ALIQUIPPA — For more than half of his life, Zabriawn Smith has waited for a promised community center in Plan 11.
The 28-year-old Aliquippa native was still a teenager when crews first broke ground on the towering, L-shaped structure at the corner of Washington Street and Sixth Avenue in 2005.
“I rode the bus past it,” he said. “I remember when it started, and I remember when it stopped. It just sits there, mostly empty."
Pastors at a local church, Sound the Alarm Ministries, purchased the former Jones Elementary School site 20 years ago alongside more than 100 other properties in Aliquippa with a desire to expand affordable housing and revitalize the local economy. Many of the lots were sold for just several hundred dollars at tax sales.