University Times

The Schenley Plaza conversion project is on schedule and on budget. The $10 million plaza project is converting the former surface parking lot between Carnegie and Hillman libraries into a public park area. The park is expected to be available for public use next spring, according to G. Reynolds Clark, Pitt vice chancellor for Community and Governmental Relations, who reported at this week’s Senate Council meeting.

The new park will include pedestrian paths, gardens, and concert, lounging and eating areas, among other amenities. Four permanent food kiosks also are under construction.

“The major construction phase of the project will be completed by Nov. 15,” Clark said Monday. “Right now the construction is about 70 percent complete and in the next three weeks we’re going to be past the 85 percent mark. A lot of things are going to happen in the next few weeks: You’re going to see a lot of trees being planted, a lot of grass being laid, a lot of perennial flowers and shrubbery being put in place.”

The plaza redesign is a project of the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy in partnership with the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, of which Pitt is a member. The Parks Conservancy, which has a 30-year lease agreement with the city, will operate the new park.

Stakeholders include Oakland community groups, such as the Oakland Planning and Development Corp. and the Oakland Business Improvement District, among several others. Pitt’s Facilities Management personnel are managing the project construction.

“The food kiosks are still going up,” Clark said. “You can already see two smaller ones. Two larger kiosks are being built as well as a larger building that will be a combination of a maintenance storage facility and public restrooms. Those are all ahead of schedule.”

When the construction began March 1, six city-licensed ethnic food vendor trucks, staples in the plaza area for many years, were displaced, and temporarily re-located to Thackeray Street.

“The Parks Conservancy is in the process of negotiating kiosk leases. All of the truck vendors were directly, personally solicited by the Parks Conservancy for RFPs (requests for proposals) for the kiosks,” Clark said. “They were made aware of the process to go through in order to apply to be considered for the kiosks. I don’t know if they all applied, but they were personally approached.”

In a related development, plans for a permanent restaurant in the plaza area have been fast-tracked, Clark said. “The [original] plan called for a restaurant 2-3 years down the road. The restaurant community heard about this and they aggressively pursued the Parks Conservancy, which put out RFPs. They were overwhelmed with positive and creative [responses].”

The conservancy is expected to award a restaurant contract this fall, with a restaurant opening as early as the end of next summer, Clark said.

As part of the plaza project, traffic and pedestrian patterns are being reconfigured around the 10-acre site, an area that eventually will have 110 on-street public parking spaces.

The revised traffic patterns in the plaza area are targeted to go into effect Oct. 15, Clark said. Vehicles coming from Schenley Park will be able to go straight past Frick Fine Arts directly to Roberto Clemente Drive. Schenley Drive (also known as Pennant Place) will become two-way in front of Hillman Library, with parking only on the plaza side of the street. Drivers from Schenley Park will be able to turn right at the south end of Schenley Drive, which will provide a straight shot to the reconfigured Bigelow Boulevard intersection.

The contra-flow lane formerly between Forbes Avenue and the surface parking lot has been eliminated permanently and will be replaced by a garden area.

“The park will be functional by the winter, except for some finishing touches,” such as landscaping features, completion of the promenade walking area surrounding the grass-covered middle and the installation of movable furniture and a permanent carousel, Clark told the University Times following the meeting. “The Parks Conservancy is planning a grand opening in the spring, but hasn’t announced a date yet.”

Following Clark’s update at Senate Council, Chancellor Mark Nordenberg said, “I do think that the Schenley Plaza opening is going to be a wonderful thing for us and a wonderful thing for the community — among other things providing an attractive connection between many of the major institutions,” including Pitt, The Carnegie and Carnegie Mellon. “It really is going to be a positive addition to the neighborhood, and it is the product of the kinds of partnerships that I think are going to drive much of our progress in the future.”

Nordenberg noted that the project had strong regional and local backing, including by Oakland’s major institutions.

“Also, we did get support from state government and everything that we’re doing here has been appropriately and respectfully vetted with our non-institutional neighbors in Oakland, so they feel as if they’re a part of it, too,” the chancellor said.

“You really can get so much more done when you are joining forces rather than skirmishing with each other,” he added. “We really do hope that this visual success will be something that drives additional projects fueled by this partnership in Oakland, because it is a vibrant area with a lot of untapped potential.”

—Peter Hart