned (SP) district on the site – SP-10 Zoning Text – that outlines the process and intention for the development. Also during this time a handful of events and activities took place on the site, including: the 2015 Thrival Festival, temporary urban forestry, spillover lab space for CMU students and professors (including early days of CMU Robotics and their DARPA challenge testing), and bringing on Uber with their test track as one of the site's early tenants.
WELCOME TO HAZELWOOD GREEN
2016 TO PRESENT
Over the course of three years, the vision for the site became a reality. The site was rebranded as - Hazelwood Green - during the Big Tent Event in October 2017. During 2018, a new SP-10 Preliminary Land Development Plan and Zoning Text was finalized and approved in late 2018 to provide adaptability for market shifts within a form and performance based framework for sustainable urban design. With the dedication of Blair Street and Hazelwood Avenue to the City in April 2019, the site was publicly opened for the first time in nearly a century and provided critical bicycle, pedestrian, and transit connectivity to and within the site. Shortly thereafter, CMU and Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing occupied the first new building on the site. Winter of 2019/2020 saw the completion and dedication of a people-first Lytle Street. After completing design and approvals during 2018/2019, the site’s first public open space - the Plaza - began construction, with an opening slated for fall 2020. Also during this time, the team solicited interest from potential developers, tenants, residents, and energy service providers.