PITTSBURGH — Homewood residents want to know what’s next for a piece of neighborhood history, the Greater Pittsburgh Coliseum.
The Homewood Community Development Collaborative talked about the coliseum at a meeting on Thursday night.
The coliseum was first built in the 1800s to house street cars. In recent years, it has been sitting empty and has become a source of controversy.
In 2022, Channel 11 told you about a proposal to transform the facility into an entertainment space, complete with a roller rink and bowling alley.
The plan was put on hold when the Urban Redevelopment Authority decided to restart the planning process.
Then, in July 2023, the URA got a proposal from a development team that includes Homewood native Billy Porter and celebrity chef Rachael Ray, aspiring to turn the space into a community center, business incubator and roller rink.
The HCDC says the proposal has potential, but there are a lot of unanswered questions.
Channel 11 reached out to the URA to find out where the project stands on Thursday.
We received the following statement:
“The URA received a development proposal, unrequested, from a development team including Herky and Lisa Pollock, Billy Porter, and Rachel Ray in July 2023. We expressed interest in the development team engaging with the community to share their project concept, further refine their proposal, and begin conversations with potential partner agencies, to ensure that the project concept was aligned with the community’s goals. Since then, the development team has remained in a pre-planning/concept phase of the project. The team is required to meet a number of requirements to move forward any further. At this time, the development team has not entered into the URA’s disposition process for the sale of the Coliseum property.”
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