Letter to President Jake Oresick
Board of Directors
Oakland Planning and Development Corporation
July 29, 2021
The Legal Rape of
The Land of Oakland
Continues
Mr. Oresick,
The Legal Rape of The Land of Oakland continues. OPDC, Oakland's Registered Community Organization, continues to be intricately involved in this ongoing tragedy as it has just sold its property at 233-237 Atwood Street to the University of Pittsburgh for future development. Another valuable property is forever lost from our community.
All of the benefits derived from the sale could have been provided to the community by the University of Pittsburgh without selling the valuable property to them.
One of the benefits heralded by OPDC for this sale is a commitment by the university to create opportunities for staff and faculty to live in Oakland. The university has over 12,000 full-and-part-time faculty and staff, but you can probably count on one hand the number of those who live in Oakland. Their choices not to live in Oakland are varied, with the destruction of the business district by the university and the binge drinking problems created by nearly 30,000 students at the Oakland campus topping the list.
Another heralded benefit of this sale is that it "memorializes Pitt's intention" to develop a grocery store in the neighborhood. Remember, before the insatiable greed and The Legal Rape of The Land of Oakland by the university, we had two major supermarkets and over a half dozen grocery stores that served an eclectic, vibrant residential community.
The University of Pittsburgh now owns more than 100 properties in our community. At a public meeting for the university's Institutional Master Plan, I asked Wanda Wilson how much money Pitt gives OPDC in "direct funding." The answer was a pitiful $25,000. It may very well be that no university has taken so much from a host community and given back so little.
What this sale is truly telling our community is that there will be no opposition to the university's Institutional Master Plan that is now before City Council. OPDC will not demand an independent, honest impact study to assess the effect this plan will have on our community for generations to come. This plan is moving forward even though no one at OPDC can give us that much needed in-depth assessment.
The sale also tells us that OPDC will not oppose future development by the university in our community.
OPDC had a choice between vigorously defending us from the uncontrolled expansion of the university in our community, or becoming a partner in The Legal Rape of The Land of Oakland. OPDC has chosen the latter.
Carlino Giampolo
Note: A notice in the April 3, 2022 edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette mentioned the Oakland Planning and Development Corporation sold its commercial property at 233 Atwood Street, to the University of Pittsburgh for $1,650,000.