The Rev. Dale Snyder sits in the pews at Bethel AME Church where he is pastor, in Pittsburgh on Tuesday, April 11, 2023. Bethel, considered Pittsburgh’s oldest Black congregation, lost its previous sanctuary when much of Pittsburgh’s historic Lower Hill District was razed in the 1950s, making way for an arena and expressway in an urban renewal project. More than 60 years later, in what’s being called a step toward “restorative justice,” the church is poised to obtain use of a 1.5-acre parcel near its former site in an agreement with the Pittsburgh Penguins. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team has reached an agreement with a historic Black church to provide it development rights to a 1.5-acre parcel near the church’s former property. Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church’s old sanctuary was demolished along with much of the surrounding Black neighborhood in the 1950s in a now-lamented urban-renewal project. The Penguins hold development rights in the area near the arena where they currently play. Bethel says public authorities compensated it in the 1950s for a fraction of its property’s value. The Penguins only came in existence a decade after that happened. But the agreement is being called “restorative justice.”