Naomi Girson | staff writer

On March 6, although the temperature dropped to 30 degrees, the door of the Uptown Partners of Pittsburgh office was left cracked open to reveal a row of fresh produce.

A sign sat outside the building — “Uptown free food distribution. Come in!!”

In the first half of the three-hour food drive, two people came by to stock their pantries.

Dashinique Johnson, community project manager and Mikayla Scheckler, community developer, sat patiently in the office, shivering from the cold.

Their free food offerings on the first and third Thursday every month at their office on 1518 Forbes Ave., are just one of the ways they are trying to bring more life to Uptown, which Johnson classified as a food desert, with the closest grocery store being across the river on the South Side.

“The need is here,” Johnson said. “Folks will know about everything. They’ll have information. We have a mailing list, we have social media, word of mouth, everything. You can give the horse water, but you can’t make them drink.”

Even with the lack of participation, they continue to offer all they can to the community.

Johnson said along with the cold weather keeping people from visiting their location, their fresh food offerings are not what people crave, especially in America, with almost everyone adjusted to a more artificial diet. Processed foods make up the majority of the calorie intake of Americans, according to Top Nutrition Coaching. Although, their goal is not just to feed Uptown, but make it healthier.

Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank partnered with Uptown Partners to provide the resources for their free food distribution for the residents in and around the neighborhood.

Uptown Partners began as a solo entity in 2007, with a mission to serve the Uptown community, but in 2017 they took on the EcoInnovation District Plan — a community plan for Uptown and West Oakland to implement equity, sustainability and job growth into the neighborhoods.

Brittany McDonald, executive director of Uptown Partners, said that they are steadily working their way through the plan. The document is more than 200 pages, with definitive action items for their task force to work through in the community.

“For people that don’t understand it, they have to look beyond the Forbes and Fifth Avenue corridor. There’s an actual neighborhood on these other streets. It’s not a pass through between Oakland and Downtown, and it’s not just an extension of Duquesne University,” McDonald said.

She did not deny the benefits the university adds to the area, including working with Uptown Partners, including student volunteering in their weekly clean ups and work-out classes but the neighborhood has deep roots to Downtown.

In fact, the non-profit has been tackling historic preservation in accordance with the District Plan. They have gained conservatorship of the Tito-Mezza-Zizza house, a former beer distributorship on Fifth Avenue with deep roots in Pittsburgh’s history. They are now working on renovating and transforming the space into a mini-museum.

Scheckler is more focused on the real estate side of the district plan. They want to add more housing to their area, with 30% to 40% of it to be affordable for low-income residents.

They don’t just want to create housing anywhere it might fit by cramming occupants in apartment buildings, but make single-family homes as well.

They worked with Habitat for Humanity in the past with property they acquired, which she said she would love to do again.

“Definitely a lot of young families around here, and we would love to have a place for them to live that aren’t apartments necessarily. I think everyone should be able to have their own home, even though it seems impossible right now,” Scheckler said.

They also have been working to hold landowners accountable, as many of the uninhabited buildings had not been maintained properly, causing major issues for these infrastructures, if they want to turn them into future livable housing.

“We have a few where bricks are falling off the back, the roofs are caving in. We have one property on Fifth Avenue where the entire inside is collapsed into itself, like the building facade is still there. But you can’t go inside, there’s a tree growing in the house,” Scheckler said.

They would have to get those buildings demolished to be able to make the property viable again, so the better the condition, the faster and less expensive the process will be.
Uptown Partners will continue to work through the EcoInnovation District Plan, coordinating budgets, leveraging, identifying and empowering the residents, including those at Duquesne.

“Duquesne University is a wonderful partner to us and always supportive of our endeavors,” McDonald said. “It’s just that we want to make sure that people understand that this is bigger than that, and it is a home to a lot of people.”