Steel shaped Hazelwood almost entirely, and the neighborhood you have entered on the south bank of the Monongahela River has been rebuilding its identity since that industry left. The LTV Steel Hazelwood Works, which operated on the riverfront below this bluff from the 1880s until it closed in 1998, was one of the last major steel mills operating within Pittsburgh city limits. It employed thousands of workers — many of them Black residents of Hazelwood — and when it closed the economic blow was devastating.
The former mill site, called Hazelwood Green, is now being developed as a major mixed-use technology and research campus. Almono LP, a consortium of Pittsburgh foundations, purchased the 178-acre site and is managing its redevelopment with extensive community engagement about what the neighborhood needs and who should benefit. Carnegie Mellon University's Manufacturing Futures Institute is among the early tenants.
Hazelwood Green is one of the largest urban brownfield redevelopment projects in the country. Whether it delivers broadly shared benefit to Hazelwood's longtime residents or primarily benefits newcomers is the central unresolved question of Pittsburgh's post-industrial future. The same question echoes in every mill town in the Mon Valley.