🔥 What not to do during a drought

💸 Mayor Ed Gainey Presents Final Budget Proposal

The mayor wants to trim city spending by 3% in 2025 without cuts to services or staffing. The draft is the mayor’s second and final iteration. City Council will now hold televised hearings to consider revisions. The budget must be approved by Dec. 31. [TribLive]

• 😱 Wait, I thought Pittsburgh was going broke!? Mayor Gainey explains. [🎧 City Cast Pittsburgh]

💰 $1 Million for Century III Mall Site

The Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program will help finish demolition and fund future development. State Rep. Nick Pisciottano, who was just re-elected, says he wants to see it turned “back into a hub of activity for our community offering a place to eat, shop, and enjoy while creating hundreds of local jobs.” [WPXI]

• ➡️ What happened to Century III? Author and shopping mall enthusiast Matthew Newton taps into Pittsburgh’s nostalgia and explains why the mall went bust. [🎧 City Cast Pittsburgh]

📽️ Film Fest Kicks Off With ‘Clemente’ Doc

The Three Rivers Film Festival begins today with “Clemente” — a feature on the Hall-of-Fame Pirates legend — at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center. The film goes beyond his best plays and shares his struggles with racism as a Black Puerto Rican. [City Paper]

The Hill District — including Crawford Roberts, Bedford Dwellings, Upper Hill, Terrace Village, and Middle Hill neighborhoods — buzzed with Black businesses, entertainment, and culture as far back as the 19th century, spawning a storied Black newspaper, a legendary baseball team, and welcoming jazz legends like Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, and Billy Eckstine. In fact, local musicians were credited as the founders of Be Bop.

That all changed in the 1950s when this vibrant celebration of Black life was destroyed in the name of “urban renewal.” The city razed swaths of the Lower Hill and forced out 8,000 residents and 400 businesses to make room for the Civic Arena — the precursor to PPG Paints Arena — and its parking lots.

In 1966, residents drew a line at the intersection of Centre Avenue and Crawford Street, demanding “progress” stop there. By then, many thousands more families and businesses had been forced to leave. You’ll find a landmark to their activism at Freedom Corner. Today, the Hill is helping direct a wave of new investment in projects like the New Granada Theater, Jeron X. Grayson Community Center, and the First National Bank Tower, which is being led in part by ancestors of families displaced in the 1950s.

➡️ Read on to learn about the August Wilson House, where to get a great cup of coffee, the new grocery store with international flavors, and a park with a stellar sunset view.