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Audubon Greenway Phase I & II
Allegheny Land Trust has recently purchased this 98-acre tract in Sewickley Heights, adjacent to the 80-acre Sewickley Hills Park.
The property consists of open meadows, wooded slopes, spring seeps and headwaters of Little Sewickley Creek – a “Medium – Gradient Clearwater Creek Community” as defined by the Allegheny County Natural Heritage Inventory (ACNHI). It is located within the Little and Big Sewickley Creek Area Landscape Conservation Area (LCA) which is the buffer surrounding the Camp Meeting Woods Biological Diversity Area BDA. The Camp Meeting Woods BDA has been ranked “Exceptional Significance” and contains two occurrences of State Significance – NC001, State Significance S3; and NC002, State Significance S2. Following is an excerpt from the ACNHI.
"This [Campmeeting BDA] BDA is recognized as both a High Diversity Area and a Community/Ecosystem Conservation Area which encompasses a significant forest and stream community. The many topographic features, aspects and elevational ranges provided within this large BDA add to the overall biological diversity and potential natural qualities of this site."Miles of trails exist on the property that helps to link Sewickley Hills Park to the extensive trail system of Sewickley Heights Park. The total acreage of the two public parks and adjacent conservation lands held by ALT is more than 1100 acres.
The property has almost one mile of frontage on Audubon and McGee Roads and is less than a minute from the Mount Nebo interchange of I-79 which is experiencing accelerated growth, including a 384 unit apartment complect and a 392 unit townhouse complex under construction.
The land was zoned for single and multi-family housing sites, that if constructed, would have had a significant negative environmental and aesthetic impact. A large area would have been cleared and graded to create level building pads for homes and driveways Construction would have destabilized the moist wooded slopes, disturbed spring seeps and degraded the water quality of Little Sewickley Creek with erosion. Landscaping for new homes would have introduced exotic and invasive species into the ecosystem, and lawn care would have introduced harmful chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides into the soil and watercourses of the BDA. Fortunately, Allegheny Land Trust has been able to successfully raise the funding to acquire and protect this land as permanent green space.