Neighborhood advocates and several Pittsburgh City Councilors say they want to provide after-school programming at a freshly-renovated rec center in the city’s Hazelwood neighborhood.
They just have to figure out how.
Neighborhood organizations have used Burgwin Recreation Center, located on the border of Hazelwood and Glen Hazel, and its adjoining park as a nexus of youth programming for the past several years. In 2023, City Council took $1 million from a cancelled transit project to pay for renovations.
But according to City Councilor Barb Warwick, even as work on the center nears completion, it lacks the funding needed for it to open this year. The community organizations that have provided services there are struggling to operate on tight budgets, she says. Without city support, the building will remain closed.
“The school year will be starting before we know it,” Warwick said. “It is my priority to ensure that the kids in Glen Hazel have access to a safe place to go after school, to do homework, to get food, to have fun.”
Warwick put forward a bill last month that would take $200,000 from the city’s Stop the Violence trust fund to fund social-services programming at the center. Part of her goal, she said, was to ensure neighborhoods like Hazelwood have the same opportunities as other neighborhoods. Her own children, she noted, have access to free after-school programs in nearby Greenfield.
“This is a citywide issue. There are multiple council members at this table who have programs just like this, operating small nonprofits on shoestring budgets,” she said. “Maybe they’re relying on a retiree that’s just being a hero for the community. But that’s not how it’s supposed to work.”
Councilors initially seemed skeptical of the proposal when Warwick introduced it in June, and asked how other recreation centers in similar situations should be funded. Stymied by those objections, Warwick held the bill for two weeks and invited Hazelwood residents to speak at Council about their hopes for the center.
Several community members did so Wednesday, urging Council during its public-comment period to fund programs at Burgwin.
Lauren Coursey, of the Hazelwood Initiative community development corporation, said funding the rec center would help provide young people with options for how to spend their time, at a moment when city leaders are voicing heightened concerns about youth activity.
“So many kids from the neighborhood, as well as from neighboring communities, come to use the spray park attached to the rec center,” Coursey said. “Funding the rec center would mean out-of-school activities in a neighborhood where there is no movie theater, no arcade, and very few third spaces for children and teens.”
Aceton Hill, a 10-year-old Hazelwood resident, and his mother, Denise Johnson, expressed similar concerns.
“Kids are running the streets and doing whatever they think they want,” Hill said. “There’s only a couple camps and after-schools.”
“We see what’s going on every day out in the streets. After-school programs, we have a couple, but it’s not enough to serve Hazelwood,” said Johnson, who said she worries Hazelwood has been “forgotten.”
James Cole, program director with POORLAW, a local organization that has provided many of the center’s community services, said the group needs support to keep making those services available to the neighborhood. He said he had spent a lot of his own money to keep the programs going, and had to get an additional job.
“Wealthier neighborhoods get the funding … to have an after-school program and summer camp, but the underserved neighborhoods aren’t getting the same monies to do this,” he said.
Councilors seemed more amenable Wednesday to the idea of finding some way to fund Burgwin than they had been when the issue first surfaced last month. Several wanted to determine whether a formal request for proposals or some other funding structure would be the best way to help the center, but none expressed opposition to supporting Burgwin.
“I’m committed to finding, or helping you find, or getting approved the funding so this place can continue to operate,” said Councilor Anthony Coghill. “It seems like a really great place.”
Warwick, meanwhile, voted to hold off on a vote for another two weeks, an effort to give Mayor Corey O’Connor’s administration more time to come up with next steps. She said Wednesday that she had spoken with O’Connor, Chief of Staff Dan Gilman and Parks and Recreation Director Eric Sloan about the center, and that they “expressed that they’re on board to work toward a solution.” With that two-week delay, the earliest Council could vote on the bill is July 22.
The mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the issue. But Warwick expressed optimism that funding Burgwin could be a start to making youth programs more available in other parts of town.
“All kids in Pittsburgh deserve safe, effective after-school and summer programming [and] out-of-school programming all across the city,” Warwick said. “It’s not something that we’re going to be able to fix overnight, but I am glad that we are talking about the issue in a really meaningful way.”