New Beginning: Allentown’s Warrington Avenue Poised For A Makeover

The crowd inside — and eventually outside — 816 E. Warrington Ave. one recent evening gathered to showcase a newly renovated Allentown property. The former Ken’s Variety had been vacant for more than 20 years.

As the evening deepened, “Open in Allentown,” a “pop-up” event with a garage-style glass door rolled up, became a stew of neighborhood leaders, investors, consultants, residents of Allentown and nearby neighborhoods mingling over cocktails and catered nibbles.

The event and mix of people signified what Hilltop Alliance executive director Aaron Sukenik called “Warrington Avenue in its reinvention phase.”

One mile from Downtown (Pittsburgh) and cradled by the hot markets of Mount Washington and the South Side Slopes, Allentown is riddled with residential blight, and 35 percent of its commercial properties are vacant. But the newly repaved Warrington Avenue is on the cusp of a transition from being seedy to being seen.

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http://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2015/04/06/New-beginning-in-Allentown-Warrington-Avenue-poised-for-a-makeover/stories/201504060015

Alliance Aims To Transform Vacant Parcel In St. Clair To Include Townhouses, Urban Farming

The site of a former public housing complex in St. Clair might become the home of a residential community that could fund one of the largest urban farms in the country, nonprofit officials said.

“It’s definitely a significant plan, but it’s not going to be easy,” said Aaron Sukenik, executive director of the Hilltop Alliance, which wants to redevelop the site and operate the farm.

The Housing Authority of the city of Pittsburgh demolished the 61-year-old St. Clair Village public housing complex in 2010 as it sought to reshape the look of public housing in the city to a model that had less-dense communities and more mixed incomes.

The Hilltop Alliance wants to turn the vacant, 107-acre parcel into Hilltop Village Farm, which would include 120 for-sale and rental townhouses, as well as an urban farm using about 20 acres for a farm incubator, youth farm and community-supported agriculture farm, or CSA.

Read more: http://triblive.com/news/allegheny/7413350-74/farm-housing-hilltop#ixzz3MeUTxCjn
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Investors Are Becoming Pittsburgh’s Biggest Home Buyers, Sellers

Locator map with the Mount Washington neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania highlighted. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Joe Calloway has bought 39 homes this year in the city of Pittsburgh, mostly in south Pittsburgh communities such as South Side Flats, South Side Slopes, Arlington, Allentown, Beltzhoover and Mount Washington.

His Allentown company, RE 360, finds properties selling for below-market value, either by word of mouth, industry sources or courthouse auctions. He renovates about 20 percent of them for resale and rents the other 80 percent to city residents.

“The city of Pittsburgh is attractive to me because I grew up here,” he said. “I know the area, and it’s important to invest in what you know.”

While Mr. Calloway — who has purchased more than $1 million in single-family homes this year — is the largest buyer of investment real estate in the city, he is hardly alone. According to RealStats, a South Side-based real estate information service, real estate investors have bought 1,111 homes within the city limits so far this year for a total of $85.4 million.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/business/news/investors-are-becoming-pittsburghs-biggest-home-buyers-sellers-708060/#ixzz2i5m9hqt6