With leadership from Chris Buccini ’90 and Amachie Ackah ’90, a low-income Pittsburgh neighborhood is coming back to life, and its residents have a big stake in the rebuilding process.
BY JANA F. BROWN
As a boy growing up on “the Hill” in the 1960s, Curtis Morehead watched as skilled workers — carpenters, masons, plumbers, electricians — set to work each day, making sure the residents and business owners of his Pittsburgh neighborhood had heat, running water and other services essential to life in his district.
“I would see different tradesmen in my community,” recalls Morehead, who is Black, “and none of them looked like me.”
Though the Hill District had been a vibrant community of predominantly Black neighborhoods — and a cultural hub renowned for jazz — that all changed in the late 1950s, when urban renewal ushered in the construction of a new Civic Arena that displaced some 8,000 residents and forced the relocation of close to 400 businesses. The arena’s developers had promised that the new facility would continue to feature the arts, but poor acoustics instead led to it becoming the home of the National Hockey League’s Pittsburgh Penguins in 1967.
“And then,” says Chris Buccini ’90, “they built a highway that disconnected the community that was still living there from the rest of Pittsburgh.” In much the same way that the North End was cut off from the rest of Boston by the six-lane Central Artery until the Big Dig moved the highway underground, the then-new I-579 highway created a physical barrier between the Hill District and the city’s other neighborhoods. “Since then,” Buccini says, “there has been this historic scar on the city.”
An economic downturn ensued, and the Hill’s population gradually dwindled. Buildings fell into ruin, businesses were shuttered and poverty dominated what was once a proud and thriving blue-collar community. Morehead — who in 2009 co-founded Emerald Electrical Services with his wife, Deborah — was there, watching it happen, as he and his siblings longed for what they had once known.
For years, developers proposed solutions to renew the Hill District, but they were met with understandable skepticism by residents who questioned their motivations. Large-scale construction had failed them once before, so what would be different this time? The desolation deepened in 2012, when the Civic Arena was demolished in favor of the new PPG Paints Arena and yet another parking lot took its place. Nearly five years ago, Buccini, president of the Wilmington, Delaware-based real estate development company Buccini/Pollin Group (BPG), took over the management of a 28-acre site in the Lower Hill District, partnering with a number of other entities, including the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Pittsburgh-based FNB Corporation, to launch the Lower Hill Redevelopment project. With a multi-layered mission of social justice, sustainability and community-building, the mixed-use project is both focused on the district’s future and deeply mindful of its past as it creates new residential and commercial spaces, jobs, cultural opportunities and more. The first priority — getting mistrustful residents on board — was a challenge that Buccini knew he could take on, thanks to a core team that includes his lifelong friend and SPS formmate Amachie Ackah ’90.
“Chris has a unique view on these things, and he brings a sensitivity but also a global perspective to what’s going on with these issues,” says Ackah, an SPS trustee who’s also the co-founder, managing partner and chief investment officer of Clay Cove Capital, a key equity investor in the Lower Hill Redevelopment project. “The philosophy with this project has always been that you’re going to have better urban planning and renewal, and better development, if you humanize it and you think about the people who populate your buildings.”
Rendering of the revitalized Lower Hill site at completion
Once completed, the redevelopment of Pittsburgh’s Hill District will represent the intersection of culture and commerce and will commemorate the history of a neighborhood and its residents. Ackah and Buccini both say their St. Paul’s School bond played a meaningful role in their decision to collaborate on the work. Hailing from Philadelphia and Delaware, respectively, the duo often saw each other on breaks during their years in Millville, extending a friendship that was forged in the houses and on the athletic fields of SPS. Over the last two decades, they have partnered on a number of real estate development and investment ventures, and when the opportunity to work together in Pittsburgh, relatively close to their home bases, came up, they jumped at the chance. The Lower Hill Redevelopment project was a natural fit for their mutual interests.
A seasoned investor and developer, Buccini, who graduated from Princeton, notably teamed up with Bill Taylor ’91 in 2011 to restore Wilmington’s historic Queen Theater. Prior to its grand reopening, the theater had been abandoned for more than half a century; it is now a thriving live music venue. Ackah attended Williams College and then earned his MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. In addition to his role on the SPS Board of Trustees, for which he serves as the clerk/secretary as well as the chair of The SPS Fund, he also sits on the boards of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Episcopal Academy in Pennsylvania. His Clay Cove Capital Partners is a private equity firm that invests specifically in real estate and development companies.
The first phase of the Lower Hill project launched in September 2021, with the groundbreaking of the $250 million, 26-story FNB Financial Center, which will become the corporate headquarters of First National Bank. According to the Lower Hill Redevelopment website, “the tower is expected to generate 1,250 construction jobs, 2,000 permanent jobs and $40 million in investments in the Middle and Upper Hill Districts.” And, Buccini shares, the FNB Financial Center is one of the first new office towers under construction in post-COVID-19 America. Mindful of evolving societal needs, it will feature touchless elevators and security, along with layered mechanical, electrical, plumbing and other systems that take sustainability into account.
The second phase will include a 1,000-space parking garage and a 3,500-seat Live Nation entertainment venue. In addition to being a LEED-certified project, the Lower Hill Redevelopment also is founded on the fundamentals of green construction, and its design includes seven acres of central open space to host large and small gatherings.
Equally important as the project’s commitment to sustainability, Ackah and Buccini both note, is that first priority of rebuilding a community that had previously only seen the downside of development. To that end, locals like Curtis Morehead are playing a pivotal role; his Emerald Electric Services is one of dozens of companies engaged with the effort. Emerald, which has done prior work on PNC Park, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team, and Heinz Field, where both the Pittsburgh Steelers and the University of Pittsburgh’s Division I football team play, so far has purchased the switchgear — components that control, protect and isolate power systems — and has supplied the lighting packages for the FNB tower. Four of the company’s 12 full-time electricians are at the site daily, overseeing and performing electrical work.
“We are really happy to have the opportunity to have that 28 acres coming back to life,” Morehead says, noting that the prospect of garnering maintenance and service agreements for the future means the project is good for the long-term viability of local businesses that will play a critical role in sustaining the Lower Hill.
“Amachie and I had a goal of [hiring] 30% minority- and women-owned businesses, and we’re at 32% right now,” Buccini says. “So we’ve created an infrastructure in our organizations that actually has really helped the smaller electrician who has never done something of this size, spending a lot more time and money to really help mentor them, partner them up with a bigger firm that could help them grow into the next career phase. That’s what we’re trying to do across the board.”
“We’re working on small jobs, but we’re also giving an ability for people to have basic financial literacy — understanding how to apply for a union job and be in the trades,” Ackah adds. “Looking at helping them turn a job into a career, maybe in one of our buildings after the construction is done.” He says that there also will be resources to assist everyone, regardless of race or ability.
“It’s a multilayered project about reinvestment in the community. We’re trying to build some of that infrastructure for people to be successful in defining careers and opportunities, and building companies that will have a lasting imprint not only on themselves and their families, but also in their community.”
— Amachie Ackah ‘90
The redevelopment project also features a component of social responsibility. Ackah and Buccini proudly report that the development team, including BPG, Clay Cove and Fenway Partners (which owns the Boston Red Sox and recently acquired the Penguins) has agreed to give away 50% of the first 10 years of real estate taxes. That means that, instead of going to the city, the money will be reinvested directly into the Hill community. In the first phase of construction alone, BPG was able to give $7 million to an affordable housing fund that will distribute grants to help residents restore their homes. “It allows people to then not be pushed out of their neighborhoods,” Buccini explains.
First National Bank will offer low-interest credit lines for minority developers to help them with set-up costs. BPG and its partners also are backing smaller projects in the Hill District, among them the relocation of a popular, historic barbershop to a larger space that will allow the owner to grow his enterprise. Funds and space also have been set aside for blocks of additional affordable housing, up to 20% of living space, to allow residents to remain in the district, even as property values rise with the redevelopment and the improved connection and access it creates to downtown Pittsburgh.
As part of the revival, Dr. Kimberly Ellis joined BPG as director of community, arts and culture. The niece of esteemed playwright August Wilson, Ellis grew up in the Hill District and is a self-described historian, preservationist and storyteller of the neighborhood, charged with engaging and empowering residents, artists and entrepreneurs in its renewal. In addition to finding artists to help tell the story of the Hill District’s cultural legacy, Ellis offers guidance to the development team on how to represent that legacy, whether it’s highlighting the rich history of jazz in the district or creating large murals to honor Black Lower Hill artists.
“My role is to build a new community in the city of Pittsburgh and in the Hill District and inform how people engage,” Ellis explains. “I help spread the news about artist opportunities on the site, help recruit the artists, help set some parameters that allow artists to express their creativity. The idea is to show people how it captures our legacy and how to embrace it.”
For Buccini, Ackah, Ellis and others, incorporating the arts is yet another way to nurture a flourishing Hill District. To that end, among the earliest priorities of the redevelopment was securing federal funding for Frankie Mae Pace Park, a project Buccini describes as an urban connector over the I-579 highway that had previously separated the residents of the Hill District from Pittsburgh’s downtown. In addition to bike paths, pedestrian walkways and community gathering spaces, the park includes a museum that honors the Hill’s cultural legacy. Artist Jann Rosen-Queralt designed trench drains with symbolism that reflects Pittsburgh’s culture while recognizing and honoring past social injustices. Rosen-Queralt also designed a rain garden and benches with steel-embossed prints of her artwork, bringing together poetry, the city’s legacy of the Underground Railroad, historical maps and more. Ellis served as the scholar for the project, and collaborated with artist Vanessa-Brantley Newton to create a fictional park guide named Keisha to help visitors navigate the space.
Once complete over the next decade, the 28 acres of Lower Hill ideally represent a cross-section of residents of multiple ethnicities, from university students to the elderly, as well as a thriving medical community at the upgraded University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (formerly the Presbyterian Hospital campus, where Morehead’s mother, Louise, proudly served as a supervisor in the mailroom); and a swath of corporate America, complete with retail shopping and dining; and a vibrant music and events scene between the Live Nation venue and the arena that houses the Penguins. The intentional open space at the heart of it all invites connection in literal and figurative ways, acting as a throughway along which the various inhabitants can cross paths.
“Everything I do is urban redevelopment,” Buccini explains. “I typically take land or buildings that have sat vacant and generate very little tax revenue — and nothing for the community — and our company goes in and redevelops them. That’s the physical and the economic, but then you layer in the repair that’s going on to heal this community. The goal is for people to really have ownership when it’s done.”
Ackah’s hope for the project is to see the Hill District truly integrated into downtown Pittsburgh, and for it to become one of the city’s most lively and robust neighborhoods — a place where people can work, live and play at a world-class level. “This project is about taking a community that was once vibrant and building it into a 21st century neighborhood for everyone,” he says. “It will have diversity, it will have history, but it will also be a place that welcomes the world to what the modern city of Pittsburgh is and can be. It’s going to be an example of how you don’t give up hope.”
