By SUSAN JONES
The long talked about landscaping and pathways along the hillside between O’Hara and Allequippa streets got a boost last week when the Board of Trustees Property and Facilities committee approved $14.5 million for the project.
The idea behind the project — which will surround the new Recreation and Wellness Center on O’Hara and the Arena and Sports Performance Center next to the Petersen Events Center — is to create a new campus district with more and easier connectivity between upper and lower campus.
It will create create vertical and lateral connections to the new facilities and to DeSoto Street, said Dwayne Pinkney, executive senior vice chancellor for administration and finance and chief financial officer, and “provide areas for passive student and visitor recreation with views of the Cathedral of Learning and beyond.”
In addition, the project will capture underground up to 4 million gallons of stormwater from the site to reuse in campus chilled water plants and install a construction access roadway to ease construction traffic in the area. It will be funded by education and general debt and repaid by the E&G operating budget.
This portion of the 10.9 acre Hillside Transformation Plan is 1.9 acres of trees, sustainable landscaping, native plantings, gathering spaces and accessible pathways that is being dubbed Panther Overlook, said Aurora Sharrard, assistant vice chancellor for sustainability.
The area will be accessible by stairs, called Panther Run, alongside the recreation center or by taking an express elevator inside the rec center from O’Hara Street to the fifth floor. The rec center’s main entrance on the fifth floor will open onto Panther Overlook.
The original design for the area won an honorable mention for David Rubin of Land Collective from the Society for College and University Planning for “Excellence in Planning for a District or Campus Component.”
The hillside also will be reforested, Sharrard said, with several hundred small and large shade, ornamental and coniferous trees, which will “immediately increase tree canopy in line with our Institutional Master Plan goals, and as they mature, they'll continue to increase shade and reduce the heat island effect.”
All the landscaping will be in line with Pitt’s sustainable landscape design guidelines, including a focus on native plant species and pollinator gardens.
“This is a conscious connection of campus and a reactivation of previously vehicular heavy spaces that are instead being transformed into an urban oasis that also increases campus accessibility with pedestrian and bike pathways, stairways and a connection into the Recreation and Wellness Center, which will improve campus mobility,” Sharrard said.
The Panther Overloook project is slated to begin this month and be completed in spring 2026.
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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