Category Archive: Historic Properties
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Unusual tax credit sale would fund renovations at Schenley High
By Joe Smydo,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Monday, March 20, 2006Pittsburgh school officials are considering an unusual public-private partnership that would use federal tax credits to help pay for renovation of historic Schenley High School in Oakland.
Under the arrangement, Pittsburgh Public Schools would sell the 90-year-old building to a for-profit venture, such as a group of banks, and use the proceeds to address the school’s costly asbestos and systems problems.
But the for-profit group wouldn’t be buying the building as much as the tax credits an owner can get for overhauling an historic building, said Richard Fellers, district operations chief, and Chris Berdnik, district finance director.
Mr. Fellers and Mr. Berdnik said the for-profit partner would lease Schenley to the district for a period of years dictated by federal tax law. After that, the district would buy back the building at a nominal cost, perhaps $1.
The deal would allow the district to renovate Schenley while keeping its debt load down and the partner would get a reduction on its federal income taxes.
The plan is in a preliminary stage and subject to thorough vetting by the administration, school board and community, Mr. Fellers and Mr. Berdnik emphasized.
At Wednesday’s legislative meeting, school board members will vote on having the district’s bond lawyers work on the proposal.
“This is not a financing methodology that you read about every day for a school building,” Mr. Berdnik said.
But it isn’t unprecedented, either. Mr. Berdnik said he’s found three schools in Virginia and one in the area of Spokane, Wash., that were renovated under similar arrangements.
In addition, public-private partnerships have been formed to refurbish other kinds of historic buildings.
“Essentially, there is a market for for-profit organizations to acquire tax credits,” Mr. Fellers said.
Overall, the use of federal tax credits to rehabilitate historic properties is widespread. Since 1978, the program has helped owners make $3.5 billion in upgrades to 2,090 properties in Pennsylvania.
The tax credits are available only to building owners. The district doesn’t pay federal income taxes or have use for tax credits itself. Mr. Berdnik suggested bringing in a private partner to leverage the credits and limit the renovation project’s impact on city taxpayers.
In November, as part of a districtwide reorganization, school Superintendent Mark Roosevelt proposed closing the triangle-shaped Schenley building and moving the school to the Reizenstein Middle School site in Shadyside in 2007.
Mr. Roosevelt said the district couldn’t afford to renovate Schenley, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has a long list of distinguished alumni. One architect estimated the project would cost $55.7 million, and another put the cost at $86.9 million.
Parents, students and other school supporters mounted a campaign to save the building, saying its location in vibrant Oakland fueled success of the school’s international studies program. Mr. Roosevelt named a task force to study the school’s future, and a third architect later proposed a scaled-down rehabilitation for $32 million.
Mr. Roosevelt has put Schenley’s fate on hold indefinitely.
While Mr. Fellers and Mr. Berdnik declined to say how much money the district may put into Schenley, they said tax credits wouldn’t fund the whole project.
To make up the difference, the district could issue bonds or use proceeds from the sale of other buildings. There’s no shortage of buildings to sell, given that Mr. Roosevelt’s reorganization will close 18.
The federal tax credits would cover 20 percent of the cost of work allowed by the federal government, said Bonnie Wilkinson Mark, historical architect with the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Abatement of asbestos and overhaul of heating and ventilation systems are allowable work; landscaping and sidewalk work are not.
Mr. Fellers and Mr. Berdnik proposed selling the tax credits for more than 90 cents on the dollar and offered this example:
A $40 million project would generate $8 million in tax credits. The district would sell the building — and the credits, they said — for about $7.3 million. The district would use the proceeds for renovations, and the private partner would use the credits to lower its income taxes.
Under federal law, the private partner would own the building for at least five years after renovations are completed.
During that period, the partner would lease the building to the district for continued use as Schenley High School. At the end of that period, the district would buy back the building for a nominal charge.
Ms. Wilkinson Mark said she’d already heard about the proposal from an architect working with the district.
She said the partners would have to submit the proposal to her organization for review. The commission would then make a recommendation to the National Park Service, which has the authority to accept or reject tax-credit projects.
On Wednesday, school board members will vote on paying up to $30,000 for the district’s bond counsel to research the proposal.
(Joe Smydo can be reached at jsmydo@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1548.)
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Mellon’s Downtown plans leave subtenants in limbo
By Ron DaParma
TRIBUNE-REVIEW REAL ESTATE WRITER
Thursday, March 9, 2006Come May 31, one of Pittsburgh’s most dramatic buildings, the ornately designed Two Mellon Bank Center, will be nearly empty.
That’s not surprising, since the major tenant, Mellon Financial Corp., announced last year it planned to vacate the 11-story Downtown building — also known as the Union Trust Building — sometime before the end of May.
However, the question that has many people still guessing is: “What’s next?” for the landmark building constructed by industrialist Henry Clay Frick and opened in 1917.
“Limbo is a good word,” said Rick Conley, owner of Oliver Flowers, describing the plight of the more than 20 tenants who still populate the first-level retail arcade area, and remaining office tenants on the floors above.
“We really haven’t heard anything,” said Conley, who just about every day talks to someone else with a question about what’s going on there.
“We’re waiting for the other shoe to drop,” said Rachelle Scanga, owner of the Remedies pharmacy, a 20-year-plus tenant.
Scanga, like a number of other tenants, said she’d like to stay, and is anxious to hear word on her fate from DeBartolo Property Group LLC, the building’s owner.
Most of the tenants are subleasing from Mellon, which has decided not to renew its master lease for the nearly 600,000-square-foot structure designed in Flemish Gothic style by noted Pittsburgh architect F.J. Osterling.
Their continued tenancy is in question because their subleases expire concurrently with Mellon’s master lease at the end of May.
Last year, Joseph Lufkin, senior vice president of Tampa, Fla.-based DeBartolo, successor to the Edward J. DeBartolo Corp., of Youngstown, Ohio, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that it was the company’s intention to try and re-lease the building.
However, the building is losing occupancy at a time when the city’s commercial office market vacancy rate remains just under 20 percent and large tenants looking for space are scarce.
In the meantime, there has been little word from DeBartolo, tenants say. Lufkin could not be reached for comment.
One of those not moving is Larrimor’s, the upscale clothing store that has been in the building for 66 years. The store has a separate, longer-term lease with DeBartolo, said its owner, Tom Michael.
Business at the store is good, he said.
“We like our space, we believe in Downtown, and we think our location is fairly good, although I wish the building wasn’t empty,” Michael said.
Also not moving “at this time” is a Citizens Bank safety deposit box and foreign exchange center in the building’s first sub-basement level, said Mike Jones, a Citizens spokesman.
But others are, including a 3,000-square-foot U.S. Steel Corp. training center that is shifting to the U.S. Steel Tower, and the Disciplinary Board of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which is moving to the Frick Building on Grant Street.
“We’re moving at the end of March,” said Sky Foerster, president of the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh, whose office is on the 11th floor at Union Trust. The council is moving to One Mellon Center across Grant Street.
“The Union Trust Building is one of the most significant buildings, architecturally, in the city, after the Allegheny County Courthouse,” said Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., president of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
“It’s a very dramatic, highly visible piece of Gothic architecture, remarkable inside and out, and we were delighted with the restoration that was completed several years ago,” Ziegler said. “It is one of the most lively and agreeable buildings in which to step out of your office and into the hallways and see that great rotunda space and the beautiful terra cotta Gothic ceiling.”
Mellon is relocating its employees to one of three other Downtown buildings — One Mellon Center, 325 William Penn Place and the Mellon Client Services Center.
“The pending expiration of this lease at Two Mellon Center has provided us with the opportunity to restack our headquarters facilities, which is part of a larger ongoing initiative to reduce occupancy expenses corporate-wide,” said spokesman Ron Gruendl.
Mellon, which has a total of 6,300 employees Downtown, hasn’t said how many of those workers are based at the Union Trust building. Real estate officials have estimated it occupies about 70 percent of the nearly 600,000 square feet of office space there.
Ron DaParma can be reached at rdaparma@tribweb.com or 412-320-7907.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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Groups band together to preserve local farmland
By Patricia Lowry,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tuesday, March 07, 2006Farmer Ron Beinlich, who grows berries, peaches, pumpkins and other fruits and vegetables on his Triple B Farms near Monongahela, has been watching family farms disappear all of his life.
“Every farm in Allegheny County is under some development pressure,” he told a nearly full house in the 183-seat Carnegie Museum of Art Theater Saturday morning. They came to hear an overview of local farm preservation efforts from three groups working to keep the bulldozers at bay: Allegheny County Farm Preservation Board, Allegheny Land Trust and Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. They do it by purchasing the development rights of farm land, which are held as easements against the property.
“We have preserved every farm we’ve tried,” Beinlich said of the preservation board, which he helped establish seven years ago. The board, funded by the county and authorized by state law, has preserved nine farms and a total of 1,100 acres in the county. Through the Growing Greener II ballot initiative, which Pennsylvania voters approved last year, $3.6 million in farm preservation money is available to the board this year.
The money will be used to identify farmers interested in preserving agricultural use of their land in perpetuity and to fund the preservation easements. The cost of the easement is equal to the amount of the development value of the property — put another way, it’s the difference between what the farm would sell for as a farm and what it would sell for as land to be developed for housing or non-agricultural commercial use.
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation has purchased easements on farm building facades as well as entire farms, said attorney Martha Jordan, a Landmarks trustee. Jack Miller, Landmarks director of gift planning, said that with the help of a $500,000 grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation grant and $600,000 from Landmarks the organization has preserved more than 13,000 acres of farmland in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties with a collective value of almost $6 million. In Washington County, the Allegheny Land Trust, headed by Roy Kraynyk, has preserved the 103-acre Linder horse farm.
While the museum’s program focused mostly on Allegheny County efforts, almost every Pennsylvania county now has an agricultural land preservation board. And through Growing Greener II, the state protected 37 farms on 3,360 acres last year. The goal is to protect another 2,000 farms over the next six years. Pennsylvania leads the nation in farmland preservation, with a total of 2,783 farms and 318,350 acres saved from development, and with 55 of its 67 counties enrolled in the easement purchase program.
Those efforts seem to have come just in the nick of time, as the Brookings Institution’s 2003 study showed Pennsylvania also is a national leader in sprawl, second only to Wyoming.
The museum program, called “Preserving Western Pennsylvania’s Farms,” was held in conjunction with the Heinz Architectural Center exhibit, “Barns of Western Pennsylvania: Vernacular to Spectacular,” which continues through May 28.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Historic, asbestos-plagued Schenley deserves reprieve and makeover
By Patricia Lowry,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Wednesday, February 22, 2006Close Schenley High School? He can’t be serious.
And move the Schenley students to Reizenstein? He must be joking.
He wasn’t. On Nov. 9, the shocking news was that Pittsburgh Public Schools Superintendent Mark Roosevelt would close the storied school that looks like a Greek temple and move Schenley students and staff to the one that looks like a prison. He didn’t put it quite that way.
Shouldn’t this be a no-brainer? Isn’t Schenley the school with the fabled, historic neighborhood, the proud heritage, the great building? Isn’t Reizenstein the school that’s walled off from its neighbors and in a 1970s building that only its architects could love?
But such decisions aren’t made on looks and location alone. Schenley has asbestos issues. It’s embedded in the plaster walls and ceiling, the pipe coverings and the floor tiles, and estimates for removing it and upgrading the mechanical systems came in at $55.7 million and $86.9 million.
The good news is that Roosevelt kept an open mind and listened to Schenley supporters who want to keep the school where it is. He formed an independent task force to study the issue. That committee got a more detailed, room-by-room estimate from a third architectural firm, Astorino, which believes the job can be done for considerably less — about $32 million to address the major problems and $62 million for a full-scale renovation. For now, closing Schenley is off the table, until the task force comes up with a recommendation.
Here’s hoping the committee sees the school for what it is: a tremendous asset in which taxpayers have made a hefty economic investment, $1.48 million for the land, building and equipment, and another $9.4 million for the 1985 addition, which added a new pool and a gymnasium. That’s a total of more than $43 million in 2006 dollars, a fraction of what it would cost to assemble the land and erect such a building in that neighborhood today. But thanks to the foresight of an earlier Board of Education, it’s already there. All this one has to do is take care of it.
In fact, the board has been maintaining Schenley, commissioning and installing custom replacement windows approved by the Historic Review Commission, putting in a new science lab and new seats in the auditorium and making repairs as needed. But it’s clear from a tour of the building last week that Schenley still needs a lot of work.
Major upgrades to the heating and electrical systems have been delayed because they can’t be done piecemeal due to asbestos. The building’s natural ventilation system was shut down 10 years ago because the ducts that bring fresh air to each room are lined with asbestos. Every time even minor repairs or improvements are done, the asbestos abatement contractor must be called in along with the plumber or electrician, escalating the cost. That new $600,000 science lab cost twice what it should have because of asbestos abatement, said my school district tour guides, construction chief and architect Vidyadhar S. Patil and environmental specialist Robert J. Kennedy Jr. And while Schenley has a computer lab, asbestos has left the school unable to reach its goal of about a dozen computers in each classroom.
Although Kennedy’s monthly inspections make sure no asbestos has been exposed inside the building, Schenley looks tired and worn in places. But the structure of this steel and concrete school, which rests on 1,700 concrete pilings, is sound.
Moreover, Schenley has some important assets Reizenstein Middle School lacks: a landmark Classical Revival building with a monumental entrance, a culturally rich neighborhood of museums and universities and a strong visual connection to that neighborhood.
The triangle-shaped building was designed so that each of the classrooms that line the perimeter has an abundance of natural light. So do the corridors, which face interior courtyards flanking the central auditorium, but it’s the classrooms that get the views.
Some may argue that a view is a distraction. That seems to have been the opinion of Reizenstein’s designers, who placed a ribbon of clerestory windows around the first floor of the building that give minimal natural light and no view of anything but clouds and sky. The second-floor windows, hidden behind overhangs, are even worse.
I would argue that natural light is essential to well-being and that the view, especially the one from Schenley, is inspirational. It helps students understand and bond with their community. Almost 40 years ago, I was a student teacher at Schenley, in the art room located in one of the building’s elbows. From that hillside perch, we had a commanding, panoramic view of Oakland, which spread out below us like a 3-D map.
To understand what an important building Schenley was when it opened, you have to go back a little further.
Schenley was the first high school built after the state assembly reorganized the Pennsylvania school system, creating central boards of education that no longer had to share power with local ward school boards. That made bigger, better school buildings possible, with more amenities such as auditoriums, libraries, science labs, art and music rooms and swimming pools.
Schenley was the first high school in the country that cost more than $1 million to build, a distinction trumpeted in local newspapers along with its status as one of the top 10 high school buildings in the country.
Schenley’s architect was Edward Stotz, who, in answering the call for a building with minimal ornamentation, also provided one with maximum dignity, faced in Indiana limestone and with a projecting, columned entrance that communicates that the act of entering the school is of some significance. The spare treatment continues inside, along with the elegant materials: Corridor floors are terrazzo, and the stairs are white marble. When the building was new, reproductions of famous paintings and buildings lined the walls, turning the halls into galleries. Today the hall walls are too bare, and while one of alumnus Andy Warhol’s report cards is in a glass case (he got straight A’s), there are no reproductions of his work hanging about.
Stotz apprenticed with local architects before spending the year of 1889, when he was 21, studying and sketching in Europe. He was 48 when Schenley opened, and he seems to have regarded it as his best work. A 1922 biographical reference mentions his most prominent buildings, including Colfax School, Fifth Avenue and South Side high schools, “and the most beautiful of all, the Schenley high school.” The firm he founded, now known as MacLachlan, Cornelius & Filoni, designed Downtown’s new Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts.
If Schenley moves to Reizenstein, the district would spend about $15 million to upgrade science labs, build an auditorium where the defunct tennis courts are and improve the lighting.
A better option, and one also being considered, is moving Schenley students and staff to Reizenstein for a year while Schenley is upgraded. If the district applied that $15 million toward the $32 million cost of renovating Schenley, it would be almost halfway there.
Protected by city historic status, Schenley is in no danger of being torn down, and the building still would have an educational use if the district sells it to the University of Pittsburgh, one potential buyer. But Schenley’s highly successful magnet program, which provides a variety of educational opportunities in a racially diverse setting, deserves to keep blooming where it was planted. Even in these pragmatic days, that should count for something.
(Architecture critic Patricia Lowry can be reached at plowry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1590.)
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Historic Religious Properties Receive Energy Audits
PHLF News
February 16, 2006In addition to awarding 16 grants totaling $80,300 in 2005, the Historic Religious Properties Committee took advantage of a generous opportunity of a matched grant from Saxer Foundation to hire an energy management and consulting service to analyze the energy consumption and costs of two historic churches. The grant of $2,000, was matched by Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation at the direction of Historic Religious Properties Committee. Mulberry Presbyterian Church in Wilkinsburg, and the New Hope Church in Marshall-Shadeland were selected to receive intensive energy audits.
Gregory Wozniak of G. A. Wozniak and Associates spent several days in each building meeting with maintenance exploring energy consumption, energy systems and operations of both churches. He then produced a comprehensive report with cost savings recommendations.
By initiating these recommendations New Hope Church can expect to reduce their energy costs 20%; saving $2,000 annually. Mulberry Presbyterian Church, with an annual utility cost approaching $42,000, expects to save over $9000 annually.
These are much needed dollars that can be used for other projects in both buildings.
Mr. Wozniak has agreed, at his own cost, to provide an additional energy audit for Old St. Lukes, an historic church in Scott Township.
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Three Market Square buildings may get an upgrade
By Mark Belko,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tuesday, February 14, 2006The Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership may team with the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation to redevelop three publicly owned buildings in Market Square.
Both groups see the plan as a way to not only save three vacant, deteriorating buildings but to pump life into the Fifth and Forbes retail corridor and Market Square itself.
Under a preliminary proposal, the foundation would serve as developer of the three buildings from 439 Market St. to the corner of Market and Fifth Avenue. The Downtown Partnership would serve as an anchor tenant, moving from its offices on Liberty Avenue.
One of the partnership’s goals over the next five years is to focus more attention on Market Square, where it now sponsors Thursdays with a Twist and a farmers market.
The square also is a primary spot for many of the partnership’s annual Light Up Night festivities.
“We think that conceptually it makes a lot of sense,” Downtown Partnership President Michael Edwards said.
“Certainly Market Square, from the public’s perspective, is sort of a harbinger of the condition of Downtown. We need to make sure it is managed well and working for the merchants.”
The potential venture with the History & Landmarks Foundation comes as the Downtown Partnership prepares for its annual meeting today, one of its most anticipated in recent years. Mayor Bob O’Connor will be speaking, and the focus is expected to be on the growing investment Downtown, from residential housing to PNC’s new office tower on Fifth Avenue.
The History & Landmarks Foundation originally approached former Mayor Tom Murphy last year with a proposal to take over the three buildings, one owned by the city and two by the city Urban Redevelopment Authority. It did so in part to save the facade of 439 Market, a city-owned building in such disrepair that adjacent property owners wanted it demolished.
Mr. Murphy wouldn’t sell the buildings to the foundation, but he did accept a loan from the group to make repairs to 439 Market.
Foundation President Arthur P. Ziegler Jr. recently talked to Mr. O’Connor about the plan to work with the Downtown Partnership on the three buildings.
Mr. O’Connor said he’s willing to consider the idea and perhaps sell or lease the properties to the foundation, depending on what’s best for the city.
“Bringing good tenants to Market Square, Fifth and Market certainly is a goal, and I think it shows the vitality and desirability of the Fifth-Forbes corridor,” he said.
Mr. Ziegler envisions retail on the ground level of the buildings with the Downtown Partnership and possibly other tenants on upper floors. Preservation Pittsburgh also has proposed a transit cafe in the old Regal Shoe Co. building at Fifth and Market.
The entire endeavor, Mr. Edwards added, is contingent on several issues, including cost and the ability of the partnership to negotiate a settlement of its current lease, which runs until 2009.
The proposed reuse of the three buildings is just one idea to revitalize Market Square, which Mr. O’Connor has described as having an “old, tired” look. The mayor would like to turn the square into a small park, replacing sidewalks and streets with grass.
That plan could involve the elimination of Forbes Avenue, McMasters Way and Graeme Street where they run through the square.
(Mark Belko can be reached at mbelko@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1262.)
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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College eyes pool
By Bill Zlatos
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, February 6, 2006One of the country’s first indoor swimming pools in a home, built for banking magnate Andrew Mellon, soon may become a lost relic.
Chatham College, which received the Tudor-styled Shadyside mansion as a gift from one of Mellon’s children, is considering other uses for the now empty pool, once a glamorous symbol of the wealth, power and excess enjoyed by Pittsburgh’s barons of banking and industry.“We’re working now to determine what those possible uses could be,” said Chatham spokesman Paul Kovach. A meeting room is one possibility.
In the meantime, the drained pool, housed in a vaulted room lined with pearl-like tile, lies covered with a blue tarp. The eight-lane, 75-foot-long Sigo Falk Natatorium in the college’s new Health and Fitness Center has made the old 60-foot-long pool obsolete.
Al Tannler, historical collections director for Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, said he understands why the college would want to change the pool.
“Reuse is not a problem,” he said. “It’s a matter of it being a tasteful way, and Chatham has a good reputation for that.”A year ago, the college converted another icon of Mellon’s wealth — the mansion’s two-lane bowling alley — into a broadcasting studio.
The mansion, now Mellon Hall, the college’s administration building, has a storied history.
“We’ve always heard old stories from alumni about hearing the ghost of Mr. Mellon walking around the house,” Kovach said.
Located on Woodland Road just off Millionaires Row on Fifth Avenue, the house was built for George Laughlin Jr. in 1902. The mansion features at least 10 intricately carved wood and marble fireplaces, stone archways, wood paneling and pocket doors.
Mellon, the former U.S. secretary of treasury, bought the house in 1917. He hired the original architect, MacClure & Spahr, to expand his home. The expansion included the bowling alley and a 60-foot-long swimming pool with Guastazino tile, a material popular for its light weight, fireproof ability and good acoustics.
“People just loved it,” Tannler said of the tile. “They went nuts.”
However Chatham decides to use the pool, the Guastazino tile will stay put, Kovach assured.
Other Pittsburgh landmarks with that tile are the Allegheny County Courthouse, Buhl Planetarium and the vestibule of the City-County Building.
Tannler said there’s no way to know if the Mellon House was the first local home with an indoor swimming pool. In 1907, architect Grosvenor Atterbury designed the public Phipps Natatorium, now razed, Downtown.
Indoor swimming pools in homes were rare in those days, said Darren Poupore, curator of the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N.C., the largest private home in America with 250 rooms. Biltmore, built in 1895 by George Vanderbilt, grandson of industrialist Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, featured an indoor swimming pool with vaulted Guastazino tile. That pool is 53 feet long and 27 feet wide, with a maximum depth of about 9 1/2 feet.
Mellon never visited Biltmore, Poupore said, but Pittsburgh’s millionaires were familiar with the Vanderbilts. Coke and steel baron Henry Clay Frick rented George Vanderbilt’s home on Fifth Avenue in New York City after he left Pittsburgh.
There’s no way to know whether Andrew Mellon felt the urge to keep up with other millionaires when he added his pool.
“There definitely was a lot of one-upmanship, trying to outdo your colleagues and siblings,” Poupore said.
Bill Zlatos can be reached at bzlatos@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7828.
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Pittsburgh Bridges Public Service Announcement