By Sean P. Ray | Managing Editor

OBSERVATORY HILL — Residents gathered on July 24 at the Valley Refuge Shelter to help shape the future of Riverview Park’s Grand Avenue entrance and Kilbuck Valley area.

This was the third re-envisioning meeting organized by Friends of Riverview Park, which is seeking to renovate and beautify the park area around Grand Avenue. That section of the park currently faces numerous issues, including the presence of Pittsburgh Department of Public Works facilities, a garbage and asphalt dump, lack of adequate drainage, damage from landslides and more.

The re-envisioning process began with unfortunate timing. The first meeting was held on March 3, 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the second meeting wasn’t held until May 22, 2023. At that meeting, members of the public made suggestions of what kinds of features they want to see incorporated into the park area’s renovations.

At the third meeting on July 24 organizers collected the suggestions from the last meeting and presented a map with early plans on what kind of renovations might be done. Audience members were given a series of green and red stickers to apply to the map around the conceptual renovations, green stickers signifying that they really liked the idea while red stickers meant the opposite.

Tim Nuttle, an ecologist with Oikos Ecology, and Brad Hazelwood, a landscape architect with Eisler Landscapes, led the meeting and discussions on behalf of Friends of Riverview.

Hazelwood said the goal of the renovations was not to “fill” the area up entirely, but just to add a few amenities to improve the park’s entrance and provide some additional recreational activities.

“It’s not going to be an amusement park,” Hazelwood said. Some of the recommended new features included a splash pad which could be converted into an ice skating rink in the winter, a daylighted stream to capture rain water and channel it away safely, vegetation restoration on Kilbuck Valley hillsides, an education center, an office for rentals and a gate to be shut when the park closes, among other features.

Hazelwood and Nuttle cautioned attendees that the process of getting these features installed is going to be a long one. When one person in the audience asked if there was “money available to do these things,” Nuttle quickly answered “No!”

“Not yet,” he further said. “That’s the point. We have to make a list to say here’s what we want and ask for the money from the city.”

Nuttle said there were multiple avenues for funding the project could pursue, such as state grants and direct city budget line items.

After receiving audience feedback, Nuttle and Hazelwood said the next phase is to come out with more exact plans, with specifications on measurements and projected costs for the most requested features.

“I would call it budgetary-conceptual,” Hazelwood said of the next phase of plans.

Another meeting is planned for sometime in September, which may be the final one, Hazelwood said. After that, Friends of Riverview Park will begin lobbying the city for financial support.