As long-time readers of REVITALIZATION already know, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is already one of America‘s greatest back-from-the-near-dead revival stories.
Now, this wonderful city is about to receive over $30 million for restoration, renovation and redevelopment projects from the state’s Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program.
Downtown Pittsburgh.
The grants have been awarded annually since 1986 to a broad variety of revitalizing businesses and projects all around the state.
Eligibility is broadly defined as projects that “have a regional or multi-jurisdictional impact, and generate substantial increases or maintain current levels of employment, tax revenues or other measures of economic activity,” according to the Pennsylvania Office of the Budget.
This includes everything from public parks to historic movie theaters. For instance, Carnegie Music Hall in Homestead will get $500,000 for general updates, and Allegheny General Hospital will receive $1 million to build an Academic Cancer Center.
Other Pittsburgh metro area grantees in 2018 include:
- $2 million will help rehabilitate the historic New Granada Theater in the Hill District;
- $1.5 million will help redevelop the Wilkinsburg train station;
- $1 million will help the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust build a movie theater on 6th Street in Downtown;
- $750,000 for installation artist James Turrell to create a “skyspace” on the roof of the Mattress Factory Museum on the North Side;
- $1 million goes to the Oliver Bath House in the South Side to expand, and make the space handicap accessible; and
- $500,000 to restore and renovate the Strip District riverbank.
The spectacular Church Brew Works. Pittsburgh’s oldest microbrewery repurposed and restored an abandoned church.
The Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program (RACP) is a Commonwealth grant program administered by the Office of the Budget for the acquisition and construction of regional economic, cultural, civic, recreational, and historical improvement projects.
RACP projects are authorized in the Redevelopment Assistance section of a Capital Budget Itemization Act, have a regional or multi-jurisdictional impact, and generate substantial increases or maintain current levels of employment, tax revenues, or other measures of economic activity.
RACP projects are state-funded projects that cannot obtain primary funding under other state programs.
All photos of Pittsburgh by Storm Cunningham.