Sunday, August 28, 2011
By Joe Smydo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Laeveyyonna Moe, 3, of the South Side plays with a giant bubble at the Uptown street fair on Saturday. The festival is organized by the Uptown Partners. The Pittsburgh Association of the Deaf has been in the neighborhood since 1965. Photo by: Lake Fong/Post-Gazette
Bloomfield is the center of Pittsburgh’s Italian community, Oakland the city’s academic hub and the South Side the nightclub district.
Uptown’s 46-year-old role as center of the city’s deaf community may not be as well known, but that could change as the neighborhood strives for revitalization.
“We want a better neighborhood,” Cheryl Noschese, former president of the Pittsburgh Association for the Deaf, said Saturday at the third annual Uptown street fair.
The event is sponsored by Uptown Partners, a community group made up of residents, businesses and nonprofits. Executive director Jeanne McNutt said she has made an effort to involve the association, one of the neighborhood’s most established stakeholders.
The association bought its Gist Street building in 1965 because of the central location, turned a dungeon-like basement into a banquet room and made other improvements. Now, it would like to see the rest of the neighborhood catch up.
The wish list includes demolition of blighted buildings, more green space, apartments for graduate students and neighborhood retail.
Uptown residents have to go to the South Side or other neighborhoods for groceries and coffee shops. “What about right here?” James C. Noschese, Ms. Noschese’s husband and an association officer, said through sign-language interpreter Vickie D’Avanzo.
Situated between Downtown and Oakland, both bustling neighborhoods, Uptown is poised for growth, Ms. McNutt said. “There’s lots of opportunity.”
Along the way, the deaf community may grow as well. Ms. McNutt cited plans to turn one former commercial building into apartments for people who are deaf or have vision-related disabilities. Mark Babich, the association’s president, said he’d like to see his group increase its membership, too.
In one way, the association soon will be adopting a higher profile. It’s preparing to put a large mural depicting the deaf community and sign language on the side of its building.
Joe Smydo: jsmydo@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1548.
First published on August 28, 2011 at 12:00 am
Source: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11240/1170450-53.stm#ixzz1WJsfTsRZ