Walk Washington Road this month and you will hit orange cones around Clocktower Plaza, a stairway to the T station wrapped in scaffolding, and crews measuring for shade sails that were not there in June. Walk ten minutes south to Beverly Road and you will find something else entirely: a 40-seat dining room, an exposed pizza kitchen, and a line for a crust that took 72 hours to make. Same municipality. Same season. Two commercial strips telling two different stories about where Mt. Lebanon is putting its energy right now.
That contrast is not an accident of timing. It is a pattern worth understanding if you live here, because it tells you something about how this town actually works: Washington Road is where the public money goes. Beverly Road is where the private bets land.
What's happening on Washington Road
The construction you're seeing Uptown is Phase I of Activate Uptown, the municipality's follow-up to the Vibrant Uptown streetscape project that wrapped in 2023 at a price the municipal government itself puts at $3.9 million. That earlier project rebuilt the basics: sidewalks, lighting, electrical conduit, planters. Activate Uptown is aimed at something harder to engineer, the public spaces people actually linger in rather than pass through.
According to the municipality's own 2025 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, published in April 2026, Mt. Lebanon has earmarked $221,000 to begin Phase I this year, targeting Clocktower Plaza and the stairway connecting Washington Road to the light rail station. Staff has also submitted a grant request to Main Streets Allegheny for another $100,000 to help close the gap. That $221,000 figure is lower than the $374,750 originally penciled into the 2026 capital improvement plan back in October 2025, a reminder that early budget lines and final earmarks rarely match exactly, and that the town is still assembling outside funding to get the full project done.
For scale, the entire 2026 capital improvement program covers roughly $18.8 million in projects. Uptown's plaza work is a small slice of that, but it's the slice residents will actually see and walk through this year. The scope includes:
- Sunshades for Clocktower Plaza, addressing the shade complaint that topped resident feedback during the district's 2023 public survey
- Wayfinding signage and projection art along the T-station stairway
- Seat-wall mosaics and accent lighting
- A bike runnel built into the stairway itself
- Decorative handrails replacing the current corroded ones
None of this is cosmetic for its own sake. The stairway connecting Washington Road to the T stop has been a known weak point in Uptown's design for years, largely because the station sits below street grade and out of sight from the sidewalk above. Riders coming into Mt. Lebanon from the city have no visual cue that a business district is waiting at the top of the stairs. This phase is the town's attempt to fix that first impression.
Uptown itself is not a small district. The central business district runs along Washington Road between roughly 733 and 600, and according to the municipality's own business district page, it holds 41 commercial properties and 182 businesses, 72 of them storefronts. It's also the only part of Mt. Lebanon served directly by Pittsburgh Regional Transit's light rail line, with connections to Downtown Pittsburgh, the South Hills Galleria, and South Hills Village. That transit link is part of why the municipality keeps reinvesting here even when the private market doesn't need the push.
The pizza went to Beverly Road instead
While Washington Road absorbs public dollars, the most talked-about restaurant opening Mt. Lebanon has seen in recent memory chose a different street entirely.
F&F Pizzeria, the Brooklyn-based pizza concept from chefs Frank Falcinelli and Frank Castronovo, opened its first location outside New York City at 307 Beverly Road, in the space formerly occupied by Bado's Pizza Grille & Ale House. This wasn't a satellite outpost of a national chain testing a suburban market. The Franks built their reputation over two decades in Brooklyn's Carroll Gardens, and they picked Beverly Road in Mt. Lebanon, not a denser or trendier city neighborhood, for that distinction. The build-out reflects that ambition: a 40-seat downstairs dining room, a full bar, a slice shop, and an exposed pizza kitchen behind windows the team opened up to bring in more light. The dough follows a naturally fermented, 72-hour process using only flour, water, and salt, and the menu leans on imported ingredients like Sicilian olive oil and Grande mozzarella from Wisconsin alongside the restaurant's signature clam pizza. A second Pittsburgh location is planned for the Strip District, with a third slated for Shadyside.
Beverly Road picked up other openings too. The Baked Bean, a coffee and bakery spot, debuted at 380 Broadmoor Ave on Valentine's Day 2026, bringing hand-crafted coffee drinks and artisan baked goods to a business district that already leans toward the daily-routine end of the spectrum: fitness studios, wellness services, boutiques, restaurants. Toastique's gourmet toast and smoothie counter rounds out that same corridor.
None of these openings required a streetscape grant, a construction crew, or a line item in a capital budget. Beverly Road, which runs from Overlook Drive to Ralston Place next to Lincoln Elementary School, simply filled its storefronts.
Two districts, side by side
| Washington Road (Uptown) | Beverly Road | |
|---|---|---|
| Boundaries | Roughly 733 to 600 Washington Road | Overlook Drive to Ralston Place |
| What's new in 2026 | $221,000 earmarked for Activate Uptown Phase I: plaza shading, T-station stairway repairs, wayfinding | F&F Pizzeria's first location outside New York City; The Baked Bean, opened Feb. 14, 2026 |
| Character | Coffee shops, pizzerias, small galleries, clothing boutiques, 72 storefronts among 182 businesses | Restaurants, boutiques, fitness and wellness studios |
| Transit | Direct Pittsburgh Regional Transit light rail access to Downtown and South Hills Village | No fixed-rail stop; street parking and a surface lot |
| Weekly public rhythm | Uptown Market, Curbside Concerts | Day-to-day retail and dining traffic |
The Saturday rhythm neither street owns alone
Regardless of which street is getting the shade sails or the sourdough, Uptown still runs the closest thing Mt. Lebanon has to a shared civic calendar. The Uptown Market, managed by the Mt. Lebanon Partnership and running since 2005, opened its 2026 season on May 30 and continues every Saturday through October 24, from 9 a.m. to noon, with produce, baked goods, meats, and cheeses from regional farms and food producers. The Partnership also runs Curbside Concerts, a program built specifically to bring live local music into the Uptown streets rather than confining it to a single stage.
That's the part of the routine that hasn't shifted even as the construction fencing has gone up. A Saturday morning at the market, a stroll past the plaza work in progress, then dinner a short drive away on Beverly Road once the craving for clam pizza sets in. The two streets aren't competing so much as dividing the labor: one hosts the town's shared spaces and its market days, the other absorbs the private investment that doesn't need a grant application to happen.
What this actually tells you
If you've lived in Mt. Lebanon for a while, you already knew Washington Road was under construction and that a Brooklyn pizzeria opened over on Beverly. What's easy to miss is that these aren't two unrelated updates. They're the same town solving two different problems at the same time: making its public spaces worth lingering in, while letting its private commercial corridor do what it's already doing well without needing a dollar of municipal help. Neither street is falling behind. They're just not carrying the same kind of weight this year.
Whether you're weighing what a walkable business district does for daily life here, or you're simply trying to figure out where to grab dinner while Clocktower Plaza is fenced off, that's the read for August 2026: watch Washington Road for the public realm, and watch Beverly Road for what shows up on your plate.
If you're thinking about what a Mt. Lebanon address actually means day to day, from the T stop to the storefronts to the Saturday market, Black Key Partners has spent years tracking exactly this kind of neighborhood detail across Pittsburgh's inner-ring suburbs. Reach out any time you want a local read that goes deeper than the listing photos.
