Public Riverfront Vision Meeting Scheduled

The first of three public meetings for the Allegheny Riverfront Vision will be held Thursday. The two-hour meeting will begin at 6 p.m. at the Heinz History Center. Community members are invited to learn about redevelopment slated to happen in the Strip District, Lawrenceville, and Highland Park. Urban Redevelopment Authority Executive Director Rob Stephany says a 6-mile stretch of land along the Allegheny River will see many of its stagnant warehouse properties converted into something more productive. “We’re kind of excited about the idea of converting warehouses into places really for the universities’ technologies to be dreamed up and turned into technologies for research, if not be fabricated and moved forward,” says Stephany. He says housing is another riverfront option, as some of the current successful businesses in the area are attracting people from places like Seattle and New York City. Stephany says the project will keep the good things and change the bad along the riverfront: “It’s both about saving what’s great and trying to reposition the stuff that’s not so great as it is trying to connect those things that are really strong and vibrant and make them more so by connecting them to the river.”