Is this the year of the West End?

Dru Simeone thinks so -- and her enthusiasm rides on a new brand: West End Village. The executive director of the West Pittsburgh Partnership told a recent gathering of community development professionals and residents that the neighborhood has the chance it has sought for years: money and consultants to begin building a master plan.

"Now our success rests with each of you," she said.

For the next six months, the process will pull together interested residents and business owners to compile a document that will amount to a wish list -- but one deemed worth funding and guided by professionals.

Master plans are long-term development guides. Some goals look like pie in the sky early on. Nonprofit pros describe the first step as "getting the low-hanging fruit." The pie comes later.

"Ten years ago we were dreaming the impossible," said Lou Bucci, the partnership's board chairman who arrived in the neighborhood then. "We had empty storefronts, streets with drug addicts and two out-of-control bars. And we wondered whether we could ever fund a master plan."

State Sen. Wayne Fontana, D-Brookline, came up with $150,000 in state funding. The Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighborhood Development granted $30,000 for staff support. The Allegheny Foundation gave $25,000 for operating support.

The professionals who will guide the process will be architects, urban planners and design specialists, transportation engineers and landscape architects and marketing pros. The agencies are Chan Krieger Sieniewicz, CityVisions, Wilbur Smith Associates and Klopfer Martin Design Group.

"Come out to the meetings," Ms. Simeone encouraged residents. "Share your opinions of how this neighborhood needs to develop."

She said the rebranding effort happened a couple years ago. Banners that read "WE" hang along the South Main Street thoroughfare. "The wonderful aspects of our neighborhood -- the library, playground and shopping district are all ingredients of a village. It is a walkable, liveable, identifiable village neighborhood."

Several times over the past decade, it seemed the neighborhood was building momentum for a big leap. Long ago called Temperanceville, it has been a revolving door of respectable restaurant-bars. Several other entrepreneurial efforts have come and gone, too, and vacant storefronts are still a problem.

"Development has been hampered by flood issues," said Mr. Bucci. "We're probably the most neglected neighborhood in the city. We don't have many people and therefore we have a tiny voice."

The 2000 Census counted 466 people, which ranks the West End 84th among 90 neighborhoods in population.

The three businesses everyone names when touting the neighborhood -- Artifacts, an extremely high-end home decor warehouse; the James Gallery, an art destination; and Ceramiche, a store that sells high-end tile and stone for decorators and designers -- are not everyday retail opportunities for local locals.

Rick Hvizdak, an owner of Artifacts, said he envisions the West End as "a quaint, cute little village, not like any other place."

Ms. Simeone said the planning process can "blow wide open the doors for riverfront, housing and commercial development."

The neighborhood is nestled in a thin, curved strip of valley between Duquesne Heights and Elliot. As close as it is to Downtown, and even walkable from the North Side, it is situated behind a roadway configuration that nearly prohibits pedestrians and confounds out-of-towners.

One of the partnership's goals is to turn the remains of the West End Circle into green space with safe access for walkers and bicyclists to riverfront trails and the West End bridge.

Mr. Bucci said that in six months the road construction that has turned South Main and Steuben streets into parking lots of traffic "will all be worth it."

The $52.6 million reconfiguration of the West End Circle is scheduled to be completed in June.

A retired restaurateur, Mr. Bucci said he moved to Pittsburgh from California 10 years ago for opportunities and moved to the West End, seeing the neighborhood's potential so close to Downtown.

The West Pittsburgh Partnership has cleared several blighted properties, making empty lots available for new buildings, said Andrea Fitting of the Fitting Group, a marketing and branding consultant to the West Pittsburgh Partnership.

"It's nice to see in an area that obviously needs reinventing that there is a plan," said Mr. Fontana. "There's an opportunity for the West End now and I believe it will have a ripple effect" on other western neighborhoods.

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