Getting & Going

After a few weeks of operation, Regent Square’s new GetGo hasn’t—so far, at least—morphed into the problem many neighborhood residents feared it might become.

No crowds, no traffic jams, no trouble...just a steady flow of business at the self-serve fuel pumps and walk-up cashier window.

This is no scientific finding, mind you, but the observation of a guy who walks around the neighborhood a lot talking to people and visiting businesses in the 1100 block of South Braddock Avenue at many different times of day.

Edgewood authorities report there have been no incidents that required police attention since the opening and that traffic movement, especially traveling west along Hutchinson, is no worse than normal.

There had been consternation in some segments of the community during the past six months—much of it documented on the pages of FH-RS Patch—since news of Dave Gerenyi’s plans to sell his long-time Sunoco business at Braddock and Hutchinson surfaced last summer.

That concern grew considerably when it came out that Giant Eagle wanted the site for a GetGo store. People worried about noise, crime, congestion and further exacerbation of the chronic pedestrian-vehicular do-si-do at the intersection.

A lot has happened since Gerenyi’s going-away party Oct. 13, including Giant Eagle’s startlingly rapid transformation of the former Sunoco property into a small-scale GetGo.

The community apprehension wasn’t entirely a matter of stuck-in-the-past, not-in-my-backyard traditionalists. After all, this is the same outfit that created the Wilkinsburg GetGo, a noisy, littered, worrisome place a scant two miles away on Penn Avenue.

But the Wilkinsburg store is a much different deal with a walk-in market, deli counter, hot meals—even fresh vegetables. The Regent Square store has none of those features; customers cannot even enter the building.

Still, it’s early days. Time, driver familiarity and better weather may cause detrimental developments. Certainly nothing at Regent Square’s GetGo corner will be helped by greatly increased traffic along South Braddock in the coming months as Kennywood opens and PennDOT’s elaborate Squirrel Hill Tunnel project gets under way, diverting Parkway East traffic through the neighborhood.

Will the little GetGo grow into a more elaborate walk-in market utilizing the old gas station service bays that now are empty? Giant Eagle officials say zoning requirements and terms of the acquisition limit the operation to the current configuration. Future expansion, if feasible, would be complicated and expensive.

That is to say, that’s all “down the road” for now.