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Bloomfield Development Corporation (BDC) recently completed a streetscape and gateway study for Liberty Avenue.
The plan focuses on three gateways along the avenue, improving pedestrian safety and the neighborhood's identity, and re-knitting the building fabric of upper and lower Liberty Avenue. The specific areas to be addressed include in front of West Penn Hospital, and the imposing intersection where Liberty Avenue meets the Bloomfield Bridge.
"Those areas set the tone for how people experience the neighborhood," says Andrea Lavin with Community Design Center of Pittsburgh (CDCP).
Initial plans explore adding bump-outs, similar to those in Oakland, to slow down traffic and create shorter, safer crosswalks; and adding street trees with higher growing branches that will not impair pedestrians' or drivers' line-of-sight. Other suggestions under consideration include benches and bike racks, and shifting from metered to pay-and-display parking. The plan also includes a parcel layout for the development of the Bloomfield Shure Save site for whenever, it ever, the owner is ready to sell, says Karla Owens, executive director of BDC.
"This is not a plan that is going to be immediately implemented. These are not changes that are going to happen overnight," explains Lavin with CDCP.
The plans have already been shaped in two community meetings, and the final design boards will be presented to the community in March, says Owens.
BDC engaged Burt Hill Architects and transportation engineers Wilbur Smith to conduct the study and create a plan for improving the corridor.
BDC received funding through a $12,000 CDCP Design Fund Grant, as well as an additional $10,000 through Senator Jim Ferlo's office, and about $4,000 through the Urban Redevelopment Authority's Mainstreets program.
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Writer: Caralyn Green
Sources: Andrea Lavin, Community Design Center of Pittsburgh; Karla Owens, Bloomfield Development Corporation
Photograph courtesy of Bloomfield Development Corporation