The New Look of East Liberty

Attended ELDI’s meeting at East Liberty Presbyterian last night to hear about the new plans for Penn Circle. First the big news: it’s confirmed that Target is going in where the projects were demolished between Penn & Broad. It’s this crazy structure where cars enter at street level and park, but then you go upstairs to the store itself.

Penn Circle itself will be redone to allow for two lanes of traffic in all directions, eliminating the one-ways on Penn Circle S & E. There’s also plans to make it much more pedestrian friendly, and overall it sounds like a big improvement over the hot mess that’s there now.

ELDI also has a lot of landscaping improvements planned, and the bus station is going away and moving to on-street loading.

None of this will be completed until Summer of 2011, but it’ll be interesting to see how this affects the already-changing East Liberty. What are your thoughts on all of this new development and construction?
— Matthew Buchholz