Plans for a new grocery store, public square, retail and hundreds of apartments in Pittsburgh’s Bloomfield neighborhood appear to be dead.
Bloomfield Development Corporation said Thursday that the site at the corner of Liberty Avenue and the foot of the Bloomfield Bridge was transferred to Giant Eagle, which means that redevelopment plans for the site will not be moving forward.
O’Hara-based Echo Realty pitched creating a 248-unit apartment building, a 28,000-square-foot grocery store, about 10,000 square feet for retail, and a public plaza facing Liberty Avenue on the site. Those plans were stalled when the city’s zoning board rejected a variance last year, but that decision was appealed.
Giant Eagle spokesman Dan Donovan confirmed the regional grocery chain is taking over ownership of the site.
He said that means Giant Eagle will continue to operate the Community Market grocery store there without any interruption. The store employs 28 workers, and those jobs will be maintained, said Donovan.
“Since opening under the Community Market banner in 2020, the Bloomfield store has grown in popularity as a trusted resource for the neighborhood’s residents,” he said.
That’s bittersweet for Bloomfield Development Corporation, whose leaders are happy the neighborhood will maintain the grocery store, but upset that new housing will not be coming online.
The proposals also included 25 units that were to be maintained as affordable to low-income residents. Sam Spearing of Bloomfield Development Corporation said that many community members were eager to apply for those affordable units, but now they will miss out.
“Bloomfield should be a welcoming place for everyone to live,” said Spearing. “The loss of this development just made that harder.”
Maria Montaño, spokeswoman for Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, said the city was in the process of trying to negotiate a settlement with Echo over the zoning variance appeal to allow the project to move forward.
She said they are now open to working with Giant Eagle.
When asked if Giant Eagle has interest in pursuing redevelopment of the site, Donovan said that Echo was the driving force of the redevelopment project.
Echo did not immediately return a request for comment.
The redevelopment plans were largely supported by the Bloomfield community, including nearby businesses like Trace Brewing. The development also was seen as an opportunity to upgrade the intersection at Liberty Avenue and the Bloomfield Bridge.
Spearing said Bloomfield Development Corporation is calling on city leaders to make it easier to build more affordable housing.
David Vatz of Pro-Housing Pittsburgh, an advocacy group, said he is dismayed at the end of the redevelopment plans.
He criticized the city’s zoning code for being too restrictive. The development was seeking a zoning variance to increase the maximum height allowed, which Echo said last year was in order to build enough units to make the project economically feasible.
He said the 248 units that would have come online would have put downward pressure on local rents, since new housing would be provided in a popular neighborhood with rising rents.
“It’s a great example of our bad zoning code killing housing,” Vatz said. “It is really sad, and a detriment to all Pittsburghers, because less supply means rent will continue to go up.”
Montaño said the city is looking at possibly updating the zoning code, but could not provide a timeline when that might occur.