Ribbon cutting held for major project in Pittsburgh

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — It's a new day in Pittsburgh's East Liberty neighborhood, as a decades-old problem there has been solved.

The problem? An old roadway that circles the business district chokes off hundreds of businesses, leaving most of them shuttering their doors

On Thursday, that roadway, known as Penn Circle, was completely reimagined. According to businesses in the area, the roadway was re-imagined into a success.

East Liberty's The Suite Spot Barber Shop is one of those success story. The owner knows that well. He started here as a barber 21 years ago and now owns it. He and most of his clients have seen East Liberty transform from a dying area into a dynamic business district.

"Just the culture has changed," Horace Topeck said. "It used to not get this traffic, especially down at this end of the street."

Penn Circle was first conceived in the 1960s, when the idea came to build a roundabout of sorts that circles the business district.

The problem? It was the opposite of progress. It choked off what was known as the second downtown of Pittsburgh as motorists stopped going inside, using the circle to get around the businesses instead of visiting them.

Today's redesign has fixed many of the original design flaws.

"When you grow up in a community, you see for yourself when you come back and see what it is today," Mayor Ed Gainey said. "It just shows me what happens when you have a community like East Liberty that continues to come together."