A long-stalled plan to redevelop 30 vacant parcels along the 4800 block of Second Avenue in Hazelwood has a new lease on life, but only a temporary one. The Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh has given Hazelwood Initiative a six-month window to reestablish a project on the site after the original developer, Boston-based The Community Builders, officially dropped its plans late last year.
The URA owns all 30 parcels on that stretch of Second Avenue, and it granted Hazelwood Initiative a six-month hold from market in June, according to a URA spokeswoman cited by WPXI. That hold gives the nonprofit community group time to reboot a redevelopment effort that has already changed hands and changed shape more than once. The Community Builders had originally been chosen to build a 50-unit affordable housing project there, in what was described as a gateway location for both Hazelwood and the nearby Hazelwood Green master plan.
The Community Builders was awarded a Low-Income Housing Tax Credit for the project but never used it, and the firm's proposal to rebuild what amounted to a focal block of Hazelwood ultimately did not move forward. Hazelwood Initiative, led by executive director Sonya Tilghman, is now pursuing that same kind of tax credit as it works to reestablish a new redevelopment project for the block, per the same WPXI report.
A Site With A Long, Complicated History
The URA first issued a Request for Proposals for the 4800 block back in July 2019, seeking to convert the publicly owned parcels into mixed-use development aligned with the Greater Hazelwood Neighborhood Plan, according to the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh. The authority, established in 1946 under Pennsylvania's Urban Redevelopment Law, holds special statutory powers to assemble and hold publicly owned property and grant exclusive market holds so development stays aligned with community plans.
The project's financing troubles date back years. The Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh's fiscal year 2024 Moving to Work plan revealed that a conditional gap-financing commitment for an earlier 44-unit version of The Community Builders' project was automatically terminated after the developer failed to land competitive 9% Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, according to a filing from the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh. City officials tried to keep the project alive by adjusting its scope: in September 2024, Mayor Ed Gainey announced citywide affordable housing investments that included URA gap financing for a scaled-down 29-unit version of the same proposal, per a city bulletin distributed through GovDelivery. That revised plan also failed to survive, with The Community Builders officially walking away from the site late last year.
Why Hazelwood Needs This To Work
The 4800 block's vacancy traces back to the collapse of Hazelwood's industrial economy. The business district along Second Avenue declined sharply after LTV Steel permanently closed its Hazelwood coke works in 1997, ending 80 years of coking operations at what had been Pittsburgh's last primary steelmaking facility, according to PublicSource. That closure is why so much of the corridor ended up in the URA's hands in the first place.
The stakes have only grown sharper since a local Rite Aid closed in 2024, leaving Hazelwood as an acute food desert and increasing community pressure on city leaders to prioritize fresh food access in any Second Avenue development, PublicSource has reported. That urgency runs alongside the housing push: on the southwestern side of the same block, community coalition GH-CARED and nonprofit POORLAW have secured preliminary URA support to study a 40,000-square-foot community grocery co-op and commercial space, according to POORLAW. How Hazelwood Initiative's residential plans will interface with that grocery co-op effort remains an open question.
New Tax Credit Tools, Same Old Competition
Hazelwood Initiative isn't starting from scratch when it comes to partnerships in the neighborhood. The nonprofit and The Community Builders broke ground together in November 2022 on Gladstone Residences, a $23.9 million historic adaptive-reuse project converting the former Gladstone School into 51 affordable and mixed-income apartments elsewhere in Hazelwood, according to The Community Builders. That prior track record shows the two groups have worked together successfully before, even as their Second Avenue partnership fell apart.
The core obstacle remains the same fierce competition for tax credits that sank the earlier proposals. Pennsylvania created its own state Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program under Act 107 of 2020, authorizing the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency to award state credits that mirror the federal program and help close funding gaps. In 2025, the state expanded those resources further through a new Affordable Housing Tax Credit, authorizing PHFA to sell up to $10 million annually in state tax credits specifically to create gap financing for affordable rental developments, according to Regional Housing Legal Services. Whether that newer tool will be enough to get a project across the finish line where two prior versions failed is not yet known. It's also unclear whether Hazelwood Initiative will bring on a new master developer or take the lead role itself as it tries to succeed where The Community Builders could not.
