The Significance of a Little Pizza Shop

I was wondering if any of the coverage of Dok Harris’s campaign kick off would pick up on this last week. (Post-Gazette coverage – Franco Dok Harris kicks off mayoral bid, July 28, 2009.)  But this post on Schloss in the burgh – Please explain this to me – reminded me that no one has mentioned the significance of Vento’s Pizza yet.  It has been so long that I almost forgot about it – and there isn’t much out there on the web – the Vento’t story occurred before every news item was posted to the web. But thanks to the website Castle Coalition (whose tag line is Citizens Fighting Eminent Domain Abuse)- we found this article from their 2003 report.

Home Depot Decides to Include Local Pittsburgh Pizzeria in its Plans Rather than Try to Have it Condemned

In 1998, Home Depot announced plans to build an $8 million, 131,000 square foot store and garden center on the former site of an old Sears store in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh. However, a number of local small businesses would have to be displaced in order to accommodate the Home Depot and adjacent parking lot. These businesses included a bar, a dry cleaner, a nail salon, and Vento’s Pizza, a popular pizzeria that had been in the area for over 50 years.1 The Pittsburgh Urban Redevelopment Agency (PURA) hoped to avoid using eminent domain for the project, and promised to find suitable, nearby locations for the displaced businesses. The relocation effort was a success, except in the case of Vento’s Pizza. Vento’s objected to PURA’s plan to relocate the pizzeria from its prominent location on Highland Avenue to a less traveled side street. A bitter local controversy followed, pitting proponents of the redevelopment against a fiercely loyal pizza constituency.

This little pizza shop has a big political history – here are some of the other articles from the Post-Gazette that reference Vento’s pizza. I think that the issue between Home Depot and Vento’s even made the cover of the Wall Street Journal but I have not been able to find the article online.  This pizza shop has been a significant stage for politics of development in Pittsburgh.

Local leaders say mayor’s energy will help him, July 10, 2006

Every Saturday morning after buying a Starbucks coffee in his Squirrel Hill neighborhood, Mr. O’Connor drives to East Liberty to shoot the breeze at Vento’s Pizza on Highland Avenue and run his car through a car wash. He often leads walking tours in the area.

Chief executive candidate Onorato not known for backing off quietly, October 19, 2003

One of his best-known blowups came at the end of his tenure in a council debate over city aid to Vento’s Pizza near the old Sears in East Liberty, which had to be moved to make way for a new Home Depot.

Gene Ricciardi mentioned speaking to owner Al Vento about the matter in Italian, and Sala Udin, smarting from council’s recent approval of a development plan in the Hill District that he didn’t like, said city residents “shouldn’t have to speak Italian” to get aid.

Letters to the Editor, No Thanks to Murphy, April 11, 2001

I take exception to Steve Leeper’s comments regarding my business (“Ad Watch: O’Connor’s TV Ads Are First to Air,” April 6). Mr. Leeper claims Mayor Tom Murphy saved my business and without the new Home Depot in East Liberty, I would have been “done.” Nothing could be further from the truth. While I appreciate Home Depot’s willingness to accommodate me after City Council President Bob O’Connor brought us together, my business was thriving before it came along.

Ad Watch: O’Connor’s TV ads are first to air, April 6, 2001

O’Connor is rotating two ads, one that offers a list of promises on issues. The second emphasizes O’Connor’s theme of neighborhood commitment by portraying the challenger as savior of Vento’s Pizza, an East Liberty landmark dislocated by development of a Home Depot store on Highland Avenue.