Link to November 21 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article.
Excerpt: When Chris Spina went to Duquesne University in the 1970s, he didn't think the area was a neighborhood. Most students commuted and few ventured to Fifth Avenue.
The northern boundary of Uptown, Fifth Avenue now bustles with students, restaurant patrons, hockey fans, concert-goers, workers and potential investors.
It's a pivotal time for the roughly 905 households that nestle nearly invisibly into the industrial and institutional streetscape. Tens of thousands of drivers pass through every day without seeing the neighborhood. But it is starting to assert itself.
On a recent balmy day, do-it-yourselfers on ladders pounded and painted along Locust and Tustin streets. Ed D'Angelo popped out of his Forbes Auto Repair shop on Gist Street to hail sculptor James Simon. Children were walking home from school. A dog barked.
It was a village moment in a place that John Fleenor, a Gist Street resident and artist, calls "a work in progress."
