Healcrest Green Community Conservation Project

A Unique, Urban Green Space

2025 Update | We did it! In partnership with local leaders and passionate community members like you, we have completed this community conservation project and Healcrest Green will be forever conserved!  

Background | In the center of Pittsburgh’s Garfield neighborhood sits a 1.6-acre plot of green space. Over the years, this land has served as a farm, a community learning and gathering space, and as an unofficial trail for nearby Garfield residents. Today, Allegheny Land Trust owns and conserves this land as a permanent community green space with recently-built sustainable trails. 

Starting in 2019, ALT worked with the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation (BGC), the nearby Environmental Charter School (ECS), and passionate neighbors like you to conserve more than half of those parcels. Thanks to all of those helped make this project a reality through donations, partnerships, volunteering, and more.

Now that the entirety of the land is conserved, the goal is to follow the collaboratively-designed vision charted with key community partners. Some of those plans include opening the land for public use as a place for passive recreation and enjoyment of nature, community gathering, gardening, and an active outdoor classroom. The protection of the land will deliver a host of environmental benefits that will further enhance the neighborhood including improved air and water quality, stormwater absorption, sound buffering, urban cooling, wildlife habitat protection, and more. The flora, fauna, and community are already experiencing some of these benefits as ALT and community partners have begun site activities like trail-building, trash removal, and habitat restoration efforts.

There are three primary outcomes of this on-going project:

• The acquisition of this rare 1.6 acres of urban green space for its permanent conservation as a community green space. (COMPLETE)
• The active stewardship of the land by community partners to facilitate its transformation to a safe and productive natural area by maintaining and improving its scenic beauty, natural habitat capacity, and basic user features and amenities (removal of invasive and the planting of native plants, walking paths, outdoor classroom space, gardening plots, natural play areas, etc.). (ONGOING)
• The on-going utilization of the area for other community and environmental purposes including environmental education, gardening programs, small gatherings, and other as defined by community and partners. (ONGOING)

 

Keep an eye on this webpage and ALT’s monthly e-newsletter for next steps in conserving this land forever. If you have questions or want to support this effort, please contact Tom Mulholland, ALT’s Director of Community Conservation, at tom@alleghenylandtrust.org.  

Project Media Coverage: The Bulletin September 2021