Coinciding with the Sept. 15 start of Hispanic Heritage Month, Pittsburgh’s Latino Community Center announced on Wednesday, Sept. 16 that it has finalized plans to relocate its headquarters to a new facility in the Strip District.
Previously based in a rented office space near Friendship, the organization will now operate out of a building it purchased in the Strip District, a neighborhood it described in a press release as “the intersection” of many different Latino communities spread across the region.
The move comes as part of the center’s multiyear Prospera plan, aiming to expand the outreach to the region’s sizable Latine community — specifically Latine youth.
“The center’s role is going to be to make sure that every one of our kids has a clear path,” said founder and director Rosamaria Cristello. “We’re there to help their parents support them, their caregivers support them, [so] that each of our kids has access to becoming a part of our region’s workforce.”
The center estimates that the Latine community will constitute one of every 11 workers in Pittsburgh by 2050.
Cristello, a first-generation Guatemalan immigrant, recounted her experience at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) as one of her reasons for founding the center: “I changed my major six times at IUP, and if I can prevent that for any of our youth, you know, that would save them so much time and money.”
Pittsburgh’s Latine community has faced mounting pressure due to recent federal immigration enforcement. Cristello cites ICE and COVID as two major crises that have defined the center’s history, with Prospera aiming to orient the center more around its day-to-day programs like tutoring, afterschool services, and college and career advising.
“I think that the expectation is that we’re going to continue to just focus on social services,” she said in a conversation with WESA. “But no, like, our youth deserve people that are focused on them and their future and are helping them reach that, right? And so that’s us.”
The center enters its tenth year of operation in 2027, after being founded in 2017.
