New Neighbors in Hazelwood Green
The Greater Hazelwood Neighborhood Plan, “Our Hands, Our Plan,” was approved on November 5th, 2019. The Hazelwood community worked on this for a long time to make sure that it fosters opportunities to build generational wealth and community health to ensure current and future generations benefit from the neighborhood’s growth and prosperity. The plan focuses on building strong partnerships with stakeholders throughout the region while protecting and celebrating the unique landscape, history, culture, and spirit of Greater Hazelwood. A big part of this is Hazelwood Green, the City of Pittsburgh’s 10th Specially Planned district. Both the Greater Hazelwood community and Hazelwood Green share the goal of integrating the 178 acres of new development with the existing Greater Hazelwood neighborhood. Mill 19 celebrated its first official opening this September with CMU’s Manufacturing Futures Initiative, the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) Institute, and the economic development nonprofit Catalyst Connection. The work at Mill 19 will focus on A.I., automation, robotics, and other innovations related to manufacturing.
In December, we welcomed a new addition to the tenants at Mill 19—Aptiv. Aptiv is a self-driving car company and will house its research and development operations here. The company is the first private sector industrial tenant on this site since LTV Steel. As a company, they believe in developing safer, greener, and more connected solutions to enable the future of mobility.
In April of 2015, Aptiv successfully pulled off a coast-to-coast autonomous drive—– traveling nearly 3,400 miles from San Francisco to New York City, with 99 percent of the drive-in fully automated mode. Aptiv also has an older connection with Carnegie Mellon University (now their Mill 19 neighbors). In August 2015, they acquired Ottomatika, a CMU spinoff company that provides software and systems development for self-driving vehicles. Ottomatika’s software acts as the brain powering its advanced network of sensor technology for autonomous vehicles. Together, they create a platform that enables vehicles to make safe, highly complex decisions.
It is exciting to welcome these new tenants to the community and watch as Hazelwood Green transforms into the area that the people have envisioned for themselves in "Our Hands, Our Plan.” The addition promises to enrich the neighborhood as Aptiv is happy to work with the Community Priorities and Strategies outlined in the Neighborhood Plan to provide employment and internship opportunities to Greater Hazelwood community members and maximize resident opportunities associated with development.