Community groups criticize plan to restore theater instead of bring affordable housing to Hill District

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- They supported Mayor Ed Gainey in his election campaign, but some community leaders in the Hill District are accusing his administration of having misguided priorities. 

At a press conference Monday afternoon, they asked the mayor to make good on his promises to develop affordable housing in the neighborhood. 

"Our first priority the city must understand is housing, our second priority is housing and our third priority is housing," said Randall Taylor with the Hill District Consensus Group.

Mayor Gainey ran on a platform of bringing affordable housing to the Hill and other neighborhoods suffering from disinvestment, but Monday neighborhood leaders decried the funding of a plan to restore a theater instead. 

"That is our main concern, that the URA would allocate $2 million dollar without any public comment or oversight to one group. We're concerned about the city, that their priority is not housing in the Hill District," Taylor said. 

For more than two decades, the Hill District Community Development Corporation has had plans to restore the New Granada Theater, which still remains shuttered and more recently expanded that vision to include apartments and a parking garage with a price tag of more than $45 million. 

This group says the neighborhood has more immediate needs and accuses Gainey and the city's Urban Redevelopment Authority of committing $2 million dollars in American Rescue Funds to the CDC and the project without their input.

"If we voted for political leaders to represent us, that's what they need to do," said Carol Hardiman of the Hill District Consensus Group. "It doesn't come through one group, it doesn't come through me. Nobody died and left somebody czar of the Hill."

Gainey administration spokesperson Maria Montaño said while the URA voted on some measure to fund the theater if or when it opens, she said that $2 million commitment will be the subject requiring public input and discussion.

"It's been an open and transparent process with public input, and that future allocation will undergo the same public scrutiny," Montaño said. 

But the group says the CDC has failed to deliver on this and other projects.

"If you go through my neighborhood, they're not doing anything. Nothing," said Fifth Ward Democratic chairman James Scott. 

The restoration of the Granada Theater has been on the table for more than two decades and has quite a long way to go. These groups say the needs of the Hill are much more immediate: affordable housing and help for people to stay in their homes.