What could possibly matter more than the Super Bowl?

February 9 is National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. Tomorrow, Love Ministry Outreach, together with the Southwestern PA Aids Planning Coalition, will present an event to kickoff the campaign leading up to that day, featuring hip-hop artists, gospel music and dancers. Oh, and food. And free HIV testing.

Why should you and I and our households and our families and our friends go?

Because African-Americans, who make up 13 percent of the U.S. population, made up 49 percent of new diagnoses of HIV in 2005 (according to the Centers for Disease Control).

That is beyond tragic; that is insane.

And it is unnecessary. We can stop the spread of HIV with a little bit of knowledge and a little bit of change. A good starting point for knowledge is knowing whether or not one has it.

A good starting point for change would be to change from viewing HIV as a curse placed upon the wicked to viewing it as an avoidable disease. Why would anyone want to bother to find out that they are cursed? Easier to live and die in ignorance.

Let's not live and die in ignorance. Instead, let's show up at the Homewood Salvation Army, 8020 Frankstown Avenue, between noon and 5 p.m. tomorrow.

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About "the Family Dollar store"

I attended a meeting last night for Homewood business owners. The primary focus was to explore the possibility of forming some sort of business association for the community, perhaps even a chamber of commerce.

As often happens in meetings in Homewood, the announced agenda gave way to people venting about whatever happened to come to mind.

At one point, someone raised the matter of "the Family Dollar store," - the building at 7240 Frankstown that was supposed to have Family Dollar as its anchor tenant when it was built, but which has never been occupied.

The question was asked, "Who owns that?"

The answer was given, "The URA."

That's incorrect.

The building crops up often in conversations around Homewood, and nearly always, there is mention of the URA. The misconception that the URA, or the City generally, owns it seems prevalent.

The inaccuracy of that idea is bad enough; what is worse is that it gets attached to a mythos, a meta-narrative, about the relationship between Downtown and Homewood, a mythos in which residents of Homewood are perpetual, eternal victims of the Downtown Puppetmasters. According to this self-reinforcing story, the URA not only owns the building, but its ownership of the building is part of either the City's negligence of Homewood or the City's plot to take Homewood.

But a simple check at the County's real estate website shows that the builidng is owned by RSSI Homewood LLC, a private developer. Not the URA. Not the City.

But there's more: the building is for sale. The asking price: $1.2 million. I'll have to check on this, but I think that with standard commercial financing, that would require a down payment of $240,000.

A brand new building sitting on a piece of prime real estate in our community has remained vacant for a year and a half. What if everybody who is upset about that put their dollars and pennies together to make the down payment, and bought it?

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Homewood loses another icon

There are people and institutions that become icons in their communities, even if they never gain fame in the larger world. Arthur Burns Jr.'s Southern Platter restaurant never became as famous as Sylvia's, the Harlem soul food spot. But for anyone who ever went there after church for the Sunday buffet, the Southern Platter was - how shall I say this? - da bomb.

Mr. Burns has died. I'm writing an obituary story for tomorrow's paper, but would like to offer this space for folks to share memories of him, or of the Southern Platter.

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Homewood, represented

Good news: my concern that Homewood might not have been represented at last week's TOD symposium has been answered. At least two people were there to represent the neighborhood. The Rev. Sam Ware, board president of the Homewood Brushton Community Coalition Organization was there, and said that TOD will be on HBCCO's agenda going forward.

(Actually, locals should keep an eye out, not for TOD, but for TRID, which stands for Transit Revitalization Investment District. Homewood has strong potential to become a TRID.)

Also present at the symposium was Councilman Ricky Burgess' chief of staff - and Homewood native and resident - Shawn Carter. Here's a couple of nuggets from my conversation with him:

"The real estate our community sits on is probably worth more than what sits on it." That would seem manifestly true of spots like the old Mr. Tommy's Car Wash.

"We have to be careful about how its redeveloped and we have to participate."

Amen.

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Who is TOD and why should we care?

Actually, TOD is not a person; it's an idea. The letters stand for Transit-Oriented Development, and it has become one of the hottest ideas in the world of urban planning.

What is transit-oriented development? I think Wikipedia does a pretty good job of defining it:

A transit-oriented development (TOD) is a mixed-use residential or commercial area designed to maximize access to public transport, and often incorporates features to encourage transit ridership. A TOD neighborhood typically has a center with a train station, metro station, tram stop, or bus station, surrounded by relatively high-density development with progressively lower-density development spreading outwards from the center. TODs generally are located within a radius of one-quarter to one-half mile (400 to 800 m) from a transit stop, as this is considered to be an appropriate scale for pedestrians.

The concept of transit-oriented development is gaining ground in Pittsburgh; so much so that last week some movers and shakers, including the Urban Redevelopment Authority, Sustainable Pittsburgh and the Heinz Endowments, sponsored a symposium about it.

Colleague Jon Schmitz was there; here's his report.

Why should we care about transit-oriented development? Because we have an East Busway stop with large parcels of vacant land right next to it. So when symposium attendees took a tour to look at sites that are right for transit-oriented development, that tour included North Point Breeze and Homewood.

People in Pittsburgh who are discussing one of the hottest trends in urban planning, and who have the means to go beyond discussion to make things happen, are including Homewood in that discussion.

But are the residents of Homewood being included in that discussion?

I called Sustainable Pittsburgh, who sent me an email notice about the symposium, to find out if anyone from Homewood participated in the event. Executive Director Court Gould took a quick look at the list of attendees, and could not see that anyone from Homewood was there.

He said that he was chagrined.

"Social equity is as center to our mission as is the environment and the economy," he said. And indeed, social equity is smack dab in the middle of the organization's mission statement:

Sustainable Pittsburgh affects decision-making in the Pittsburgh Region to integrate economic prosperity, social equity and environmental quality bringing sustainable solutions to communities and businesses.

So, why was Homewood apparently not represented at the symposium? Several reasons come easily to mind: not enough Homewood residents are in the databases of the people who put it together; those who are and who got the email, didn't show up; those who got the email didn't spread the word...

But the more useful question may be, how can we make sure that Homewood is represented in future discussions about development around the East Busway stop?

1) Visit Sustainable Pittsburgh's website and get yourself onto their email list.

2) When TOD-related meetings are announced, plan to attend, and

3) Tell other folks about them.

Next time I get an email about a TOD meeting, I'll tell you folks.

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Notes from Westinghouse

I did attend the meeting at Westinghouse High School last night, and so did colleague Joe Smydo, whose story is here.

Personal observations:
As mentioned in Joe's piece there were about 40 parents and other concerned citizens. That number concerned Bagumba Lowery, who said, "There should be ten times as many people here."

I agree. Ten times that number have turned out for meetings that were *not* intended to produce decisions, but which simply provided opportunities to vent.

Mr. Lowery said that the meeting should have been more well-publicized. Meeting facilitor Margie Howard, of CTAC, pointed out that principals of the schools involved had sent out notices and emphasized that the meeting offered free food and day care.

Which raises the question again that Jeff Guerrero raised about the kids' pottery and crafts exhibition at Carnegie Library a few weeks ago: "What does it take to get people out for things?"

Or maybe that should be, "Other than a shooting, what does it take to get people out for things?"

We will not get to where we must go by lurching from crisis to crisis.

Anyway...the bulk of the meeting consisted of a breakout session where smaller groups spoke about ways to deal with the top three concerns expressed by attendees of a previous meeting held December 9: Safety to and from school; programs with resources that attract kids and families; and having a student recreation center or facility.

There were actually some students there. One of them, Allerdice freshman Shealyn Williamson, told the safety group that if her earrings set off a metal detector there, the security people might have her step aside, but they don't even do a real pat-down.

"They just do this," she said, and illustrated with gestures of someone running their hands near a person's body without touching.

"Someone could bring anything into the school that they wanted to," she said.

Keenan Johnson, a Westinghouse junior, said, "Westinghouse needs something that interests people more" than the current programming in order to halt the decline in enrollment.

The recreation center group had the most young people, and they lingered longest after Ms. Howze range the bell to signal the end of the meeting.

I hope that at the very least, the adults got the message that THESE KIDS CARE.

Next week:
21st Century schools, 1950s paradigms
Pittsburgh, the plantation?
Thoughts of a Black Entrepreneur
Who is TOD and why should we care?

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Yes, KFC is gone

For those who have not seen it yet for yourselves...the Homewood KFC is not just closed, it is CLOSED. Sealed tighter than a drum, with every hint of KFC-ness stripped away - not just the big sign that lit up the corner for the past few decades, but the small signs marking the entrances to the parking lot, all gone. It looks like its been empty, not for days, but for years.

I spoke with a manager last week who declined to give his name and said there wasn't really anything to talk about. I told him that I write about Homewood and that I live in Homewood and that I know a lot of people care about that KFC; trying to get at the question of whether anybody wanted to say anything to all of the customers who will be disappointed and hurt by this. He said he would pass my contact info to his boss.

I didn't really expect to hear back, partly because it was a franchise, whose communications are probably strictly controlled by its ginormous corporate parent (Yum! Brands, Inc., based in my hometown of Louisville, Ky.). Still, it would have been nice if, like the owners of Jenny Lee Bakery, they had been allowed/instructed to say to customers, "Thanks for your support."

News you may have missed

Homewood, sad to say, was one of the neighborhoods that led the city's 28 percent increase in homicides in 2008, with 12 murders reported in the neighborhood last year. Only the North Side had more, with 13.

The abuse of a former Homewood resident has led to the discharge and arrests of five workers at the Kane Regional Center in Glen Hazel. Alzheimer's patient Thelma Bryant used to live two doors down from me; I have written before about her house being purchased by someone from Maryland and my occasional attempts to contact the new owner to get them to take care of the place (like the rest of the street, it looks much better after the City cleaned up the block in October).

The Holy Rosary School has been the subject of two attacks by vandals since Christmas.

Calendar note

The Pittsburgh Public Schools will hold a public meeting Thursday evening to discuss the future of Homewood's schools. The meeting will be held from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Westinghouse High School and will begin with a light dinner.

This meeting is not in response to a homicide or a fire or some flagrant instance of abuse in the schools. It is just a meeting that will help to decide the fates of Homewood's chidren for the next decade or two. I don't even have kids, and I plan to be there.

Better late than never?

I've meant to say this for more than a month now - big thanks to the folks who helped to make the Readers Get-Together happen: Montage owner-proprietor Helen Baynes (412 973 5188) and caterer Diane Alford of Priscilla's Pastries (412 731 6644). Those phone numbers mean that I'm recommending them for anybody who wants to put together an affair. A separate shout out goes to coworker and dessert guy RJ Hufnagel, who does *not* have a cheesecake business, but perhaps should.

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