Pitt plans housing up on the hill

Pitt’s campus seems to sprout new buildings from the grounds of Oakland like spring flowers…. Pitt’s campus seems to sprout new buildings from the grounds of Oakland like spring flowers. If the University has its way, the fall of 2004 will be no different.

That’s when Pitt hopes to build five new residence halls on its upper campus, another step in a concentrated effort by the administration to bring facilities like those of the lower campus to the hill.

Vice Chancellor for Public Affairs Robert Hill said the new complex would also offer students the option of remaining in on-campus housing through their senior year.

While Hill was unable to put a final cost on the building, he said the project, originally conceived in 1998, would be funded by rent receipts of its residence and would not perpetuate a tuition hike.

“It’s going to be a pretty terrific place,” he said, adding that it would include new amenities for students geared toward making the area a new hub for on-campus student life.

Not everyone is as optimistic.

Scarlet Morgan, executive director of the faith-based community development group Breachmenders Ministries, remembers having to sit through 25 minutes worth of traffic to travel 2 1/2 blocks up the hill to her Allequippa Street residence amid throngs of Pitt basketball fans en route to a game at the Peterson Events Center. When Morgan finally made it, she was unable to find a parking spot anywhere near her house, forcing her back down the hill to park along Fifth Avenue.

Morgan is concerned that the new construction will only worsen the existing problem of traffic congestion and parking in the western part of Oakland.

“I think that students have a right to have a campus life,” she said. “I don’t think they have to the right to have it in the midst of a residential community.”

Hill said the traffic problem would be addressed by the city planning commission, and that the University could not move forward with the project until the commission was satisfied.

But Morgan said she still isn’t convinced.

“I’ve heard that before,” she said. “Traffic has only increased with institutional growth and development.”

Morgan added, though, that the University and Oakland do not need to have an adversarial relationship.

“It’s not about the community being against students,” she said, “but creating a healthy environment for both to live in.”