Brookline Chamber Answers Boulevard Project Questions

About 50 Brookline residents gathered Monday at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church Monday to discuss the Brookline Boulevard Reconstruction Project and, mainly, to share ideas about how to support local businesses during construction.

But several residents had questions about the project in general, and members of the Brookline Chamber of Commerce provided answers where they could. 

Construction timeframes, parking, traffic flow, bus routes and more were topics of discussion. 

Lois McCafferty and Nathan Mallory, both of the Brookline Chamber of Commerce, were able to provide the following answers:

• Michael Facchiano Contracting, located on McNeilly Road, was awarded the bid for the Boulevard project. There will be a liaison working to keep open lines of communication between the contracting company and local businesses.
• There will always be front-door access to Boulevard businesses, even when construction occurs in that block. Businesses will not be required to close, nor will they be asked to close, at any point, by any entity.
• Construction will happen in phases, and will affect one section of the Boulevard at a time.
• Parking will be seriously limited by construction, and the Chamber has formally requested help from the City of Pittsburgh to deal with the issue.

Unfortunately, many more answers are yet to come.

Design plans are finalized and the project is scheduled to begin this spring, but a construction schedule is not available yet. Plans to alleviate the parking situation are in discussion, but nothing has been decided. The Chamber will work with local business to determine how deliveries will be carried out.

McCafferty said Chamber members and Boulevard businesses would be notified of the construction schedule as soon as it becomes available. Another meeting likely will be held at that time.

And, Mallory said, there will be a number of sources residents can turn to for information while construction is happening.

Those include the community newsletter publication The Brookline, Dormont-Brookline Patch, the Shop the Line Facebook page, local church bulletins, and the offices of state Sen. Wayne Fontana, state Rep. Erin Molchany, and Pittsburgh Councilwoman Natalia Rudiak.

Mallory also said all residents are invited to attend monthly meetings of the four Brookline community organizations. Click here to see when and where they meet.

Editor’s note: Residents also shared numerous ideas for helping Boulevard businesses survive the construction. Dormont-Brookline Patch will publish an article on that discussion later this week.

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