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Tuesday, 17 August 2010 14:17

Written by Diana Nelson Jones

I’m starting to get a soft spot for Beechview. Its fine folks manage to live without pretense in the middle of a hornet's nest of politics, and they have waited so long for their once thriving retail corridor to be something again.

It’s got nothing going on if you just glance out your passing window, but we now know that an IGA grocery will be rescuing the forlorn shuttered Foodland in the spring and a new high-end butcher’s shop is coming to the little storefront that used to be a pet store.

Today, while photographing past and present storefronts, I met Joyce E. Devlin. This is she in the photo, in front of 1609 Broadway, right across from the grocery store. She bought the former bank last year.

“I always wanted to be on Broadway,” she said, taking a big draw on her smoke. “I just didn’t know it would be in Beechview, where there’s no beach and no view, but surf’s up.”

She said she wants what ex-Pittsburgh developer-turned-escape-artist Bernardo Katz (*see footnote) once claimed he wanted for Beechview — to return it to vitality. Her plan is to open Joyce E. Devlin by Design in October. If she is successful, people will shop for gifts, visit her artist studio and buy coffee and hot chocolate at a to-go window.

Several blocks off Broadway, a new  production opened this year at the end of Rockland Avenue — a new community garden near the new spray park near Beechwood Elementary, which is not new but is still open.

The garden was developed and is maintained by Pretty Up Beechview, the band of merry beautifiers that has regular litter clean-ups. To see more photos and learn more about the organization, visit https://sites.google.com/site/prettyupbeechview/PrettyUpBeechview/community-garden.

 Christy Baraff, a Pretty-Up participant, said the site has been planned for more than a year and got help from the city's "Green Up" program, but too late for spring planting. The community planting day of ornamentals, shown here, was Sunday.

"Our vision is to have a true community site that can be used for more than just gardening," Christy wrote in an e-mail. "We look to have educational programming, and other activities such as movies in the park."

Folks, just another example of what can happen when people stop talking about their ideas and start acting them out.

* Katz, who was indicted by a federal grand jury last year for mortgage fraud, owing the Pittsburgh Urban Redevelopment Authority more than $700,000 in defaulted loans, faces counts of wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud but is apparently safely ensconced in Brazil, since the United States’ extradition treaty with Brazil does not cover Brazilian citizens.

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