Tucked behind a nondescript bus shelter on Braddock Avenue and Verona Street in Braddock sits a pond teeming with exotic flora and fauna.

A green and yellow alligator lies in repose, its jaws dangerously close to the fish with brilliant multicolored scales. An octopus's arms tangle with a lavender and green lily pad.

There's no water in this pond. It's a 10-foot-wide mosaic constructed of thousands of pieces of brilliantly colored broken tile and cut glass, the centerpiece to what will become a small mosaic sculpture garden that will mimic a park, the brainchild of local sculptor James Simon. Eventually, the sloped walkway that leads to the recently completed pond will be filled in with a mosaic stream.

For as much that meets the eye, there's plenty more that doesn't. Public art projects such as this are intended to do more than just beautify. Mayor John Fetterman is hoping to transform the distressed borough -- both aesthetically and economically -- partly by making Braddock an arts community. "My immediate goal is to help change the outsider's perspective of what's possible in Braddock through the arts," he said. "This is a good way to counterbalance popular prejudices."

Mayor Fetterman's plan is not novel. Increasingly in post-industrial communities where old warehouses provide potential studio spaces, art is being used as a part of broader economic revitalization plans. Karen Newell, the spokeswoman for the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, which contributed $18,000 to the Braddock project, noted that the number of communities with cultural districts -- areas where local governments offer financial incentives for artists, entertainment venues and restaurants -- is on the rise across the country.

Art "does indeed change communities," she said. "So many cities are looking at art as a way to bring people in and enrich the economy."

To be sure, the payoff from investment in the arts can be hard to measure. It doesn't fall neatly into profit-and-loss categories on general ledgers or government balance sheets. But a study by the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council and the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit advocate Americans for the Arts suggests the impact can be substantial. It estimated that arts and cultural industries in Allegheny County generated about $342 million of local economic activity, added $15 million to local government coffers and supported more than 10,000 full-time jobs in 2005.

Public and private funding

This is the reason many communities have transformed abandoned or rundown parts of their community into cultural districts -- Pittsburgh's Cultural District being a prime example -- by enticing artists and arts organizations to move in.

Mayor Fetterman's hope, with the mosaic and other activities, is to attract artists and others who can appreciate the unique architectural features of Braddock's remaining buildings and preserve them rather than bulldoze them.

Like the Braddock mosaic itself, the project's funding came in several pieces, cutting across public and private funding sources.

It started when Allegheny County Economic Development constructed a bus shelter on Verona Street. It was built near the entrance to a new housing development, but a vacant lot, strewn with trash and overgrown with weeds, lay between the shelter and the new homes, creating something of an eyesore.

So Kathy Castner, a project manager who works with the county department, invited Mr. Simon to create something for the lot. Her department, through a federal Housing and Urban Development block grant, contributed $60,000 for infrastructure. The borough chipped in $2,000, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation kicked in another $18,000 and Mayor Fetterman's own nonprofit, Braddock Redux, contributed rent-free studio space for Mr. Simon to work. Seven local teenagers, employed through the local Braddock Youth Project that is run by AmeriCorp through Allegheny County Department of Human Services, provided labor.

The most effective public art projects, as in the case of the Braddock mosaic, utilize a range of local community resources in some way experts say, helping to broaden involvement and facilitate success.

"The goals are to stimulate public participation in the artistic process," Ms. Newell said. "It has a place of pride in that community because they worked so hard to bring it to fruition."

In this case, Braddock Youth Project participants performed most of the tedious labor of carefully breaking ceramic tiles and gluing them into place, and then filling in grout between the pieces.

On a recent warm August afternoon with rain threatening, the participants, some far more industrious than others, worked to put finishing touches on the mosaic, which had been transported from the studio and installed in the lot. They had worked five days a week, four to five hours a day, for an entire month, putting it together.

Cameesha Jones, 17, sat on a ledge and carefully broke bits of shiny blue ceramic tile with a hammer. She said the weeks of precise yet monotonous work of laying tile wore on her. "That's what makes it boring, doing the same thing every day," she said. "It was a routine."

Other participants were down on their hands and knees, laying in tile with gobs of sticky adhesive or scraping and scrubbing the grime that had accumulated on the surfaces.

Providing daytime activities for teenagers is critical in Braddock, which suffers from one of the highest crime rates of any municipality in the county, and some of the teenagers admit that their neighborhood peers are in gangs. But all said they want to go to college, some to pursue careers as lawyers or nurses.

Art and children

Research indicates that children involved in arts programs are less likely to participate in criminal activity, have better standardized test scores and better communication skills.

Still, the participants were skeptical that the program, which ran only four to five hours a day, could keep anyone bent on mischief out of trouble. Jason Paylor, 15, who has a vandalism charge on his record, said the program might keep kids out of trouble from "10 to 2," but the rest of the time, kids were free to do what they want.

He admitted that he would probably just be sleeping in until the late afternoon if it weren't for the program. But he also said that he preferred being in community service, which he was mandated to do because of his vandalism charge.

While they will be happy when the project was finished, "at the end, it's going to be worth it," Ms. Jones said. "We're doing something for the community."

Crouched over the mural, using a scouring sponge to remove dirt and grime from the tiles, 14-year-old Brittany Quarles agreed. "I've lived in Braddock all my life, and this will make it look better," she said.