By SUSAN JONES
Over the past few years, the Oakland Planning and Development Corp. has been through some internal upheaval and external scrutiny, with the departure of several board members and its executive director in 2022 and the ongoing debate over how to best develop Oakland.
In March, Andrea Boykowycz, who had been serving as OPDC’s interim director since Wanda Wilson’s departure in December 2022, was named the group’s sixth executive director.
A native of Oakland, Boykowycz had been on OPDC’s board since 2006, until she joined the staff in 2017. “I grew up here and have had a pretty lifelong connection,” she said. “My parents were involved in the first Oakland plan, for instance, and in the creation of OPDC, and I knew its founder extremely well. So I have had a very long association with the organization.”
Oakland development
OPDC was in the news frequently in 2021 and ‘22 when developer Walnut Capital was proposing its Oakland Crossings project for several acres of South Oakland. The project was originally planned for 18 acres, but was reduced to 13 acres and was to include multi-unit, high-rise apartment buildings on Halket Street, and the development of the Quality Inn and Isaly sites along the Boulevard of the Allies. In January 2023, Walnut Capital said it was “pausing” the project because of inflation.
When Oakland Crossings was proposed, OPDC — then under the leadership of Wilson — objected to the zoning changes requested by Walnut Capital, because they didn’t followed the approved route through the city Planning Commission.
“Consistent with what we had said back when (Oakland Crossings) was first published, it’s basically a bunch of pretty pictures and there wasn’t really anything there,” Boykowycz said last month. “There was no plan for achieving it. And as far as I can tell, there’s no expectation that that’s going to be realized at this time.”
The Post-Gazette reported last month that Walnut Capital is trying to revive part of the Oakland Crossings project, specifically developing about 200 apartments on McKee Place.
OPDC does support development of the area around Zulema Park, near the Boulevard of the Allies, to create a “town center,” with affordable housing, sustainable buildings, community service hubs, groceries and transit. This project is in the 10-year Oakland Plan that was released in 2022. It involves the Isaly’s Building, owned by UPMC, and the Quality Inn site, which the University owns and has released a request for proposals to develop into non-student housing with a grocery store on the bottom floor.
“I think that there’s an opportunity for us as a community organization to work with city planning to try and bring both Pitt and UPMC to a pretty good understanding of how to really work together, if at all possible, in moving that vision a little bit closer to reality,” she said.
Setting priorities
Right now, OPDC is working on a strategic plan to set its priorities. “In the past, OPDC has operated a pretty broad array of different kinds of programs. And for one reason or another, we’ve simplified a lot of the things that we do,” Boykowycz said. “And I’m hoping to just clarify with regards to our mission what it is that we really work on.”
One area of focus, also from the Oakland Plan, is creating community service hubs at three city-owned locations in Oakland — Frazier Fieldhouse in South Oakland, OPDC’s headquarters at 294 Semple St. and the auxiliary building behind the Herron Hill Pumping Station on Centre Avenue. Boykowycz said they are working with the city on site control of the locations to solicit capital funds and ideas for how the spaces can be used. Uses could include health care, child care, senior support or exhibit space for art programs.
“Oakland is a really hard place to find third spaces. Everything is really very valuable for housing and for commercial development,” she said. “There’s very few places where people can just be, outside of the library. We’re really interested in making sure that we can actually develop meaningful community centers.”
OPDC also has been working for several years to buy existing homes or build new ones to sell as affordable single-family homes. The homes are available through the Community Land Trust. Some are at market rate and others are income restricted. Right now there are six two-bedroom rowhouses available on Edith Place to people who income qualify at or below 80 percent of median income.
“Each house that we build for homeownership in Oakland, where there’s a guarantee that it will always have owner occupancy, it has a lot of stabilizing effect on the neighborhood,” Boykowzcz said. “It’s not to say that you’d want a neighborhood that has no rental in it. That’s crazy. But what you want is long-term eyes on the street, and you want people to be able to provide some kind of continuity.”
Even those sold at market rate end up being less expensive than many properties sold in Oakland to investors who are willing to pay more because they can recoup the costs by filling it with rent-paying students.
Working with Pitt
“I think it’s going to be our priority to cultivate a relationship between OPDC and Pitt that’s really based on finding common cause where we can and having respect for each other when it’s clear that there might be opposing interests,” Boykowycz said.
Oakland has transformed dramatically over the course of her lifetime, she said. “And I’m very familiar with the antagonistic relationship that many long-term residents have had with the University and many still have. I don’t know that has benefited the neighborhoods much. And I don’t know that there is any path to delivering an Oakland of the future in which the University’s presence isn’t felt and experienced on a daily basis.
“We are all members of the Oakland community and if there’s anything that I am really committed to, it’s going to be maybe broadening everybody’s definitions of what constitutes the Oakland community,” she said. “I think that the division between students and longer-term residents is not really helpful.
“It’s obviously clear somebody who has a nine-month lease has a different experience of Oakland than somebody who owns their home. … Nevertheless, despite all of our various differences of backgrounds, demographics, living situations, the household members, all of us are here. … I’m really keen on trying to find ways to be able to serve all of Oakland’s residents.”
She said she’s committed to finding ways to make sure that “there’s room here for all of us.” There’s a lot of pressure to live in Oakland, and right now, there just isn’t enough space for everybody. She noted that the Oakland Plan talks about increasing residential density in central Oakland, and about making room for different models of housing. “I’m hopeful that there are ways we can really bring those to reality.”
Pitt is starting the work of updating its campus master plan, and Boycowycz said she hopes the University is looking comprehensively at the way it uses all of its assets in Oakland, including those not in the core of campus. How Pitt uses those buildings outside the core boundaries is of “incredible significance to the neighborhood in general, and has a big impact on how people live and perceive the University.”
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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