May 16, 2004 By Paul Sunyak 5 min read

From a lawn chair on the stoop of her apartment in Snyder Terrace, surrounded by a cool breeze and lots of sunshine, Lorraine Walker got a bird’s eye view of the beginning of the end for most of Bierer Wood Acres. The first of 16 row houses in the public housing project was being turned into splinters and rubble, with puffs of white dust squirting into the sky, as demolition machinery was unleashed on the nearby eight-unit building that Walker once called home.

“I used to live down there, for 13 years,” said Walker, 68, who’d just concluded a gab session with Andre Walters, a Fayette County Housing Authority department head. “I was teasing him, saying I want to move back (there). He said, ‘Go ahead, you can move back today if you want to.'”

But within five minutes, that option became a physical impossibility. The building that contained Walker’s former address, 66 Pershing Terrace, ceased to exist just as Mario Piccolomini lowered the huge metal bucket on the machine he was operating.

It had taken him five to six hours over two days to transform a slice of Bierer Wood Acres real estate. By the time his firm’s $329,000 contract is done, another building will be erased from Pershing Terrace. The thinning out will also eliminate six buildings from Snyder Terrace and eight from MacArthur Terrace, as the housing authority pares its number of units in Bierer Wood Acres from 192 to 86.

In total, 106 units are disappearing from the South Union Township site near Uniontown Hospital, a holding generally regarded as the housing authority’s most valuable piece of real estate.

Walters, the authority’s director of technical services, said a revitalization partnership that includes the hospital, a private developer and the county and city redevelopment authorities hopes to remake the site, which may affect the remaining units two or three years down the road.

For now, though, the goal is thinning out the 1950s-era housing project and using the brick and masonry debris to fill in part of a bowl-shaped crater in its middle. Walters said that move will result in a more tapered contour to the side of the steeply elevated, grass-covered bowl that’s closer to the hospital. “There’s going to be a lot of excavation and grading at this site,” said Walters, who estimated the work will conclude in six months.

But as the face of Bierer Wood Acres begins changing forever, longtime residents such as Eilene Hillhouse, 60, who has lived in 82 MacArthur Terrace for 12 years, have a sentimental view. Watching the demolition of the building next door as she leaned on the trunk of a car in a parking lot shared by several buildings, Hillhouse lamented its passing.

“I had a lot of good times in that place. I had a lot of good friends in there,” she said. “We’d sit on the porch, a lot of us, until 3 or 4 in the morning, laughing and talking. It’s kind of sad to see that coming down … I don’t know what I’d do if that was my place.”

Cindy Harris of 88 MacArthur Terrace, who has lived in Bierer Wood Acres for five years along with her disabled husband, said she views the demolition as a squandering of good public housing.

“I kind of think it’s a shame. With so many homeless people with nowhere to live … and they have to tear them down?” said Harris. “A lot of these (units) are very livable. But I guess they’ve got to do what they’ve got to do.”

Terrence Jackson, 41, was awaiting the chance to talk with Piccolomini about a job opportunity. Walters said the contractor has been hiring project residents to help prepare units for demolition and perform cleanup duties.

Jackson, a member of Uniontown Area High School’s 1981 state champion basketball team, said he lives at 52 Pershing Terrace with his mother, who has spent most of her life in Bierer Wood Acres. He has spent a great deal of time living there, too, and offers a solid endorsement of its appeal.

“This is a nice project, you know. It’s a decent project,” said Jackson, currently between jobs. “I hate to see it go. It’s not going to be the same, that’s for sure. I loved this place. But I guess it’s for the better.”

And as Piccolomini prepared to start knocking down the second of 16 buildings Wednesday afternoon, Walker edged forward on her lawn chair and pontificated about her own future. Last year she moved a couple of buildings up, to 85 Snyder Terrace, to accommodate the demolition.

She doesn’t want to move again within Bierer Wood Acres. Nor does she want to move out of the housing project, if that’s what the revitalization ends up requiring.

“People say, ‘When the time comes, what are you going to do, Miss Lorraine?'” said Walker. “And I’ve told them, ‘Well, when it comes time (to move), I’m going to pitch a tent down there in the ball field.'”