Rock Alley Action Team

 

Meeting Minutes: Monday, October 17th, 2011

 

Attendance: 7 people

 
1. Recap of current Greenway Events

• a. The entrance project for the Love Your Block Grant is put on hold due to a safety concern for the Greenway.
• b. Penndot and DPW recently met at the greenway to discuss the removal of the fence for the entrance project.
• c. Although the greenway is owned by the city, Penndot owns the fence (because of the greenway is adjacent to 376). They will be padlocking the gate in the near future until a new fence is put in place, closer to the greenway’s drop off.
• d. This may affect the bike trail project due to its close proximity to our site
• e. PWSA- Was going to give us a spigot for the community garden/community orchard, but they don’t have any water on that side of the street
• f. DPW thinks we will overwater and cause the hillside to crumble

2. City’s legal dept and Jason Kambitsis from City Planning commented on the Rock Alley project

• a. A question posed in earlier meetings was: “Why can’t we build a trail on the greenway when other greenways also have trails?”
• b. The greenways in the city are passive, meaning they can’t be built upon. The trails that are on other greenways in the city were already in place prior to the greenway designation.
• c. In order to create a trail on the greenway, we will need to have the city change legislation or make an exemption.
• d. The exemption (or easement) seems to be the most practical way to achieve this goal, since change in legislation takes time

3. We want to generate more interest in the Rock Alley group

• a. Have OPDC’s community organizer, Tara Sherry-Torres, help spread the word
• b. Table at the Oakland 2025 event on October 27th at St. Nicholas’ Greek Orthodox Church from 6-8:30PM
• c. Send people to the www.rockalley.org website and the Facebook group.
• d. We also need to think about how we can get them involved, once we generate the interest.
• e. Large scale marketing plan may be to utilize Google Satellite. Google retakes aerial photos every three years, and they are about to do it again. If we do something large enough, they may be able to see it.

4. Looking for a landscape architect to look at the site

• a. We will not be able to use Pfaffman & Associates to do the trail design and soil testing.
• b. We will apply for funding from Community Design Center Pittsburgh (CDCP) to hire a landscape architect.
• c. However, we currently have a grant with them and we cannot apply for another until we use up the money that we have now. This will probably occur sometime early next year.
• d. Dave and Phil will compile a list of all the issues that we have run into on the Rock Alley project to present to the landscape architect.

5. To Do List

• a. Ask Penndot, what we need to do in order to open up the tunnel
• b. Visit the www.rockalley.org website and figure out what we need to add/delete/edit

6. Our next meeting will be Monday, November 21st, 2011 at Community Human Services from 6:00-7:30PM.