A once abandoned terminal changed Southwest Atlanta. Its future is still unfolding.

Credit: Natrice Miller

Credit: Natrice Miller

A catalyst

From its beginnings, the neighborhood of Pittsburgh has been built on opportunity for Black Atlantans. Founded in 1883 by formerly enslaved people, it is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Atlanta. It was originally centered around rail yards, which helped give the community its name because the industry’s smog was reminiscent of the steel mills in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The site where Pittsburgh Yards now sits was once farmland for Clark College’s agricultural students. In the mid-20th century, it became a bustling trucking terminal, but it was abandoned by the 1990s.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation purchased the site in 2006 to breathe new life into the area by bringing in commercially affordable space for small businesses. The 61,000-square-foot small business hub offers $50-a-month memberships for access to its co-working space, and 101 micro-suites that start at 100 square feet for entrepreneurs.

“Our mission is to support wealth-building opportunities, hopefully create generational wealth through the scaling of entrepreneurship and job creation,” said Chantell Glenn, senior associate for the Casey Foundation.

“But patience is a virtue, and you cannot do this in a rushed manner that’s not community minded.”

Breaking ground

It took 12 years for the Casey Foundation to break ground on the site. During that time the nonprofit held constant planning meetings with the local community, hoping to be an example and a catalyst for how to do right by residents in real estate development.

Stephanie Flowers has lived in Pittsburgh for about 40 years. Growing up, “it was just like a community of family. And back then, everybody knew everybody,” Flowers said.

But things have changed. She’s seen legacy residents leave the neighborhood and new projects built that don’t take residents’ wants or needs into account.

So when the Casey Foundation said it would hold community meetings for input on its project, Flowers was skeptical.

“Are they really going to listen?” she recalled thinking. “Or are they going to come in and tell us what we can have and that’s going to be it?”

Credit: Handout

Credit: Handout

But Flowers was pleasantly surprised with the process. The community weighed in on the mission and the Pittsburgh Yards name and helped give the main Nia Building its moniker, naming it after the Kwanzaa principal of purpose.

“It was like a master class of rolling out something new to the community, but also allowing the community to be a part of it, to be able to co-design this beautiful space,” said Kiyomi Rollins, owner of the Ke’nekt Cooperative, and a longtime resident of the adjacent Westview neighborhood. Rollins also participated in the community engagement sessions and is now helping provide entrepreneurial support to Pittsburgh Yard tenants.

Credit: Natrice Miller

Credit: Natrice Miller

The hub’s opening in December 2020 also accelerated the completion of the access point to the Southside Beltline that is next to Pittsburgh Yards, Glenn and Flowers said.

“We boast being catalytic … just setting things in motion for additional transformation on this side of town,” Glenn said.

And while opening in a pandemic may not have been the original plan (and they waited until the following fall for a grand opening party), the Casey Foundation wanted to keep its promise to the community.

“It really goes back to the overall mission, which is us being held accountable, our team being held accountable for what we said we were going to do,” Glenn said. “And you just had to roll with the punches.”

Over the past five years, Glenn can point to at least five big pivots Pittsburgh Yards has had to make, like turning a unit originally envisioned as a maker space into an art museum after they couldn’t find an operator to oversee the use of the heavy machinery.

But that change brought the African Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta to Pittsburgh, which Glenn believes is probably the first art museum in the neighborhood.

Credit: Photo by Ty Peas

Credit: Photo by Ty Peas

2025 and beyond

This year has brought both good and bad to the business hub.

The Container Courtyard at Pittsburgh Yards, a group of standalone shipping containers that contain retail businesses, has continued to grow with the Beltline.

Lakeisha Jones, owner of plant store Pink Pothos, was the first tenant of the courtyard. A few years prior she was part of a small business incubator program with the Beltline, but when her time in the program was ending she needed to find a new space. She got connected with Pittsburgh Yards and has been open since last October.

“I think now just being in my permanent space, I’ve been able to really get my footing and decide what I want to represent, who I want to be and how I want to show up,” Jones said.

Credit: Jenni Girtman

Credit: Jenni Girtman

Another recent tenant is the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation, which provides free legal support to Atlanta families. It moved its administrative offices from downtown Atlanta to Pittsburgh Yards in March to be closer to the communities it serves, said the nonprofit’s executive director Michael Lucas.

Lucas said not too long ago he was conducting a site visit for a funder and as he was explaining the work the AVLF does for domestic violence survivors, he noticed someone who was walking into Pittsburgh Yards slowed down to listen. After the visiting group left, the individual approached one of the AVLF social workers.

“That was kind of what we dreamed of,” Lucas said, “just by working out of there, more people who need our work would learn about it than if we were in a high rise.”

But it has also been a tough year for Pittsburgh Yards as small businesses deal with a slowing economy, Glenn said. At one point the hub had an almost 90% occupancy rate, but by early December that had fallen to 67%.

Glenn is taking this as inspiration to better serve small business owners and provide more tailored support for them.

Credit: Natrice Miller

Credit: Natrice Miller

Stephanie Flowers said Pittsburgh Yards has become a place for the community to go to and is providing an opportunity for small businesses to have a low-cost space.

But she added some of the neighborhood’s residents who aren’t business owners are still unsure how the site can serve them, so she hopes Pittsburgh Yards can work to create opportunities where they can come and feel included.

“I think some of them are still trying to find out what their place is and what their role (is), because it’s so focused on the entrepreneurs,” Flowers said.

As Glenn looks to the future, she’s keeping the original mission front of mind, especially as development ramps up ahead of major events like the World Cup descending on the city.

“How do we make (Pittsburgh Yards) a destination, but not make it too overwhelming, or getting away from who this is supposed to be for?”

Ultimately for Glenn, it goes back to the history of the land and what it was originally used for: training Clark College students so they could build their businesses and take care of their families.

“I hope people remember that and see that this is a return of the land for the purpose of scaling Black entrepreneurship,” she said. “I hope that’s the impact and the legacy that this place leaves.”

— Staff writer Zachary Hansen contributed to this report.