PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania - In Pittsburgh's East Liberty neighborhood, Home Depot is more than a building supply company. It's an economic development stimulus.

Community leaders cite the long-sought opening of Home Depot here in 1998 as the beginning of the neighborhood's long, slow comeback from decades of decay.

After Home Depot came Whole Foods, then Trader Joe's, then Target - all proof positive that this once downtrodden area was on the upswing.

Then, late last year, came a new and different kind of progress: the opening of two trendy hotels, Ace and Hotel Indigo, which elevated the area from burgeoning residential and retail center to up-and-coming tourist destination.

"It's a real game changer for the neighborhood," local businessman James Miller said of the opening of Ace, perhaps the hippest hotel chain operating in the U.S. today.

It's one more step forward for East Liberty - the one-time home to some of the city's biggest powerbrokers -- which is steadily climbing out from what many consider a massive failure in government-funded urban renewal in the 1960s.

It's also a vote of confidence in the neighborhood from two major hoteliers - Indigo is the boutique brand of the InterContinental Hotels Group - who chose this location over every other in Pittsburgh, including downtown.

"East Liberty has this unique confluence of factors," said Claire Hosteny, with East End Development Partners, which converted the neighborhood's historic YMCA building into the new Ace Hotel. "Walkability, architecture, access to transit. It just has really great bones."

What to see in East Liberty

There aren't many traditional tourist attractions in this evolving part of town. But these sites are definitely definitely worth checking out:

* Don't miss the East Liberty Presbyterian Church (you can't possibly miss it - it rises above everything else in the neighborhood), a gorgeous Gothic structure built in the 1930s, and funded by the Mellon family.

* Check the schedule at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater, a live-performance venue named after native sons Gene Kelly (the dancer) and Billy Strayhorn (pianist). Opened in 1914 as the Regent, the theater was one of a half-dozen movie houses in the neighborhood during its heyday.

* Pittsburgh Glass Center, part of the Penn Avenue Arts District, offers a gallery of rotating shows (through mid-May, "Lifeforms 2016"), plus regular classes on glassblowing, stained glass and other art forms.

More information about the neighborhood: eastlibertychamber.org, visitpittsburgh.com

Great bones, and great proximity.

East Liberty, about 5 miles east of downtown, is just south of the Pittsburgh Zoo, and just east of Oakland, home to Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pittsburgh and the Carnegie museums of art and natural history.

Google's new Pittsburgh offices are down the street, in a former Nabisco factory turned office-retail complex dubbed Bakery Square. Among its tenants: high-end retailers Anthropologie, Free People and West Elm.

The biggest attraction here, though, is the growing restaurant scene, with a dozen or so eateries clustered along Centre Avenue and nearby streets. Here, the new (Muddy Waters Oyster Bar, Spoon and the Whitfield) coexist with the classic (Kelly's Bar & Lounge, a staple since 1950s, well-known for their mean mac and cheese and $4 drink specials).

Our waiter at Kelly's joked that the neighborhood's renaissance comes with a high cost: a preponderance of hipster millennials, prowling the streets in skinny jeans.

Twenty years ago, such a "problem" seemed impossible.

The neighborhood was among the poorest and most crime-ridden in Pittsburgh, the victim of poor urban planning and the suburbanization of America's cities.

Contrast the 1970s with the town a century earlier, when Thomas Mellon, the founder of Mellon Bank, worked to develop East Liberty into a commercial and transportation center.

In the early 20th century, East Liberty was one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the nation, home to the biggest names in Pittsburgh's industrial past - Carnegie, Heinz, Westinghouse and others.

At one time, East Liberty, annexed into Pittsburgh in 1868, claimed the third largest downtown in Pennsylvania - after Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

But in the 1960s, as Pittsburgh's suburbs grew, East Liberty began to decline. Residents migrated out.

Community leaders came up with a solution that ended up making the problem worse: Create a pedestrian mall, closed to cars, and reroute traffic around the central business district. The unintended consequence: The project rerouted traffic out of town altogether.

At the same time, three large low-income apartment complexes were built in the neighborhood.

Businesses fled and so did residents; crime increased.

But by the mid-1990s, a concerted effort was under way to regain East Liberty's former glory with a multi-pronged approach: massive public and private investment, along with a strategic plan to combat crime.

Progress has been steady:

* The pedestrian mall is long gone and the high-rise housing complexes came down years ago.

* Hundreds of high-end apartment units have attracted a younger, more affluent residential base.

* Restaurants and retail - everything from Target to Trim Pittsburgh, a designer men's underwear shop - are setting up shop in the neighborhood.

* East Liberty Development, Inc., a private nonprofit, has worked to fight crime by buying problem properties, improving them and recruiting new residents.

"It didn't happen by accident," said Lori Moran, president of the East Liberty Chamber of Commerce, who credits a slew of local developers and true believers for the methodical turnaround. "It takes deep pockets and the ability to be patient."

Among those who have returned: local shop owner and interior designer James Miller, a native of East Liberty who relocated his business to nearby Oakland decades ago, but recently returned to the neighborhood as part of its renaissance.

"I wanted to come back," said Miller. "I think it's a great neighborhood. And it's going to get even better."

Indeed, the neighborhood is still in transition, an odd mix of people and places.

Miller's high-end boutique, Boxwood, which offers luxury soaps, gorgeous vases and $48 candles, stands in sharp contrast to the Dollar Tree around the corner.

Moran says East Liberty can support a variety of residents and retail.

"We've retained the history and the integrity of the neighborhood, but we've opened it up to a whole slew of personalities," she said. "There's something here for everyone, from students who don't have a lot of money to tech workers making six figures."

She acknowledged, however, that local attitudes are sometimes harder to change than property values.

A fellow travel writer, en route to the Ace Hotel from the Pittsburgh airport a couple of weeks ago, said she was warned by her cab driver to be careful in East Liberty. A friend I met for a drink also seemed a bit skeptical about the neighborhood's celebrated turnaround.

I felt perfectly safe exploring the neighborhood during the day, when the streets were filled with shoppers and workers and residents. Late at night, though, the streets felt too quiet. I asked my friend for a two-block ride back to my hotel.

A few years from now, though, I'm guessing any uneasiness will be gone, the streets full into the evening.

The new hotels, combined with the apartment buildings under construction on nearly every street corner, pretty much guarantee it.