The Northside Chronicle
October 2020 Est. 1985
Volume 36 Issue 10 - FREE -
The Community Newspaper of Pittsburgh’s Historic Northside
The Coop Chicken and Waffles now has permanent roost in the Northside By Matthew Benusa There’s some fresh fowl at 401 E. Ohio St. Nicki Cardilli and her partner, Justin Fitzgerald, have established a permanent roost for their down-home Southern staple, The Coop Chicken and Waffles. Fitzgerald, a Texas native, made the first move on their original venture, a food truck, six years ago on a whim. Cardilli said while she had discussed opening a business with him, “Justin texted me and said he just bought a school bus at an aucPhoto by Ashlee Green
Semicir Street residents Mitch Hall and Jaime Filipek stand in front of what they now refer to as the "valley": the active landslide area in the middle of the street, where their former neighbor's home collapsed last year. The residents say they've done enough research and landscape management on and around their home to feel confident that it will not have the same fate. n
Photo courtesy of The Coop
The Coop Chicken and Waffles, which began as a food truck, now has a brickand-mortar storefront at 401 E. Ohio St. tion.” She responded, “Sweetie, what am I going to do with a school bus?” A yellow minibus soon turned into the red, white, and blue-branded “The Coop,” which has captured Pittsburghers for the last four years. The food truck is still operating despite the eatery’s brand new location on the Northside. You’re still able to catch it around the city or in the suburbs, and updates are posted via their Twitter page. It’s been over a month since their See Coop, Page 20
INSIDE
Long-awaited landslide work begins By Ashlee Green Semicir Street is soon to be closed for 2020. The City of Pittsburgh’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure (DOMI), in order to mitigate the damage done to Semicir Street by continuing landslides in the Northside’s Observatory Hill area, announced on September 14 that they have begun the Semicir Street wall and soil stabilization project. Through traffic will be completely closed off from Perrysville Avenue to Hemphill Street for approximately six months, with the exception of resident, emergency, public works, and delivery ve-
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hicles. The project, an $890,000 effort of DOMI, will work toward fixing slope instability issues in the area. It’s a response to a condemned home collapsing and others being evacuated and demolished in the area. Over the last year, engineers have assessed the Semicir Street hillside structure in preparation for the project launch. Jaime Filipek and Mitch Hall live at 49 Semicir Street and say this project has been a long time coming. They say driving and parking along Semicir is already difficult: garbage trucks, for example, have to back down the street, and residents often don’t receive packages because drivers don’t
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want to chance it. Last year, they say—the same year their former neighbor’s home collapsed from landslide damage—electricity lines were capped and replaced along most of the street and removed entirely from the active landslide area, what they now refer to as the “valley.” “...The middle of the street no longer exists in terms of utilities,” Filipek says. Updated water lines and new fire hydrants were added, too, they say, to deal with the area’s ongoing water runoff issues. Filipek and Hall say that so far, they have seen PWSA workers scoping and cleaning out sewer lines, which are located See Landslide, Page 10
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