RSP stands for the Race Street Project. When I first wrote about the project, I said that I have shared the RSP outline with a bunch of other folks, and received positive responses.
A little more detail about that: I first spoke with Court Gould, executive director of Sustainable Pittsburgh. He got excited, and offered to arrange a meeting with Kim Graziani, the Mayor's Director of Community Initiatives. She got excited and invited me back to meet with her and Rob Stephany, executive director of the Urban Redevelopment Authority.
Rob Stephany is more low-key than Court or Kim (listen to me, calling folks by their first name), so maybe I should not say that he got excited. But he was real interested, and very encouraging.
One of the things that he and Kim were so drawn by is the scale of the project - five city blocks. There are people doing great things all over the city in terms of green, they said, but there has not been a single project large enough for them to work together. The Race Street Project could be that project.
So, Rob and Kim suggested a meeting between the Save Race Street Committee and a bunch of folks who could be helpful to us in getting the project done.
That brings us to this week. Tuesday morning a pair of interns with the Urban Redevelopment Authority came by to do a walk-through and to take photos to document the present state of the street.
Yesterday morning, the big meeting happened, the first meeting of the Committee with our potential helpers.
Actually, not the entire Committee was there - it was chairman Min. Terry Fluker, member Latif Yeniceri and myself.
Besides Mr. Stephany and Ms. Graziani, our visitors included the interns, Derric I. Heck and Emily Burnett; Lauren Byrne, also of the URA; Dianne B. Swan, executive director of The Rosedale Block Cluster, Inc.; Andrew Butcher, chief executive officer and Chris Koch, chief operating officer, GTECH Strategies; Miriam Manion, executive director and Julie Pezzino, associate director, Grow Pittsburgh; Joe McCarthy of Penn State Cooperative Extension (I don't remember his title and don't have his card); and Khalif Ali of Operation Better Block, Inc (ditto).
That was about twice as many people as I expected.
We met in front of Baptist Temple Church, which is at the intersection of Race and Sterrett streets. Terry told the group how the Committee got started, then I said a few words about the project, and we began a walk-through of Race Street. First we headed west to the start of Race, at Lang Avenue, then we went back east to where it ends on the slope of Brushton Avenue.
Emily brought URA maps and panoramic images of the street assembled from the photos that Derric took Tuesday. We stopped often to consult the maps - who owns this property? Is this property tax delinquent? Could this vacant lot become a sideyard for the neighbor who is apparently already taking care of it?
What I had expected to be a brisk jaunt with a half-dozen or so people became a more leisurely stroll with more than twice that number.
We then went to the Homewood-Brushton YMCA to meet.
I had a three-point agenda for the meeting.
1. Establishing basis for engagement
2. Clarification of interests: What do I/we have to offer? What do I/we want to receive?
3. What are the next steps?
More about the meeting in the next post.
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Posted
Jul 03 2009, 01:19 PM
by
Elwin Green