Pedestrians and drivers make their way along Smithfield Street between Oliver Avenue and the Smithfield Street Bridge on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

For Gabrielle Davis-Jones, Smithfield Street defined luxury.

Heading to Downtown’s vibrant shopping corridor meant the nice coat, baby-doll shoes and tights, dressing in “your Sunday’s best to go buy some new Sunday’s best,” she recounted this fall.

Long after the heyday of multi-floor department stores, her childhood outings in the late 1990s and early 2000s were still big events: Kaufmann’s for school shopping, Burlington Coat Factory for winter, window decorations for the holidays.

“Going to the Smithfield Street stores — that was the first time I ever went to a [make-up] counter or went to a LUSH store,” said Davis-Jones, hospitality host at the Emerald City coworking and event space established in 2021 on Smithfield’s 200 block. The street “was truly a hub.”

Today, some two dozen street-level storefronts sit vacant along Smithfield, a roughly 10-block canyon that bisects Downtown from Fort Pitt Boulevard to Liberty Avenue. Two of the empty spaces — in the Frank & Seder Building at Forbes Avenue and One Oxford Centre at Third Avenue — span a block each, forming dim caverns amid century-old landmarks.

For public and private interests fighting Smithfield’s decline, the spaces represent a rare chance to revamp the historic thoroughfare and help anchor a Golden Triangle makeover.

They expect a yearslong haul.

Those persistent vacancies, perceptions of Smithfield as dirty or dangerous and other post-pandemic challenges demand sustained cooperation from city government, developers and investors to build on store openings, improvements in Mellon Square Park and other strides in the past couple of years, advocates said. To some business operators, much of the street hasn’t captured the public attention heralded in areas like Market Square.

“We’re the forgotten end, I think,” said Dan Means, owner of Sports World Specialties on Smithfield near Liberty Avenue. Closures of adjacent businesses like the well-known Smithfield Cafe began years before the pandemic.

For the complete story, visit https://www.publicsource.org/pittsburgh-downtown-smithfield-street-homeless-shelter-retail-strip-restoration-plans/