Heritage Community Initiatives, a nonprofit dynamo that has provided educational, nutritional and transportation programs for the Monongahela Valley from its Braddock headquarters for more than 30 years, will relocate by a couple of blocks later this year.
The new site — a former elementary school on Jones Avenue in North Braddock that served as administrative offices for the Woodland Hills School District — will allow the agency to expand its preschool program and add even more to the 245,000 meals it provides every year.
Heritage announced Monday it had purchased the site and Allegheny County property records show it paid $440,000.
“This is a very good move for us,” said Paula McWilliams, Heritage’s president and CEO. “There are many greater efficiencies being in one location.”
The former Benjamin Fairless Elementary School is a familiar location for Heritage. Since 2017, it has used the kitchen there to prepare meals for its programs and more recently has used classrooms for its after-school and summer educational programs.
Ms. McWilliams said the agency began looking for new office space more than two years ago because its lease in a former Mellon Bank building on Braddock Avenue will expire in June. It had its eye on the former school, but with the school district still there two years ago, it announced plans to renovate the former Cuda Building that it already owned a few doors away.
When the school district announced last summer that it would move its administrative offices and sell the former school, Heritage stopped the $3 million renovation at Cuda before construction started. Instead, it stepped forward to buy the 4.5-acre school site about two blocks away.
And now it’s facing even larger renovations: $2 million to upgrade the building’s heating, ventilation, plumbing and electricity; and $2 million to expand the kitchen from 619 square feet to more than 3,000.
Those seem like daunting numbers, but Ms. McWilliams said she expects a good deal of that money will come from revenue generated by expanding the preschool and after-school programs as well as the nutrition program.
It hired three additional teachers this week and expects to expand staff from 50 to about 60 in the next few months.
The extra classroom space in the new building will allow the agency to move school-age children from the preschool site at a third location on Braddock Avenue. As a result, Heritage will begin accepting applications Thursday for more preschool children for the first time in more than 10 years because it will have extra space available.
The nutrition program worked at maximum capacity in the small kitchen, providing as many as 2,700 meals a day in the summer for kids in its programs and for other agencies. When the new kitchen is ready, Heritage can add more service to outside groups.
The agency also runs a van service that offers rides for 25 cents along four fixed routes to 16 municipalities in the Mon Valley. It has also expanded to help large employers provide transportation for its employees.
The decision to move to the former school leaves the ill-fated Cuda Building without a tenant.
After the Italian store closed there about 40 years ago, there have been a series of proposals that fell through: a coffee shop, the Brew Gentlemen brew pub and an upscale restaurant, to name a few, and now Heritage.
“I very much want to work with Braddock,” Ms. McWilliams said. “It’s important to me to bring something in [the Cuda Building] to benefit the community. We want to do whatever we can to bring more jobs into this community.”
With all those irons in the fire, Ms. McWilliams said, the agency is going to be busy.
“Yes, we’re going to be busy,” she said, “but it’s going to be good busy.”
First Published: February 17, 2026, 4:00 a.m.
Updated: February 17, 2026, 2:17 p.m.
Ed Blazina
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
eblazina@post-gazette.com
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