The vacant building on the 1600 block of Broadway Avenue on Thursday, March 21, 2024, in Beechview.(Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
The city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority voted to sell a Beechview building, now under renovation, that will serve as a headquarters and community center for an organization serving the city’s Latino community.
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A Pittsburgh neighborhood organization dedicated to assisting immigrant families will be expanding their efforts with the acquisition of a vacant building on Beechview’s main street.
Founded in 2013, Casa San Jose has assisted thousands of low-income Latino immigrant families with referrals for housing, medical care, legal assistance and family issues. On Thursday, the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s [URA] board agreed to sell a building on the 1600 block of Broadway Avenue to Casa San Jose for a nominal fee of $1 plus costs.
The organization also advocates for immigrant rights and immigration reform with an emphasis on assisting people with applications for work or social benefits and after-school programming. Those efforts will now have a centralized location to provide enough space and security for the organization.
“We still have two satellite offices but we’ll be able to bring programming that we do in-house,” said Monica Ruiz, the organization’s executive director. “We’re currently renting space in various places across the city because we don’t fit where we are right now.”
The URA’s sale is the latest chapter for a site that has a long history of promised development and disappointment. The property was owned from 2004 to 2008 by Bernardo Katz, a developer-turned-fugitive who bought numerous buildings in the area, promising to invest with the help of URA funding. Katz absconded from the country, drawing federal charges of wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy and leaving debt that tied up many of the commercial properties he bought in Beechview. Now the building will be transformed into Casa San Jose’s headquarters and a community center.
Ruiz said Beechview has one of the highest concentrations of youth in the city and she intends for their new location to be a place where all kids can access services.
“We have a ton of youth programs, school camp and after school programming,” Ruiz said, adding there will also be space for a food pantry.
Ruiz said plans also call for a health care wing in the below-ground floor where volunteer doctors and dentists will operate.
“It’s really awesome. Amid all the craziness happening there are great people in this world,” Ruiz said.
Ruiz emphasized their efforts are not only for Latinos but also for “our American neighbors.”
The Trump administration is leading an effort to deport undocumented immigrants. During Thursday’s URA meeting, one board member commented on current events.
“It’s exciting to see the progress here,” said board chair Kyle Chintalapalli. “The work that Casa San Jose does has always been critical and I think in the moment we’re in now there’s nothing more critical.”
Chintalapalli is also the city’s chief economic development officer.
According to the URA, Casa San Jose expressed interest in developing the 6,000-square-foot property in 2021 and since then efforts have been underway to move the development along.
Pittsburgh government allocated $1 million in COVID-era federal dollars to stabilize the structure and those efforts are less than half complete.
Ruiz said the building will also add security features. The location of her organization’s current headquarters is undisclosed due to security concerns.
In total, construction costs are expected to reach more than $3 million, according to the URA. State funds and loans will cover some of that.
“This building sat empty for over 20 years and people wanted to do something with it but never did anything about it,” Ruiz said. “We have worked so hard. Beechview used to be a ghost town 10 years ago. And so now you see all these businesses and restaurants and all this cool stuff and I think this will be another wonderful addition to a community that really deserves it. At least we’ll be better off there.”
Eric Jankiewicz is PublicSource’s economic development reporter, and can be reached at ericj@publicsource.org or on Twitter @ericjankiewicz.
This article first appeared on PublicSource and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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