Pittsburgh’s Urban Redevelopment Authority board voted to sell land and lend money to a developer intent on building a new apartment building in East Liberty, and catering largely to low-income tenants displaced in 2018 from the razed Penn Plaza.
Trek Development Group will buy a parking lot on North Beatty Street from the URA for $400,000, and take out a $450,000 loan from the city’s Housing Opportunity Fund, according to resolutions approved by the URA board at its meeting.
The loan will be part of the $13.2 million funding package – almost all of it federal, state or local public money – needed to construct the 42-apartment Harvard Beatty Housing building. URA staff said the terms of the loan and the other financing require that 33 of the apartments remain affordable to low-income and very-low-income families for 40 years. The other nine can be rented at market rates.
Trek President and CEO William Gatti said his company has had “an excellent partnership” with groups of residents displaced from Penn Plaza.
The Penn Plaza apartment complex in East Liberty before it was demolished. (Photo by Maranie Rae Staab/PublicSource)
Penn Plaza housed around 200 people, many of whom were compelled to leave largely redeveloped East Liberty. Some have moved into Trek’s 47-unit Mellon’s Orchard building, in East Liberty. Already Trek has received 34 applications to Harvard Beatty from former Penn Plaza households, with another 13 expressing interest.
Harvard Beatty will include 33 one-bedroom apartments, and the balance will have two bedrooms. It is expected to open late next year.
Urban Redevelopment Authority Housing Project Manager Evan Miller tells the URA board about the Harvard Beatty Housing proposal at a meeting conducted by Zoom on June 17, 2021. (Screenshot)
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