Friends and family of slain Pittsburgh police officer and Bloomfield native Paul J. Sciullo II will host a street hockey tournament on Labor Day weekend. The cost is $20 per player, with all proceeds going to Officer Sciullo’s parents.

Registration closes Friday, July 31. Please visit www.paulierizzo.com to read more about the tournament and its sponsors, or to sign the guest book.

To help promote the event, download a printable PDF flyer.

Saturday & Sunday, Sept. 5–6, 2009

Osceola Park
Bloomfield

Bloomfield Events Calendar

Redeemer Community Church is in the neighborhood! Redeemer will be holding worship service on Sunday mornings at 10:15 AM at the Bloomfield-Garfield Community Center (toddler and infant care available during service). We invite all to come and join us for worship. For more information, please visit the church website at www.redeemerpgh.org.

Fellow Main Street community Vandergrift is holding their second annual Italian Film Festival. Films Umberto D., Il Postino and Malèna will be showing at the Casino Theatre on Saturday, August 15, 2009. For more information, visit Festa Italiana di Vandergrift or the official site of Casino Theatre.

To help promote the event, download a printable PDF flyer.

September 11, 12 & 13

Join us we head for Mulberry Street once again! This time we’ll be there for the kickoff of “The Festival of All Festivals”.

Our Myer’s Coach will pick us up at the shop on Friday morning and we’ll depart promptly at 7:30 AM. Once aboard the bus, we’ll enjoy a boxed breakfast. We’ll make a couple of stops along the way before we arrive at our hotel, The Holiday Inn-Soho on Lafayette Street. It’s just a short two-block walk to the heart of Little Italy and the hub of the ever-popular San Gennaro Festival!

Friday evening, we’ll get together for dinner at La Mela. This great family-style restaurant is a very popular spot on Mulberry Street. We’ll be served an unbelievable variety of great Italian dishes starting with antipasto and working our way through to some delectable desserts. The fabulous dinner will include wine and espresso and is guaranteed to keep you fueled for most of the weekend!

Saturday morning, rise and shine to meet our coach for a short ride down to Battery Park. We’ll board the ferry and sail over to Ellis Island. Take one of the complementary guided tours or research ancestors who are sure to have passed through this fascinating famous landmark. Once back in the city, the afternoon is yours to roam the streets of NYC. Purchase some great “designer” purses, take in the sites or wander around Times Square. The afternoon and evening are yours to do as you will. Enjoy the action of the festival, munch of all kinds of goodies from the street vendors or discover a great new restaurant as you explore the streets of the city!

San Gennaro Festival
Photo courtesy of bryanesque

Sunday morning, we’ll make sure the luggage is on the bus before breakfast. You can stop in at the Landmark Café for some local diner-style breakfast or treat yourself to Napoli Café for a more luxurious champagne brunch. The Church of the Most Precious Blood, where the San Gennaro statue is kept, offers mass at 9 AM and noon. We’ll try to head out for home around 1:30. This should give us time for some last-minute browsing and shopping in the neighborhood before a relaxing ride back to Pittsburgh!

Friday, Sept. 11–Sunday, Sept. 13, 2009

Merante Gifts
4723 Liberty Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15224

Price per person based on double occupancy
$499.00 before August 1, 2009
$529.00 after August 1, 2009

Bloomfield Events Calendar

Two light rail stations in Downtown Pittsburgh will close each weekend for about four months starting Saturday, July 18.

The Gateway and Wood Street Stations will shut down each Saturday and Sunday through mid-November, meaning light rail service will terminate at the Steel Plaza Station along Grant Street on those weekends.

The two stations will close following the end of scheduled service each Friday and reopen prior to the start of service on the following Mondays. The closings will not impact weekday T service.

Bus shuttles will operate in Downtown Pittsburgh each weekend, transporting T riders to and from the Steel Plaza Station. The shuttles essentially will follow the T line, stopping outside the Wood Street and Gateway Stations. Transfers from the T to the shuttles are free.

The stations will close so that workers can build an underground rail crossover near the Wood Street Station. The crossover will play a vital role during the construction of a new Gateway Station, enabling inbound light rail cars to reverse direction at Wood Street Station.

This is necessary because neither Gateway Station nor the loop now used by light rail vehicles to turn around in Downtown Pittsburgh will be available during construction of the new station.

The weekend work, part of the North Shore Connector project, will end in mid-November, before the Thanksgiving Day holiday weekend.

For more information, visit portauthority.org or contact a customer service representative at 412-442-2000 or the TTY number, 412-231-7007 for the speech and hearing impaired. Updates also will be posted on the Authority’s Twitter site at http://twitter.com/PGHtransit.

In March, 2009, leaders from community groups, the business sector, local government and the higher education community launched a new citywide campaign, “The Black and Gold City Goes Green”, the first-ever attempt by any city in the nation to run a citywide citizen action campaign to cut global warming. The goal of the campaign is to work together to reduce heat-trapping gases from global warming, with a significant measurable decrease expected by January 2010.

The campaign includes a series of monthly actions, all with little or no cost, that families and individuals can take that will make measurable reduction in the heat-trapping gases they produce.  A new website, www.theBlackandGoldCityGoesGreen.com allows participants to keep tract of the environmental improvement they are making, and see how the reset of the city is doing.

“This exciting project will make history, not just in Pittsburgh, but around the nation,” said Joylette Portlock, western Pennsylvania outreach coordinator for Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future (PennFuture), which is coordinating the community outreach campaign. “The plan is designed to empower the people of Pittsburgh through their community and public interest organizations; civic groups; churches, synagogues and mosques; sports fans and players; the news media, and any other group to make Pittsburgh even cooler by going green. Together, we will save energy, save money, build green jobs and save the planet – all by taking a few simple actions.”

The Black and Gold City Goes Green is part of the Pittsburgh Climate Initiative, which is coordinated by the Green Building Alliance. The Initiative grew out of the work of Pittsburgh’s Green Government Task Force, which conducted a citywide greenhouse gas inventory and then created a Climate Action Plan. The inventory and plan are available at www.pittsburghclimate.org. Last year, Pittsburgh City Council unanimously passed a resolution of support for implementation of the plan.

For more information about the Black and Gold campaign, the list of proposed monthly actions and a fact sheet on compact fluorescent light bulbs, check out the website at www.TheBlackandGoldCityGoesGreen.com or call PennFuture at 412-258-6680.

Children’s Hospital is officially open and we are fortunate to have such a beautiful and world class medical facility in our neighborhood. There are many employees at this facility as well as thousands of visitors  every year that will come to Bloomfield’s shops and restaurants. Many businesses have put up banners welcoming employees and offering discounts. We have met with officials from Children’s Hospital and would like to pass on information on ways your business can sign up for their programs.

UPMC Perks Program

Please see the guidelines on the UPMC Perks Program:

Vendor Guidelines
Vendor Application

How to become a UPMC vendor

Below is information on how to become a UPMC Supplier Vendor from Eric Hess, Vice President and Project Executive of Children’s Hospital:

Suppliers first have to register with our Supply Chain group at UPMC. Any vendor wanting to do business with us should visit our supply chain webpage found at http://www.upmc.com/Services/supplychainmanagement/Pages/default.aspx. From that page, they can go to Supply Chain Inquiries, and from there they can register as a supplier to UPMC. I know the two leadership people that see each of these (one of them takes a look at every one), so they don’t just go into some black hole. If any of these suppliers meet the definition of an MWDBE (minority, woman owned, diversity, business enterprise), then they should contact Toni Silva, UPMC’s Supplier Relations Director. Toni is a primary contact person for local diversity suppliers wanting to do business with UPMC. Her number is 412-647-6665.

I will be communicating with Eric Hess on events in Bloomfield for their employee newsletter blast.

If you have any questions, please call 412-681-8800 or email the BDC.