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Monday, June 02, 2003

By Jan Ackerman, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The South Side continues to flourish, but Carey Harris is taking a break from her years of working to develop it.

	Carey Harris stepped down Friday as executive director of the South Side Local Development Co. after more than five years. (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette)

Now she is just going to spend some time living there.

Harris, 34, executive director of the South Side Local Development Co. for the past 5 1/2 years, has resigned so she can focus on her family. She and her husband, John Werling, have an 18-month-old daughter and are expecting their second child this summer.

"This organization deserves someone who would be here 110 percent of the time," she said, sitting in the development company's offices on 14th Street, in the heart of the South Side.

She said it is a good time to step down because the South Side Local Development Co., founded in 1982, is financially secure and focused on its mission of tying everything from the South Side Works to Station Square into a unified neighborhood.

"We see it as a barbell, with the South Side Works on one end, Station Square on the other end and Carson Street in between," said Harris, whose organization also is working to help develop Hazelwood, Allentown, Knoxville and Beltzhoover.

	Name: Carey Harris Age: 34 Place of birth: Crafton In the news: After 5 1/2 years, she has resigned as executive director of the South Side Local Development Co. Education: Bachelor's degree in psychology, Temple University; master's degrees in social work and in public and international affairs, University of Pittsburgh. Family: Husband, John Werling; daughter, Audrey, 18 months; second child is due this summer.

Friday was Harris' last day on the job.

Rick Belloli was hired last week to replace Harris and will start Wednesday. Belloli most recently established and managed a housing and community development program in Detroit.

Harris, who plans to maintain ties with the organization and possibly do some consulting, already has planted her roots in the South Side. Soon after she took the top job at the development company in 1997, she and her husband bought a house on the South Side Slopes.

Now she can look outside and watch development of the South Side, where new buildings are sprouting up along East Carson Street, and a new bicycle trail and park along the Monongahela River offer recreational opportunities to residents.

She said the South Side has everything she wants for her family: an outdoor pool, an indoor pool, shopping, recreational opportunities and playgrounds and parks.

"The riverfront park is so nice," she said. "I take my daughter and we feed the ducks."

Harris is a transplanted suburbanite. She was raised in Crafton and graduated from Carlynton High School, received her bachelor's degree from Temple University in Philadelphia and two master's degrees from the University of Pittsburgh.

She had lived in Squirrel Hill and Mount Washington, but never on the South Side. In 1997, she was working with the Mon Valley Initiative when she was recruited by the South Side Local Development Co..

Much has changed on the South Side since Harris took over the reins of the nonprofit organization.

Back in 1997, the organization had only three paid employees and little money, but was working full throttle on a big vision for what the South Side Flats and Carson Street could become.

Today, the development company has nine employees, solid finances and many success stories.

It has built 70 townhouses, including Fox Way Commons, a development on 17th Street, and eight new row houses near 27th Street on the South Side Slopes. It has overseen major commercial development along Carson, where funky antiques stores, coffee shops, bars and restaurants have replaced empty storefronts from the days when the neighborhood was nothing more than a rundown mill town.

The former LTV steel mill site now is home to the UPMC Health System sports medicine complex, the Steelers practice facility, the new FBI headquarters and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers building. More retail, office and parking garages are planned.

About 270 new rental units are under construction at East Carson and 25th Street, on the western section of the former LTV site now known as the South Side Works. Continental Communities of Columbus, Ohio, developer of The Waterfront in Homestead, West Homestead and Munhall, is building them.

Harris said the community's income level is rising, but it is still poor enough to receive federal funds. Problems still exist with absentee landlords, though Harris said many of the newcomers who move in are buying homes, not renting.

The parking problems that have plagued the South Side for years never go away. Now that Harris doesn't have to find a solution, she is willing to go out on a limb and offer this assessment:

"I am convinced that parking is not as big of a problem as everyone says. The kind of parking crunch we have is a good one," she said. "These parkers are keeping Carson Street alive."

With bricks and mortar projects moving forward, Harris said, South Side Local Development Co. has partnered with the Brashear Association to develop human service programs to serve young and old alike.

She said that's what she likes about the organization and why it has thrived.

It has always been run by "good people with guts," Harris said.

"They knew when to say some things are worth preserving and some things have to change."