Despite widespread damage including downed trees, telephone poles and power lines from last week’s severe storm, Regent Square’s annual yard sale is still on for May 17.
The neighborhood’s yard sale includes about 100 households, said Aidan Kestigian, vice president of the Regent Square Civic Association’s board. Regent Square includes neighborhoods from Pittsburgh, Wilkinsburg, Edgewood and Swissvale.
All of those neighborhoods were hit hard by last week’s storms.
“We haven’t heard really anything from folks about questions or concerns about hosting their sales because of trees,” she said. “Registrations are kind of rapidly increasing over time, not slowing or stalling.”
The deadline to register a home online is Saturday in order to appear on the civic association’s map of the event.
The yard sale, which is in its 26th year, will take place from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 17. Items will be for sale on the streets on both sides of South Braddock Avenue between the Parkway and continuing to a bit past the Forbes/Braddock intersection.
Other nonprofits in the neighborhood will be having events as well, she said, such as the Wilkins School Community Center, which is having a used book sale.
Storm recovery
Kestigian lives on Savannah Avenue in the Edgewood side of Regent Square. She said her home’s electricity was out for about five days, and she’s just getting internet back as of Thursday.
“Our street in particular had four telephone polls fall,” she said. “It’s been a lot of cleanup, just a lot of work for people (to) get their stuff back up and running.”
The silver lining is that more people have been out and about in the neighborhood talking to each other, according to Kestigian.
East End Avenue had some “massive” trees down, she said, as did Milton Street, as TribLive previously reported.
“They’ve been cordoning off sections that shouldn’t be navigated by foot or by car,” Kestigian said. “As of right now, most of the streets look to be open to foot traffic and car (traffic).”
If there are any places that need to be avoided or streets still closed during the yard sale, they will be noted on the civic association’s website and social media pages on Instagram and Facebook.
“We will post online and on socials any updates if there are concerns about safety,” Kestigian said. “Just anecdotally, stuff’s pretty much back open.”
However, she said a couple of streets still have trees down that need to be extricated, and utility workers are still in the neighborhood working on internet and power.
She believes the numbers are fairly on par with past years, if not “slightly lower” because of the storm.
“It’s harder for folks to get up and get everything organized for this year,” Kestigian said. “We were hoping for at least 100, and it looks like we’re still going to hit that.”