On November 1, 1975, the Rev. Leo Henry gathered his parishioners, along with business people and residents of the Bloomfield and Garfield neighborhoods, for a town meeting at St. Lawrence O’Toole Roman Catholic Church in Garfield. As he observed a community spiraling downward from a decade of physical and economic decline, he felt impelled to do something to address its future. He just couldn’t stand by and watch any more.

 

Father Henry challenged  the audience that night to help him launch a community organization. Using the sale of $5 membership “shares”, he wanted to make each person a stockholder in this new engine for change. Scores of volunteers would help drive a program of advocacy, planning, and revitalization activity in both the Penn Avenue commercial district, and in the neighborhoods on either side of it. Over 500 of those shares would be sold in the weeks and months to come, and the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation was officially born in January of 1976.

 
In its first year, the BGC turned back plans for a methadone treatment center in the heart of the business district, secured $85,000 from Pittsburgh City Council to invest in the commercial district, started a newspaper christened The Bulletin, and began to hammer away at negligent property owners and recalcitrant politicians.  

In 1978, pledges by residents and business owners to commit over $2.5 million in deposits spurred Equibank to open the first branch banking office on Penn Avenue since the Great Depression. Other victories followed with the opening of a pharmacy, a dairy store, and auto repair shop. The city also committed over $200,000 to clear away debris left behind from dozens of housing demolitions in Garfield over the previous decade. Its raucous meetings with mayors and county commissioners routinely drew 300 people or more to the St. Lawrence activities building behind the church.

  

 

By 1980, the board of the BGC came to understand that a long-term approach to revitalization would eventually require the services of a full-time staff person. In 1981, it became the first community group in Pittsburgh to receive an allotment of federal community block grant funds from City Council for the purpose of hiring its own staff. The organization set to work on reducing an inventory of over 60 vacant buildings and storefronts on Penn between Edmond Street and Negley Avenue. It also started in 1982 on the construction of new, single-family homes on hundreds of vacant lots in Garfield.
 

 

In 1984, the BGC sold the administration of St. Margaret Memorial Hospital in Aspinwall on the concept of opening a family medical center in a vacant storefront at the corner of Penn and S. Evaline St. That center, under the leadership of Dr. Ann McGaffey, now sees over 600 patients monthly from the community in a modern, ground-floor center next door to St. Lawrence O’Toole Church at 5321 Penn.

In 1986, the conversion of a vacant commercial laundry at Penn and N. Atlantic into a first-class office complex known as Champion Commons brought the first million-dollar investment to Penn Avenue in over 20 years. In 1987, the BGC bought its first commercial building on Penn and renovated it into offices that it uses to this day. In 1988, the group helped form a consortium of ACTION-Housing, St. Margaret’s Hospital, and St. Lawrence O’Toole Church to renovate a vacant school building next to the church into the Laurentian Hall Apartments for seniors. It also started renovation on a 6-unit condo building at 200 S. Millvale Ave. In 1989, it spun off the Friendship Development Associates (FDA) to address the decline of the housing market in that neighborhood. And it created its own youth development initiative to boost the prospects for successful pursuit of education and career goals on the part of hundreds of children in the community.
 
   
In 1990, the BGC and FDA commissioned a study of the Penn Avenue commercial district to point the way to an alternate plan for its redevelopment, given the demise of neighborhood-oriented retailing. For the first time, the notion of an arts and restaurant/coffeeshop district surfaced as a possible future direction.
The BGC also began renovations to a 10-unit apartment building at 205 S. Millvale Ave....    
 
    ,...and the construction of 12 for-sale townhomes at Mossfield Court in Garfield.
 

In the 1990’s, the BGC trained its sights on saving vacant houses in Garfield through a “rehab-for-resale” program geared to first-time homebuyers. Eighteen homes were completed and sold between 1992 and 2002 across the Garfield neighborhood. It also managed to build 10 new, single-family homes over that span on scattered in-fill sites on Broad and Kincaid Streets in Garfield, and on S. Millvale Avenue in Bloomfield.
In 1991, the BGC bought a half-vacant, former laundry plant at Penn and N. Mathilda St., and, over time, added four new commercial tenants, including the first live-performance theater in the district. In 1992, it bought the former Pub & 10 Bar in the 4900 block of Penn and turned it into space for a new restaurant. In 1994, it purchased a vacant church on N. Pacific Ave. in Garfield and transformed it into a Community Activity Center, with a high-speed computer lab occupying the basement level. It also assisted two Garfield residents, Bob Jones, Jr. and Garth Taylor, in launching Garfield Youth Sports that year to offer football and cheerleading programs every fall for over 180 boys and girls from Garfield and other East End neighborhoods.
In 1995, the BGC began a contractual relationship with the City of Pittsburgh to provide employment placements for teens and young adults in the community. That relationship survives to this day, with up to 50 youths working for various private employers in the area.    

 

 

In 1995, it partnered with the FDA in undertaking the renovation of a vacant commercial building at 5526-30 Penn that produced a home for the Dance Alloy, together with 7 loft apartments.

  

 

 

And it started rehabilitation of a 3-storefront building at 5122-26 Penn that, today, is home to two minority-owed businesses. 

The BGC also worked with the FDA and East End Cooperative Ministry to rehabilitate the vacant Montana Building (which the EECM had owned) at 5456 Penn into 16 one- and two-bedroom apartments.
In 1996, it supported the Highland Park CDC in co-developing a vacant mansion and carriage house at 5635 Stanton Ave. into 11 moderately-priced rental units. It collaborated with the Negley Place Neighborhood Alliance in converting a Victorian house at 5548 Hays Street into 3 condominium units. It joined with the FDA in the purchase of 4 historic rowhouses in the 5400 block of Penn that were threatened with demolition. Today, they offer 6 spacious rental units for families.
And it completed renovations to a commercial building at Penn and N. Graham St. that houses two more minority-owned businesses.		  
In 1997, the Penn Avenue Arts Initiative was born and, with it, the chance for the BGC and its partner, the Friendship Development Associates, to emphasize the arts as a route toward revitalization of the commercial district. The two groups have shepherded the sale or lease of 23 vacant buildings and storefronts along Penn Avenue to artists or arts’ groups, including five buildings renovated either in part or in whole and sold in 2006 to artists and other professionals. A number of artists and small entrepreneurs have been able to tap into a pool of loans and grants offered by the PAAI to do interior or exterior improvements to buildings in the 4800 to 5500 blocks of Penn, thanks to grant monies received from a local foundation.

   
In 2000, the BGC accepted management of the “I Have A Dream” Program from the organization that started it in Pittsburgh. An endowment at the Pittsburgh Foundation, created expressly for the initiative, helps to pay the college or vocational tuition and related expenses for up to 40 young people who were part of the same fourth-grade class at Ft. Pitt Elementary School back in 1993.
The BGC completed a neighborhood plan for Garfield in 2000, in cooperation with Garfield Jubilee Association, that has provided the impetus for construction of 50 new, single-family homes now underway west of N. Atlantic Avenue. .
     
Twenty-three houses were finished as of the spring of 2007, and construction started on another eight
The organization formed a collaboration with the Pittsburgh Housing Development Corp. to implement a renovation program for vacant houses in the 100 and 200 blocks of N. Fairmount Street. Four two-unit houses are now under renovation for re-sale to first-time homebuyers.  
  In 2000, the BGC formed a task force on public safety that meets monthly with law enforcement officials, court officers, school district police, and the Mayor’s “Weed ‘N Seed” staff every month to focus personnel and other resources in addressing crime and truancy in the community.  
   
In 2002, the site of the closed St. Joseph’s Nursing Home on Penn Avenue became the subject of a 6-month long series of meetings with the community to determine a practical re-use for the site. Mercy Health System provided time for the BGC, in collaboration with Friendship Development Associates and Garfield Jubilee Association, to recommend a mixed-use development for the property. While that vision was never realized, it did open the door for the Children’s Home of Pittsburgh to purchase the site shortly thereafter as the future home for all of their services for medically-fragile children. In the spring of 2007, the Children’s Home held a ribbon-cutting on their new $20 million facility.  
 
 
In 2003, the BGC, together with the Friendship Development Associates and Garfield Jubilee Association, joined with a pair of private developers in fashioning a plan for a mixed-use development on the site of the former Eat ‘N Park Restaurant on Penn. In September of 2006, construction was completed on 60 apartments for low-income seniors who were relocated from 2 public-housing high-rises, and 7,000 square feet of retail space on the first floor, which the FDA will own and manage.  
 
  In 2004, provision of expanded after-school and summer programs by the BGC for students at Fort Pitt Elementary and Peabody High Schools became possible, thanks to a contract with a new East End non-profit, Wireless Neighborhoods. Today, over 125 students are served by those programs each year.  
       
 
For as long as it’s existed, the BGC has published a community newspaper, The Bulletin, that gives readers insight into the events, programs, and projects that are shaping life both today and tomorrow in the East End. Mailed monthly to over 16,000 households and businesses, the paper is an essential mechanism for accountability and education of the readership on what the BGC and other community actors are doing  
     
In addition to its own work, the BGC’s staff lend their time and expertise to other agencies and institutions that serve the community. Neighborhood Housing Services, the Eastside Neighborhood Employment Center, West Penn Hospital, the Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group, and Wireless Neighborhoods have all benefited from the involvement of BGC staff on either boards or committees in fulfilling their missions to their respective constituencies  
 
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