Gentrification. Revitalization. Stabilization. All words that come to mind when you’re thinking about what to do, exactly, with declining urban neighborhoods. But at the core of ‘what to do’ with declining urban neighborhoods is a mindset that urban planners (myself included) are often guilty of – at the end of the day, we can’t ‘do’ anything with property we don’t own, at least not easily or without great cost (financial and otherwise) to the community. This is often why the best examples of neighborhood revitalization and stabilization are usually organic ones – perhaps steered by community development corporations, neighborhood plans, or local planning departments – but at their core driven forward by people on the ground willing to take risks, pour their money (and those of their investors) into a place, develop a business plan, make connections, and hope it sticks.
Here in Pittsburgh, I’ve had a soft spot in my heart for the East Liberty neighborhood for years. Once the third largest shopping district in Pennsylvania, this neighborhood has great history, fantastic architectural gems, a decades-long period of decline, and some fantastically awful centralized planning decisions. Due to hard work and boots on the ground (and decidedly NOT due to anything our backwards local government planning department has done or not done, since they’re only now writing a comprehensive plan for the city) by the neighborhood CDC and countless other stakeholders, this area is hopping once again. Bookended by big box retail in the large spaces surrounding the urban core, the smaller spaces have for the most part been slowly rehabbed and are a mix of established and relatively new businesses.
And here’s the sticky part – who’s the most important stakeholder in this process? The neighborhood resident who’s seen the decline and rebirth? The chamber of commerce, who doesn’t necessarily have the best track record with supporting the small businesses? The CDC, who’s busted its butt trying to get vacant buildings filled with a sustainable mix of tenants only to get flack because they’re the ‘wrong kind’? The mix is critical to success, but everyone is always critical of the mix.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately as I frequent businesses in East Liberty. So many are food-based (yes, I am finally talking about food) – two Ethiopian restaurants, a Jamaican place, the cupcake bakery, the pizza shops, the Parisian bistro, the hip local dive bar, the waffle-centered performance art space, the conflict kitchen, the barbeque place, the hot dog shop, the burger bar, the modern American restaurant. As I write this list off the top of my head, I’m struck by the fact that most of these places are relatively new. One of the pizza shops is a long-time business (though frought with its own issues); the rest have been operating a decade or less. And although most business owners are happy with any patrons, for the most part the clientele seems to be young, non-minority, hip, with disposable income. I think it’s safe to say that the immediate neighborhood residents would not fit that description. So East Liberty is back to being a destination – which, to be fair, is its historical role. And what’s the alternative – predatory businesses (there is a check cashing place in the area, I believe), or no businesses at all?
A conversation with a fellow local food blogger started this whole thought process (and that conversation devolved from a lovely brisket recommendation). What level of investment in a neighborhood is appropriate for someone to come in with? Does that level change if they’re from the neighborhood, the city, the region, or a complete outsider? What about if they bring with them a certain caché, a cult of personality, a track record for excellence in the culinary world? Local foodies know by now that I’m talking about Kevin Sousa and his East End restaurant trimvirate (two of which are in East Liberty, and one in the urban core of the neighborhood). His first restaurant, Salt of the Earth in nearby Garfield, earned major accolades from the broader culinary community (Food and Wine and the James Beard Foundation, among others) and has been lauded locally. Rehabbing the building was seen as a Good Thing too, turning a historic Harley Davidson dealership from the 1920s that most recently was a vacant home decor place into a hot spot on a stretch of Penn Avenue that sorely needed some eyes on the street at night.
He’s followed that up with two restaurants opening almost simultaneously: Station Street Hot Dog Shop, and Union Pig & Chicken, and the grumbling has grown along with his foodie empire. I just don’t get it. The hot dog shop had been vacant for over a year, and is carrying on the tradition of a hot dog shop in that general vicinity (with that name) since 1915. The barbeque place bore the brunt of the complaints, both because people are very opinionated about their barbeque expectations and because a white dude from McKees Rocks is cooking barbeque in the ‘hood (haven’t heard it in quite those terms, but that seems to be the general sentiment).
Food questions aside (though I admit to being an avid fan of Kevin’s cooking), I ask these naysayers these questions: what would you have put in their place? Both of those storefronts were vacant. Both places are continuing the traditions of their locations (a rib joint failed a few years ago in the spot where Union is now). While neither place is the cheapest place I can get a hot dog or some fried chicken, it’s not massively overpriced. When a quarter pounder at Mickey D’s now costs $3.84 for processed crap that’s only recently become pink-slime free, and I can get a hot dog with standard fixings, all made by hand and really good quality product for $4 plus tax, how is that pretentious? If $22 is too much to pay for a really good rack of ribs, why would you willingly pay $20.99 at Damon’s for a mediocre rack?
And if you don’t want a Local Boy Done Good to bring restaurants to your vacant storefronts, where should he go? He’s a successful businessman with a solid following who chose to try new things in a neighborhood that needed it, and said they wanted it (one of the goals in the neighborhood plan is to become a dining destination, after all). He could have rested on his laurels and replicated his brand in the suburbs, and he didn’t. Why all the crap for someone who’s willing to take a chance? Isn’t *that* the American way?
Me, I’m happy to support a local businessman who serves food that I feel comfortable feeding to my kids in an area of the city that I love. Obviously, a lot of other people feel that way too. This debate isn’t unique to East Liberty, or Pittsburgh. I lived in another city neighborhood a decade ago whose parochial blue hairs tried to run the Hispanic businesses off the main street – apparently they liked vacant storefronts more. But if you alienate the small business owner, who is supposedly the lifeblood of the American economy, sooner or later you’ll end up in a chain store (or vacant window) wasteland. That’s not what I’m interested in, at all.
*an odd title, I know, but it combines the names of the three Kevin Sousa restaurants: Salt of the Earth, Station Street Hot Dog Shop, and Union Pig & Chicken
Reblogged this on DesignBurgh.
Thanks for sharing!
Go try Yinzburgh BBQ on Baum Blvd. Compare it to the BBQ at UP&C.
Unless Sousa’s massively tweaked his cooking process – which he probably *is* working on – Yinzburgh easily has the better ribs. They’re fall-off-the-bone tender, also never boiled, in a delicious rub with a choice of three sauces, each very well steeped in a specific tradition.
Forgive Yinzburgh the name, and give ‘em a shot?
Where is this on Baum? I’d love to try it, and will attempt to find it this week. Sousa did tweak his ribs from the original ‘bite’ that was flavorful but a bit disconcerting to the diner, to a more traditional falling off the bone style.
When I had the original ‘bite’ recipe, it felt undersmoked, and then seemed to be grilled to “finish cooking”, or something. The meat in the middle was undercooked, in any case.
Yinzburgh is on Baum across from the Get Go, near the BMW dealer. There was a wings place in the same spot before, and a pizza shop before that. http://yinzburghbbq.com/ Try each sauce, and if Richard is working and not too busy, have him explain each one. (One is a red sauce, another is honey mustard, and the third is a thinner vinegar-based sauce; all are delicious, but some are better matches for certain dishes.)
Thanks, I’ll check it out. My husband is from the South so he is well-versed in bbq!
You’re an excellent writer and very persuasive. However, you’re wrong on a number of counts. The premise that some guy who has multiple restaurants should be accepted in a community with high unemployment because he’s good at starting restaurants is basically flawed.
What this gent had that the rest of us do not is access to investment money and presumably connections. Connections within a city structure that I have concluded is some flawed combination of corrupt and competent. I just can’t decide what that combination is. All I know is that everything it touches turns to dust for all but the most powerful among us.
For Example:
– The Produce Terminal was given to Buncher Corp. for nothing and furthermore the last governor kicked in $15Mill of taxpayer money to these clowns for the redevelopment effort. Funny how raising another $15 Mill to match that money is easy-peasy when it’s fund matched and you got a chunk of prime real estate for zip.
There were nearly fifty microentrepreneurs in the Pittsburgh Public Market and most have been driven out, including me. Buncher and the URA tried, whenever possible, to smother us out of the view of the public. They wouldn’t let us put a sign across the street, handed a concession to charge for parking in front of the terminal when it had been free for decades, prohibited the market from putting in a bikestation. Etc. Etc. Etc. As each of these little operations was one or two person ventures, some failed, others moved on. Some still hold out hope that the new, vaguely defined and as yet undetermined, market space at the other end of the building, may happen, although at perhaps five times the current rent.
– Pop Up Pittsburgh looks to have been a great idea, but a significant failure. This because the landlords could pull out at any time and the projects that were picked for some reason didn’t launch anywhere near where they were supposed to. I just looked at their project site and still can’t figure out which chosen projects are active. I know that my project to take one of the restaurant spaces, which included a major architect/artist & another business operating in Bloomfield & the Strip, wasn’t even read. They didn’t respond to me, the lead, and when they did, butchered my name and guessed my sex wrongly. It was clear that weeks of work went straight into the trash. To date there has been no public audit of this project.
– CEED, the East Liberty microfunding organization, that funded some of the restaurants you mention in your post has reportedly had its grant from Heinz delayed. This has resulted in the freezing of funding, at $10K per project, for any number of approved ventures, including mine.
– It costs $415 for a food vending license to sell out of a truck. It costs $315 for a street vending license, which requires that the seller “move-on” every 15 minutes, at the whim of the well-connected businesses that surround them. Meanwhile it costs 69cents per space per year in license fees to have a commercial parking lot.*
If you want to feel urban planning umbrage why not take a trot through the echo chamber of Allegheny Center, which was built in the 1960s to replace–you guessed it–the last public market destroyed by cronyism and corruption. And you might think to yourself hmm, why is this here? Then consider the parking lot in the basement, calculate the average cost paid to park for all the Steelers, Pirates, & Pitt games, and then it may well occur to you that at leat half a million dollars in cash goes through that place annually.
Getting good businesses going in blighted areas comes down to access to capital. The reality is that resources are misallocated, and this supposed outside money that needs to be attracted is in fact state or local money matched to federal SBA guarantees. The banks love charging interest & transaction fees on projects over which they carry absolutely no risk. The system, from the people who enable these pay-to-play criminals, is the problem.
Meanwhile, I actually did attend an event that tried to do something for the business community of East Pittsburgh just last Thursday. It was at Hosanna House in Wilkinsburg. It was run by a guy named Ralph Watson through his company Classic Events. There were about 20 vendors both local and citywide selling all kinds of stuff, including three other food vendors besides me were selling food. He charged $60 a head for the privelege.
If you genuinely want to do a service to your readers, I would suggest taking that persuasive writing style and actually break down the numbers into how much getting a business costs by asking these various indigenuous E. Liberty how to they got going instead of attempting to answer the perceived unhappiness of local people by comparing the retail cost of finished products to national chains.
Chris Johnston
Blighty/Pittsburgh Pasty Factory
@pittsburghpasty
* This was the last time I checked. I look forward to being proven wrong.
Thanks for taking the time to respond to my post, I appreciate your comments. I don’t pretend to know the ins and outs of financing food-based businesses, though I do know that the people I know in the food industry are the hardest-working people I know.
I suspect you and I basically agree on the flawed system of local government planning & development in this town, though I think you’re not giving Kevin a fair shake by saying he’s just some well-connected dude with a bunch of capital. From what I know of his background, he’s been working from the ground up in this business for close to twenty years, has probably had a fair amount of luck/opportunity, but has also been successful because he’s a really good chef. As I said in the post, he could have rested on his laurels, replicated NaCl any number of places, raked in the dough, and called it a day. The fact that he (and the co-owners of NaCl) were willing to take a chance on a shitty stretch of Penn Avenue and were able to make it work before he got all his foodie accolades says a lot for his commitment to this city. Granted, I don’t know what his funding sources are, but I suspect Ravenstahl would be trumpeting from the rooftops if he had something to do with NaCl’s success.
As far as Buncher and the Produce Terminal (as well as the other local planning nightmares you reference) are concerned, you and I are in complete agreement. I’ve had your pasties (they’re delicious, btw), and I’m sad to hear you’re no longer at the market. I know people who had set up businesses there and failed, too. And the whole ‘let’s tear down a huge chunk of this historic building, uproot a new market that took years to get off the ground, because we can’t figure out any other way to get to that land on the river’ is disgusting to me. To me, this project, and the other licensing/funding issues that you’ve noted, are completely typical of the corruption in the Ravenstahl administration. The only way I can see that changing is by ousting him, and how he continues to get elected completely stymies me.
I think you missed my point about the price of food at Sousa restaurants – a lot of the complaints I’ve heard revolve around the pretentious hipster gentrifying the neighborhood, taking cheap food away from the masses, as it were. That’s just not the case. The food is better quality than what you can get for basically the same price elsewhere. My family and I have been to both SS and UP&C many times since they’ve opened and there’s been a wide spectrum of patrons pretty much every time we’ve been there.
I will do what I can to look into the costs of starting up a business (though I have to admit I don’t have a whole lot of time to do research-based posts) and see how that correlates to cronyism in this town. Unfortunately, access to capital and political connections are the basis of capitalism, and the frustration you feel isn’t a phenomenon unique to Pittsburgh.
Thanks for clarification. I agree with all of it except for your definition of capitalism. Political connections matter in third world kleptocracies & in Pittsburgh. Not in a free capitalist society.
I used my political scientist husband’s definition of capitalism – I defer to him on that one!
Chris, I like to hear everyone’s side of the story, but I believe you are comparing apples to oranges. To say that the writer’s “argument is basically flawed” because Mr. Sousa has “access to investment money and presumably connections” is itself tenuous at best, and at worst intellectually dishonest.
Both bundles of opinions expressed on this site (firstly the writer’s, and secondly yours) are not mutually exclusive; therefore it is not necessary to couch your argument on the premise that she is wrong. Taking an adversarial counterpoint is one way to get someone to read onward, but ultimately if the argument has no merit, it is an empty one.
Barriers of entry to opening businesses, such as access to capital and “connections” have always existed (and will continue to for the foreseeable future.) Every single business has an arduous path that it travels, and the ones that prevail are typically ones into which ownership teams have put a great deal of effort. Which is not to say that a restaurant executed impeccably will last in the marketplace. (How many dozens of great restaurants have closed in this town?)
None of us (not you, me nor the writer) was an investment partner in any of these restaurants, and from what I understand from those who are, there was no boondoggle loan or cronyistic grant given to open them. People put their money and their time on the line to get behind something they believed in and worked hard to make these places work. To hint that their success or establishment was in any way the result of “presum(ed) connections” to a city government that is “some flawed combination of corrupt and competent” is just incorrect. You paint a picture that Pittsburgh is a “pay to play” city franchise on the scale of mob-era Chicago, which it is not. Pittsburgh is full of business opportunity. Some of my favorite places are ones in which the owners bootstrapped with little or no capital. Look at Smoke Taqueria on the 8th Ave in Homestead; Las Palmas on Brookline Boulevard, and not too far away is Casa Rasta in Beechview, whose owner Antonio financed solely using credit from Home Depot, sweat equity and deft negotiation with a landlord.
I agree with you that it is sad to see the Public Market so poorly mishandled in terms of lack of long-term vision and fairness to the vendors. We’ve personally witnessed small fortunes lost as entrepreneurs struggle to make a profit in that place. A sad fact of life is that MOST businesses fail. Not just food businesses, but MOST businesses. I do not have the ledger from your business, but it does not seem that you failed–as I recall Blighty was one of the more prolific ventures in that joint. You seemed to respond to market forces (and consumer apathy) with an enthusiasm and ingenuity that is rare.
However, that you were unable to bootstrap a business in that location has more to do with the “failure by design” nature of the Public Market, and nothing to do with Kevin Sousa’s three restaurants. To pit one against the other in an argument is illogical and detracts from your legitimate gripes with Buncher, the URA and the City. For as much as I wanted it to be successful, I knew that the Public Market would be a struggle for most. For one, you’d think that there’s enough business to go around in the Strip. There is not. Opening that market adjacent to Penn Ave is sort of like holding Arena Football games in a parking lot next to Heinz Field on game days, expecting there to be enough football fans to support both.
I will continue to support the businesses that I know and love in that place, like the Soup Nancys, Gosia’s Pierogies, Clarion River Organics, East End Brewing, Grandma Z’s Maple, Crested Duck Charcuterie and others. In the final analysis, most of the places that remain profitable there have other locations; other revenue streams, and the public market rounds out their business profile.
I don’t have all the answers, but I do have a lot of insight because I’m out in the city every single day, living, shopping and consuming. I am not challenging your business acumen, and I wholeheartedly have enjoyed your food and your friendship. I will continue to support, promote and evangelize local businesses such as yours and Kevins’ not because I am expecting anything in return, but because they are gems that have been cut from good taste and great effort. On a personal note, after years of procrastination, I am opening a taco truck that will be vending in this vend-un-friend-ly town. I look forward to documenting the process publicly, so that I can utilize the soapbox I have crafted via social media to hopefully effect some change in the legislation. Or I will fail and move on.
This is the first I’ve heard of anyone being unhappy with Sousa bringing additional restaurant ventures to East Liberty. I can understand feeling a bit salty if there is some injustice going on in with regard to who can open a business, but to my understanding – but I question if there is one, and further I’m not sure the finger should be pointed at Sousa and team.
So I’ll focus on what I have heard before, and still can’t get over. People complaining about the cost of Sousa’s food. It’s obvious when restaurants are being exploitative – charging amounts that go way beyond covering costs – that’s not what is happening here. It costs a lot more money to source quality meats, produce, etc. and take care in their preparation. If anything the prices are generous, very generous. I’m supposing they are counting on sheer amount of covers to make a profit. I’ve said it a million times, but similar concepts in other cities would be charging much, much , more.
Great post, I wish you had more pictures – I miss Salt terribly and love to eat vicariously though photos.
I’m not a great photographer (and I always feel a bit strange whipping out my camera in a restaurant) but I’ve found that twitter-surfing turns up lots of good photos of Sousa food. I will say that I think this photo is about a third of the menu at Station Street!
Amen! We are thrilled to support the locally owned businesses. It’s very exciting to have East Liberty be an axis for this and to have such nice choices. Wonderful article!
I don’t really have a dog in this fight because I admire Kevin and think it’s wonderful to have new and creative food outlets flourishing in the city. But! The most serious criticism that I’ve heard about Salt and the other Sousa restaurants is that they’re out of place. While it’s great to draw attention to different parts of the city, the majority of people who live in the neighborhood where the restaurants are located – Garfield and East Liberty corridor – can’t actually afford to eat at those new places. Period.
So while Station Street may be a revamp of another hot dog shop, I wonder whether a chili cheese dog at that old shop cost $5. It almost certainly wouldn’t taste as good as Sousa’s, but it’s hard to make the case for quality and taste over affordability when you’re broke. Put these restaurants in Shadyside, downtown, hell, even the North or South Side, and there wouldn’t be nearly the same kind of backlash.
Also, regarding the BBQ reviews from you and Burgh Gourmand, I was SO HOPING one of you would spend some time talking about Wilson’s BBQ in the Mexican War Streets. It’s been around for 50 years, and while it’s not flashy or new I think it deserves to be part of the BBQ conversation in Pittsburgh and I’d be interested in hearing your take.
You touch on a lot of issues that I think will take too much time to get into (but I am making a mental list for future blog posts, for sure). First, the easy response – I tend to write more about food policy than food/restaurant reviews, and actually only wrote about the Sousa restaurants because of their impact on neighborhood planning, so I probably won’t review Wilson’s per se. I’ve actually never been there, though I remember thinking it looked awesome way back in the Rick Sebak WQED special on the North Side. I have heard that their quality can be erratic (sometimes amazing, sometimes not), and I find it hard these days with kiddos to schlep over to that end of town, but I’ll do my best to get over there and give it a whirl.
I do find it interesting, as the wife of a Southern man, that overall our city’s bbq culture is pretty lacking. Before UP&C opened, the only place we could find that came close to my mother-in-law’s cooking was Ms. Jean’s in Wilkinsburg (which is fantastic, btw – the cornbread stuffing in the stuffed chicken breast made me fall in love with my husband, I’m convinced), which thoroughly confused and disappointed him. What people call ‘soul food’ up here, they just call ‘food’ down in North Carolina, and I think part of the problem is that distinction.
OK, now onto the harder response. I’m not going to touch on the issue regarding how much a low income person can reasonably expect to spend on food when eating out, because there’s a whole food desert/social justice issue there that could be involved (are low income people resigned to eat processed/industrialized crap in perpetuity because it’s less than $5 for a hot dog, for example), and honestly, I want to roll that around in my brain some more. But I am concerned with the idea that the Sousa restaurants are out of place and would ‘play’ better somewhere else, because I don’t think that’s the case. If anything, I think they (and here I’m referencing UP&C and SS) help stabilize the neighborhood and bridge the distance between the really low end food offerings like the McD’s on Penn Circle and the higher end stuff popping up along Centre.
In East Liberty’s 2010 Community Plan, there are many references to both the local and regional draw that they expect their commercial district, and specifically the restaurants, to have. Here’s a few examples:
- “Reinforce East Liberty’s commercial heart as a unique “Town in a City” that serves both nearby residents and regional markets by providing a mix of national and local products, services and entertainment.”
- “Several new restaurants, strategically clustered to create a destination dining district, offer diverse international cuisine.”
- “Commercial core strategy: Attract and retain businesses that appeal to both regional and local markets, including national and small businesses.”
- “Economic development strategy: Expand East Liberty’s restaurant district as a dining destination.”
- “Implementation strategy: Encourage traffic-generating retail, restaurant, and service businesses with transparent storefronts on ground floors.”
I think both SS and especially UP&C, since it’s in the neighborhood’s commercial core, hit the mark on all of these action points. And I think that both restaurants are a better fit for the neighborhood than an Ethiopian restaurant (or two!), a Parisian bistro, or a third pizza shop at twice the price of the other two. Barbeque and hot dogs are certainly more familiar to the neighborhood than crepes and injera were. So if these don’t fit the neighborhood, while fitting in to the neighborhood plan, what doesn’t fit?
Look, Sousa is a mere footnote in a longer screed, so lets take him out of it because this article isn’t about him, it’s about the development of East Liberty & the city. Good for him for being successful.
What makes me uncomfortable for a place that “needs eyes on the street” and where development is “seen as a Good Thing” is that we are all a bunch of overeducated white people talking about what is best for a community that is African American and presumably the people “grumbling”.
Black people know a long history of having well intentioned white liberals coming in and offering the equivalent of intellectual welfare (but, like, without any of the benefits of welfare) by telling them what is good for their community. And more often than not what happens is a perfectly vibrant community like the Hill District gets cut in half to create a big ugly arena for white people to watch sports in. What the neighborhood gets is a footnote as the inspiration for the name Hill Street Blues. I’d be more happy if he had some residents in this conversation.
I’ll have a more comprehensive go at addressing all of your points later James, but at the mo’ I have to go feed my kids. Congratulations to @burghgourmand on the taco truck. It will be fabulous I’m sure. I can’t wait to try some of your chow.
Chris Johnston
@pittsburghpasty
ELDI had over 60 community and task force meetings with hundreds of community members over a multiple year time period when they developed their 2010 Community Plan. I highlighted the main action items in my response to Emily’s comment above, and I think UP&C and SS fit in well with their strategies. That’s a lot of residents who came to a consensus about what they wanted to see in their neighborhood.
East Liberty is another victim of well intentioned ivory tower planners (I’m well aware of my profession’s sordid past mucking things up), and I think the outreach efforts in the planning process reflects that need to combat the old top-down approach with a strong grass-roots voice. I also took a look at the 1999 Plan, and I forgot how depressing a neighborhood it used to be.
This is a really interesting exchange. With respect to whether an Ethiopian restaurant is a good fit in East Liberty, I’m not sure how an African-American owning an African restaurant in a predominantly African-American neighborhood is not a good fit. But let’s set race aside for now.
The bottom line is that I liked East Liberty while I was in law school in the late 90′s. I loved it once Justin Strong opened the Shadow Lounge in 2000. What started as me doing pro bono work for Justin eventually led to Abay. I enjoyed the mix of people his space was bringing and wanted to open something that would have synergy with that. When I was leaving my corporate law job to buy a building in a “dangerous” neighborhood to open a restaurant serving a type of food from a country where “everyone is starving”, it wasn’t the easiest sell. But with no public dollars, all of the money I could come up with, and a bunch of credit card debt, I bought the building in 2003 and got Abay off the ground in 2004.
I wasn’t incentivized to come to East Liberty by a development authority, CDC, or by the lure of future retail development. When I was in Africa, I decided I wanted to do something with my life that would have a link to the continent. That general notion, coupled with the desire to bring something unique to a cool block of a neighborhood that had a tremendous amount of potential, resulted in Abay. If someone else had owned the building, they probably wouldn’t have understood what I was trying to accomplish on a cultural level, and therefore would have been less likely to rent the space to me. So owning the space was critical. At the time, we dreamed about what it would be like if all of the vacant buildings on the block were full with interesting businesses. It’s fascinating to me to see how events have unfolded over the years. I try not to be judgmental of the folks who are just discovering the neighborhood. Although I do laugh inside when I see people now in various establishments who were the same ones that said all of this could never work.
-Jamie Wallace
Jamie – thanks so much for responding. As an avid Abay diner, I didn’t mean to disparage the restaurant by saying Ethiopian food wasn’t a good fit for East Liberty, so I apologize if I stuck my foot in my mouth above. It just seemed odd that the previous commenter, who didn’t have a problem with ethnic restaurants that the city had never seen before (as far as I know Abay and Tana are still Pittsburgh’s only Ethiopian restaurants), had a problem with restaurants that serve the exact type of food that was in the spaces before Sousa’s restaurants. Maybe because Abay is close enough to Shadyside to not really ‘count’? I don’t know.
This entire exchange has been fascinating to me too, and now I’m wondering what, empirically, works best as an indicator of a restaurant’s success (and on a wider note, a restaurant district like East Liberty). Capital? Maybe. Previous experience? Perhaps not, as your history shows. Government support? Not necessarily… there’s gotta be a dissertation in there somewhere.
For Station Street, $5-8 hot dogs *aren’t* the same kind of food that was there before, though.
If they left “hot dog: $2″, and then had “fancy hot dog: $4+”, that would continue what was there while bringing something new. As it is, it’s very much a completely different restaurant, and doesn’t seem to be appealing to anyone living nearby.
I’ll ask the next time I’m there about where it seems like their clientele is coming from. I know from the (way too many) times I’ve been there that I’ve seen many people from all walks of life ordering hot dogs and fries, including kids on bikes from across the street.
In the four or so times I’ve been over, I’ve never seen anyone in there who didn’t drive; could be a time of day/day of week change?
That’s possible. I tend to avoid the lunch rush so maybe mid afternoon on weekends or after school is different? It’s a good question.
Such an interesting discussion and so appropriate since its Jane Jacobs Day (in Canada). The post touches on one of urban planning’s most sensitive and divisive spots that has existed and continues to exist. In other words, I’m certain the post (and ensuing comment dialogue) will not single-handedly give resolution to the age old debate on the effects (positive or negative) of gentrification. True, the hot dogs are not $2 but eating at Abay (which I adore) is not cheap either. What East Liberty is going through right now reminds me of the time when Bill Clinton decided to plunk his outpost in Harlem. Not midtown. Harlem. After a pregnant urban development pause while everyone gathered their wits, Harlem started surging. Among other entrepreneurs, Marcus Samuelsson (Ethiopian/Swedish — is he African? Is he European? does it matter? — chef, known for his very high end Aquavit in midtown), opened Red Rooster – American “comfort food” — at definitely not Harlem prices. Sylvia’s, the bastion of comfort food still holds court in the neighborhood (it is in fact, now a chain, bringing Harlem cache to other areas, and is a selling point for which airport terminal you would hope to be at JFK). Today, the adage “I don’t go past 96th St.” is completely archaic because Harlem is becoming a completely dense, walking community. You can now get almost anything you need without having to leave Harlem. Its almost the epitome of Jane Jacobs’ theory of how development (decreasing the imports a city/locality needs) leads to expansion (economic growth).
However, (of course), that’s not without criticism. That’s why there is there is continued challenge and demand for stewardship by public/private organizations. Its not an easy balance to achieve, urban planners have not calculated their e=mc2.
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