Judy Hackel remembers growing up in Allentown, when the neighborhood bustled with grocers, delis and other hawkers.
“It was a boom town … because you didn’t have the large malls, and you didn’t have the big shopping places,” she said.
Eventually, though, the teeming businesses of her youth faded into vacant storefronts.
The neighborhood’s business district is again on the upswing, she said, but the community still faces food, health, economic and transit disparity.
For many area stakeholders and residents, temporary light-rail service on Warrington Avenue highlights the competing needs and visions for a neighborhood looking to solidify a recent resurgence.
“It’s been a huge resource,” said Chris Copen, owner of Bottlerocket Social Hall.
He said a permanent line “would help the business district, but it would also just improve the mobility and the accessibility of the neighborhood as a whole.”
Not all residents share love for the T. At a PRT board meeting in November 2024, several residents who live on the T line — including the Allentown Community Development Corporation President Nancy Lomasney — expressed concern that the T’s vibration may be contributing to landslides in the area.
Getting around
The Allentown brown line was shuttered in 2011 and since has been used as an alternate route for the red, blue and silver lines several times during tunnel closures.
For some, it was an unexpected gain, when Pittsburgh Regional Transit rerouted the red and blue light-rail lines through Allentown in February so that crews could rehabilitate the aging Mount Washington Tunnel. PRT doesn’t have a projected end-date for light rail service through Allentown, but expects to update riders after Thanksgiving, said PRT spokesperson Adam Brandolph.
Allentown’s transit service, like the Hilltop’s generally, is criticized as inadequate for the hilly streets that are difficult to navigate on foot.
While waiting for the T, as the light rail system is known, on a chilly October morning, Ranya Watkins, who moved to Allentown in July, said she “almost cried” when she found out the line was temporary.
“It’s way better than buses,” Watkins said.
Watkins, 26, takes the light rail to her Downtown job daily, and has begun saving for a car in anticipation of its closure.
PRT announced in March that it’s facing a $100 million funding deficit that would spark massive service cuts, including to three major Hilltop bus routes — an area which already faces “disproportionate transit inequity,” according to Abhishek Viswanathan, a board director at the advocacy organization Pittsburghers for Public Transit.
Though PRT bought itself some time by diverting $110 million from its capital budget to operations, the agency anticipates further cuts by 2027.
Nicole Gallagher, a community organizer at Pittsburghers for Public Transit, said over the years bus lines in the region have been cut, causing residents to wait longer and rely on transfers.
“People’s time is not valued in certain areas, and that is definitely evident in the south Hilltop,” Gallagher said.
As local transit systems are “under threat” due to a lack of increased state funding, Viswanathan said, the advocacy group launched its South Hilltop Organizing Fellowship to train residents on how to advocate for better mobility in the area.
“The biggest thing is raising awareness and like, providing tools and ways for people to create the solutions that feel right for themselves,” said Gallagher.
‘The most controversial thing’ since church closure
Brandolph said the agency has planned a 2026 survey to assess interest in the Allentown line, though cost and ADA compliance requirements might halt any effort to make the line permanent again.
Talk of making the line permanent prompts mixed opinions.
Lomasney contended in the November 2024 PRT board meeting that a petition to permanently run the T circulated by prominent Hilltop real estate company Re360 was giving a false perception of what residents want.
“If he was my landlord, I would probably sign it,” she said. “But that does not represent what the majority of people that I speak to [say].” She called the T service in Allentown “very contentious.”
Lomasney said she doesn’t understand why the corridor can’t be serviced by buses. A PRT representative in the meeting said that “bus bridging the entire light rail system is pretty impossible” because the agency is short on operators.
Several business owners argued that the comments disserviced low-income residents, renters and businesses who use and benefit from the line.
Joe Calloway, owner and founder of Re360, said he is disappointed that representatives from the CDC don’t favor the line because, as a lifelong Hilltop resident, he’s seen bus cuts isolate the area from the rest of the city. The T is a benefit to the neighborhood where car ownership is not common, he added.
“It really adds a dynamic to South Pittsburgh that’s super important for connecting us to the central business district and throughout the whole region,” he said.
Re360, which owns several of the area storefronts and dozens of tenant-occupied properties across the Hilltop, has been the main lobbying force for keeping the line open. The company has rallied local businesses to hang promotional signs and started a petition which had garnered over 1,000 signatures by late November.
“It really adds a dynamic to South Pittsburgh that’s super important for connecting us to the central business district and throughout the whole region.”
Joe Calloway
Hackel, the lifelong resident, said the T has become “the most controversial thing that we’ve had in Allentown, probably since the closing of [St. John Vianney Roman Catholic Church].”
The Allentown Community Development Corporation (ACDC) declined to comment on questions about the T. Vice President Stormie Parson said the organization is focused now on engaging more residents at community meetings and garnering feedback on its fledgling community garden on Arlington Avenue.
A food desert
Allentown has no grocery store of its own. Residents venture to the South Side Giant Eagle or the Shop’n’Save in Mount Washington, both of which can be a challenge to access for non-drivers.
“Unless you’re driving a car, getting to the South Side from here is not an easy trek,” said Jordan Shoenberger, executive director of Allentown-based nonprofit Abiding Missions, who described the neighborhood as a food desert. “You’re literally on top of a mountain.”
Most locals, Shoenberger said, shop at the Warrington Avenue Dollar General for groceries because of the travel inconvenience.
The need is so great, said Shelly Augustine of Breakfast at Shelly’s, that sometimes people come inside her restaurant asking to buy produce because there is “not a place where you can get fresh fruit.”
Augustine said she tried to open a deli years ago, but her efforts were hampered because she was unable to accept EBT payments, which many locals rely on.
The neighborhood does have some food assistance options, including a food pantry and weekly breakfasts at Abiding Missions. The nonprofit also offers violence prevention and daily youth programming.
Gothic commerce revives ghost town
Since 2017, when Kelly Braden opened her oddity shop Weeping Glass, Allentown’s business district has taken on a distinctly gothic aesthetic.
Braden later opened Grim Wizard Coffee and founded the Allentown Night Market, a twice-a-year festival that she said hosted about 3,000 people in October.
Much of the revitalized business, Hackel said, is because of grant funding brought in by the Hilltop Alliance and Re360’s reduced storefront rents.
Braden, whose specialty shop relies largely on tourist dollars, said the T has boosted sales by drawing in new customers from other Pittsburgh neighborhoods. Now she’s worried she will lose those customers once the line is cut.
“We’re noticing more local people that are coming in than ever before from other neighborhoods. And it’s mostly because of the easy access,” she said.
A few blocks away, Bottlerocket Social Hall, which opened in 2022, has become a magnet in the neighborhood, luring people from across the city nightly for touring musicians and comedy shows.
Now that the neighborhood is getting back on its feet, said Bottlerocket owner Copen, the T is an important asset. He said many visitors use it to get to his venue and he even commissioned a customer survey two years ago, in which 70% of responses said they would like the line to be made permanent.
When the line isn’t in operation, said Copen, “It’s a little silly that we have the subway running right through the neighborhood, but to actually ride it, you have to go down a giant hill in either direction.”
Shoenberger, the Abiding Missions director, welcomes the growth, but said there is still more need for businesses that serve local needs, such as a grocery store or more inexpensive restaurants.
With uncertainty hanging over the future of the T, Shoenberger said the people of Allentown have a “great spirit and vision of where they want the neighborhood to be.
“They want people to pay attention to them,” he said. There’s not always “a unifying [vision] … But I think Bottlerocket, Re360, I think Hilltop Alliance, the CDC, local businesses … we all want to see similar things for the neighborhood.”
Ember Duke was a Pittsburgh’s Public Source editorial intern. She can be reached at ember@publicsource.org.
This story was fact-checked by Pam Smith.
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