![\"Kalea](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/b4b63f68-33d8-4f90-870e-aa6060f8ddaa_1780432158.file.png\")
<\/a>PITTSBURGH \u2014<\/p>\nOrganizers of Homewood\u2019s National Night Out are facing challenges with road closure plans as the city of Pittsburgh offers an alternative route for the two-day event starting Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Sam Gibson, founder and CEO of ‘We the People 412’ and organizer of the event, said he requested to close a one-block stretch of Frankstown Avenue near Baxter Park, as has been done in previous years. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is something positive that the community, we’ve done it for the last past six years,\u201d Gibson said. <\/p>\n
Gibson said his permit request to shut down Frankstown Avenue was denied by the city. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve had the street closed every year, we’ve done this,\u201d Gibson said. <\/p>\n
The city has instead offered to close part of North Braddock Avenue, but Gibson expressed concerns about safety. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs you can see, while we’re standing here now, cars is flying past, and there’s kids in the street every single day. There’s kids that come past. Cars do not stop,\u201d Gibson said. <\/p>\n
Children who attend the event each year also shared their concerns. <\/p>\n
\u201cI want to feel safe because things happen around here all the time,\u201d said Clinton Valentine. <\/p>\n
The mayor\u2019s office said its permitting process was open from late May to July 24, but Gibson\u2019s application was submitted on July 27. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy application was in late, but their contact person was not available for none of us,\u201d Gibson said. <\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the mayor\u2019s office said, \u201cTuesday morning, the special events committee met and decided there was not enough time for PRT to reroute buses from Frankstown Avenue, especially because it’s during rush hour on weekdays, but we offered to close down North Braddock Avenue next to the park.\u201d <\/p>\n
The spokesperson added, \u201cThe city has not denied the permit. We just asked to amend the road closure to one with no public transit lines.\u201d <\/p>\n
For the first time, the event will span two days, running Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. Baxter Park is expected to host up to 500 attendees, along with vendors and entertainment. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe set up about 10 to 12 and it goes from 1 to 8 and we let the people just come. We got free food all day. We have entertainment for them, and we provide a lot of resources for them,\u201d Gibson said. <\/p>\n
“Every single year, everybody gathers around and just feels special, you know. I love coming out here,” Valentine said. <\/p>\n
Gibson remains hopeful that his request to close Frankstown Avenue during the event will be granted. The two-day celebration begins Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Homewood\u2019s National Night Out pushes for Frankstown Ave. closure during two-day event PITTSBURGH \u2014 Organizers of Homewood\u2019s National…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[109324,733,11540,25627,2163,57197,106716,80056,109327,73,75,74,7073,294,6654,109326,109328,108,109329,6673,109325,2583],"class_list":["post-257061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-baxter-park","tag-community-event","tag-frankstown-avenue","tag-free-food","tag-homewood","tag-mayors-office","tag-national-night-out","tag-north-braddock-avenue","tag-permit-request","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-prt-buses","tag-public-safety","tag-road-closure","tag-sam-gibson","tag-special-events-committee","tag-tuesday","tag-two-day-event","tag-vendors","tag-we-the-people-412","tag-wednesday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}