Officials celebrated a new connection between the Hill District and Downtown Monday during a ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the I-579 cap project and the dedication of the park it created.

The $32.3 million Urban Connector, or “Cap” project, once again links Pittsburgh’s Hill District to Downtown. The areas were divided in the 1950s when a portion of I-579 better known as Crosstown Boulevard was constructed.

The community had been calling for a new way to connect with Downtown after the interstate severed its link with that part of the city, officials said.

“A great injustice was done in the ’50s,” Gov. Tom Wolf said. “And this is finally a way to address that injustice.”

“This is what innovating, ambitious infrastructure projects look like. This is exactly what we need.” pic.twitter.com/bkJKcnufsL

— Julia Felton (@JuliaFelton16) November 22, 2021

Officials said they had been pushing for years to find funding for the project. U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Forest Hills, said they began working toward federal funding in 2009, though they didn’t earn their first planning grant until 2014.

The project was funded by a combination of local, state and federal money, as well as funds from private entities, officials said.

The project, though it took years to accomplish, will be “transformational,” Doyle said.

“Sometimes it takes a little while to rectify injustices,” said state Sen. Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills. “That’s what happened here. We are rectifying an injustice. I think that’s what the story is today.”

The connector aims to once again allow Hill District residents direct access to Downtown and the resources and economic opportunities located there, solving a problem residents have been facing since the construction of Crosstown Boulevard.

“Pennsylvania needs more infrastructure projects like this one,” Wolf said. “This is what innovating, ambitious infrastructure projects look like. This is exactly what we need.”

The cap project created a 3-acre park, which city officials have named Frankie Pace Park in honor of the longtime community activist from the Hill District.

Born in 1905, Pace was head of the Hill District Community Council. She also owned Pace Music Store. She died in 1989.

The park will include pedestrian pathways, bike routes, recreation and educational areas and rain gardens, along with design elements developed by neighborhood artists. It will also feature story walls honoring Pace, as well as abolitionist, journalist and educator Martin Delany, who also was a Hill District resident.

The park will not only provide a green space for city residents to enjoy, but it will also allow the Hill District to once again feel connected with the Downtown area — which was the main impetus for the entire initiative, Mayor Bill Peduto said.

“We stand where the connection to the greater Hill has already been built,” he said, praising the fact that today’s youth will see the Hill District as connected to the opportunities Downtown after it had seemed “unwalkable” for so long.

The project also focused on what the community needed and wanted in a park at the site, City Councilman R. Daniel Lavelle said.

“Once we decided to design this park, we also did it with a lot of intentionality,” which involved engaging residents with design ideas, Lavelle said. That’s how the ideas for art — like the story walls honoring local activists — came to be.

The goal, Lavelle said, was to create “a place that was reflective of the Hill District’s past while also bridging us to the future.”

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