Gladstone Update: Good News!

We did it!  On November 8, 2016, Gladstone Community Partnership, LLC, a subsidiary of Hazelwood Initiative, Inc., purchased the Gladstone Middle School after more than a year of engagement, advocacy, and planning around this large and transformative site on Hazelwood Avenue.For 15 years, Gladstone School in Hazelwood sat silent on the bluff overlooking a neighborhood that has seen its share of closings and losses.  But Hazelwood is making a comeback, and that comeback took a giant leap forward on November 8, 2016 when Hazelwood Initiative completed its $250,000 purchase of this historic and symbolic building on seven acres overlooking Hazelwood’s past, present and its increasingly bright future.The signs of Hazelwood’s resurgence are increasingly visible.  A new library and community center, a new bakery, a new spray park, a nationally-recognized award-winning youth jazz and arts program (Center of Life), and more than 100 homes renovated or repaired, all dot the landscape.  Two years ago, the neighborhood’s community development corporation (Hazelwood Initiative) purchased another vacant school (the former Burgwin School) and helped bring a Propel Charter School to Hazelwood.  Then, Center of Life and Hazelwood Initiative turned their combined attention toward the Gladstone School site.Kris DiPietro, a life-long Hazelwood resident, knew the symbolic and geographic significance of the site, as did the Rev. Tim Smith of Center of Life, located in Smith’s church just across the street from the school.  At the groundbreaking 2015 p4 Conference held in Pittsburgh a year ago, Kris and Tim joined forces with the Make It Right Foundation from New Orleans to ask what seemed like an impossible question:  Instead of waiting passively to see what some developer might propose for this historic community asset, could the Hazelwood community itself take ownership and responsibility for re-purposing the school site for new and exciting visions that the community would identify for its own future?  Assisted by the Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group and many others, HI, COL, and Make It Right convened a series of robust, fun and engaging meetings for hundreds of community residents, the likes of which had never been seen before.  The community united behind a vision that included a new expanded home for Center of Life, affordable housing, and other community-serving and job- producing uses that would benefit all of Hazelwood for years to come.  The development of the site would be required to preserve and improve the nearby greenways, and to have positive spin-off developments accrue to the adjacent residential neighborhood streets.The community rallied behind this vision en masse and, competing against other bidders, turned out more than 50 residents to speak out at a November meeting of the Pittsburgh Board of Education, urging the Board to sell Gladstone to the community, so that the community could determine and create its own future.Hazelwood Initiative and Center of Life were successful in raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase and secure the school and to begin raising the millions that will be needed to transform the community’s ideas into reality.  It took most of the year, with many delays and lots of red tape.Still, we did it!  Now it’s time to celebrate! The community will gather on Saturday, November 19 at 11:00 a.m to reflect and be inspired.  Music will be provided by Center of Life.  Hot Chocolate will be plentiful.  A banner—signed by Hazelwood residents, many of who attended Gladstone—will be hoisted into place saying:  Gladstone School—Owned by the Community!This Thanksgiving, Hazelwood has much for which to give thanks!  And as it does, the real work of transformation begins.