Category Archive: Historic Properties
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Time running out to meet under Kaufmann’s clock
By Tony LaRussa
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, July 29, 2005For many of Kaufmann’s most devoted customers — especially those who frequent the Downtown store on Smithfield Street — the change to a Macy’s moniker likely won’t change shopping habits that, for some, have been decades in the making.
Some business experts believe customer loyalty and a new association with a retailer that has a strong history of its own could ease the transition.
“Certainly, some people will see the change in names as the loss of something that is a major part of Pittsburgh’s history,” said Marc Jampole, of Jampole Communications, a marketing company Downtown. “But the fact that Macy’s is a well-known and respected name in retailing is a plus that should make the transition a little easier.”
Federated Department Stores Inc. announced Thursday that Kaufmann’s and many other regional department names will disappear next year, after it completes its deal for May Department Stores Co. The landmark Downtown Kaufmann’s and several suburban stores will become Macy’s.
Cathy McCollom of the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation believes that because the Downtown store will remain open, it could play an important role in Pittsburghers’ acceptance of the name change.
“The memories that are triggered when people talk about Kaufmann’s — meeting friends under the Kaufmann’s clock or going to see the window displays during the holidays — are very much attached to the building itself,” McCollom said.
“Sure, the name is a big part of it because it’s been around so long,” she said. “But in a sense, the building is the source for many of those fond memories. The fact that people still will be able to see it, and still be able to shop there, is very important in minimizing whatever sense of loss they may be feeling.”
People who view the Downtown Kaufmann’s as their primary shopping destination said they will continue to patronize the store when it becomes a Macy’s.
“I’ve been coming here to shop since I moved to Pittsburgh in 1971,” said Catherine Thomas, 87, of Shadyside. “There’s still something special about coming Downtown to shop, and the store has a nice selection and the service is good.”
Maryann Finotti, of Emsworth, said she began shopping at Kaufmann’s when she was a child and still thinks it’s one of the region’s better retailers.
“Oh, I have wonderful memories of when I was a little girl, and my mother and aunt and I would dress up to come shopping Downtown,” said Finotti, 62, who worked at the store while she attended Duquesne University in the mid-1960s. “I still come down to shop here every Saturday and sometimes during the week. I’ll keep coming as long as they don’t change things too much.”
Jampole believes maintaining or improving the quality, service and selection of merchandise will be critical to easing the transition to the Macy’s name.
“It’s always a risky business when you change a name, especially when there are so many years invested in a brand,” he said. “The Kaufmann’s name is so much a part of Pittsburgh, and it has long been associated with a certain level of quality. Any changes will have to be focused on providing the same, or better, experience for the customer.”
Jackie Snell, professor of marketing at San Jose University in San Jose, Calif., predicts that Pittsburghers will grow nostalgic about the Kaufmann’s name, but will “get over it.”
“It’s difficult to predict what will happen when there is a collective loss of something that has been associated with a community for so long,” Snell said. “But Macy’s has a pretty solid reputation as a retailer, so I think there is a great chance that the name change will not have a deep negative effect.”
Tony LaRussa can be reached at tlarussa@tribweb.com
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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Turtle Creek High School alums reunite before building is razed or remodeled
By M. Ferguson Tinsley,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, July 28, 2005Salt and pepper hair, laugh-crinkled eyelids, poodle skirts and a 40-year-old mystery converged Saturday afternoon.
About 250 alumni, or “Creekers,” gathered inside what used to be Turtle Creek High School. The building was renamed Woodland Hills East Junior High when the Woodland Hills School District was formed in 1981.
Some of the grads had not been in the building since their graduation days decades ago.
They came because in several months, despite the protests of some, the interior of the 86-year-old building at Monroeville and Penn avenues could be revamped beyond their remembrance, or it may crumble under the wrecking ball.
Last winter, the Woodland Hills school board voted 5-4 to spend nearly $52.7 million to build or renovate school properties. The plan called for the demolition of East Junior and for a new school to be built on the site.
Christopher Baker, Woodland Hills facilities coordinator, said there is a possibility that portions of the building’s exterior could be salvaged. Planners could save some “architectural pieces” of the building, such as the huge stone columns on the facade,
The district is looking at spending $17.3 million to construct a new junior high school on the razed site, Baker said.
On Saturday, the school’s halls echoed with: “I know your face.” “I can’t remember your name.” “How is she?” “It’s nice to see you.”
A couple of the voices belonged to people who went to Turtle Creek nearly 50 years ago. One had traveled from Charleston, S.C.
Several alumni stood chatting in the hall outside the library when someone called out, “Hey, Ellen! Let’s go to the bathroom and have a cigarette!”
It was Peggy McKinney Gonano, class of ’67, joking with her sister.
High school was packed with “the emotions, the excitement, the fun” of being a teen, said Gonano, who still lives in the borough. She called it “the growing up part.”
Back then, “growing up” may have included enduring a teacher’s unorthodox, if not comical, method of discipline.
Filing a lawsuit or making a stink in public never occurred to Gonano when she was punished for talking in Don Cifra’s English class.
The class was held a couple of doors away from the library. One day, Gonano, who is still a talker, just couldn’t stop during class.
She said Cifra told her, “If I didn’t stop talking, he was going to tape my mouth shut. … I still didn’t stop talking, even under the tape.”
A wry smile playing across her lips, Gonano said Cifra shook his head and sighed, “Another McKinney!”
Her three sisters were Creekers, too.
Today, Cifra’s classroom is furnished with modern green and pink Formica-topped desks, different from the wooden ones Gonano remembered.
Bob Russell, class of ’64, had the same impression as he walked the halls and peered in classrooms.
“I remember some of the auditorium, but the rest is all new,” the Turtle Creek resident said. It almost seemed like a different school already, he said. “But it was nice … to see it one last time.”
Although they have homes in Monroeville now, Nancy McCleland Puskar, class of ’61, and Rick McGrath, class of ’62, headed the reunion committee.
Puskar said a visit to the school a few months prior to the event made her aware of how changing times are reflected already in the building.
“They have metal detectors now,” she said. “I just wasn’t ready for that.”
Passing rows of light-blue lockers, some noticed that the trophy cases in the halls were empty. Where are the football awards? Where are the basketball laurels?
Jeanne Flaherty, class of ’62, said, three years ago, she’d rescued 125 trophies that had been destined for the trash bin.
“There were girls basketball trophies, baseball trophies, football,” she said. “There was one from the [Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League] championship.”
Flaherty, also from Monroeville, said she has catalogued them and plans to turn them over to the borough’s fledgling historical society.
Gloria Rogulin Blake, class of ’63, hadn’t seen her class ring for about 40 years.
As the tour was winding down around 4:30 p.m., just as Blake and her sister, Kathy Rogulin, class of ’58, were about to stroll out into the late afternoon sun, McGrath made an announcement to the handful of stragglers that included Blake.
“We have a surprise for you,” he said, turning his gaze on her and reaching for a small white box. “There’s a lady who has been looking for you for … years. She couldn’t be here, but she wanted us to give you something.”
Maureen Duffy Maniccia, 55, of Monroeville, formerly of East Pittsburgh and McGrath’s barber for 20 years, had been searching for the owner of a 1963 Turtle Creek High School class ring with the initials G.R. etched on it.
Maniccia said she found the ring in front of her Sunnyside Avenue house in East Pittsburgh, shortly before her family moved to Monroeville in 1966.
But once she had children and other adult responsibilities, she couldn’t find the time to hunt down the owner. She’d stuck it in a jewelry box until McGrath mentioned the upcoming reunion a month ago. He did the legwork for her.
Turns out, Blake had left the ring on a sink in the girls bathroom at Turtle Creek High a few days after her mother Mary Rogulin, now 90, had given it to her.
She’d also given her a warning: “Don’t you take it off.”
“My mother worked in the Westinghouse [Electric] cafeteria,” Blake said, slipping the gold and onyx band on her finger. “She worked so hard to buy it for me. This will be like giving the ring back to my mother, too.”
But how the ring landed in front of Maniccia’s former East Pittsburgh home remains a mystery.
Correction/Clarification: (Published August 4, 2005) Although she got her class ring back after it was lost for 40 years, a 1963 Turtle Creek High School graduate’s correct last name was missing from a July 28 story about a reunion at the school. Gloria Rogulin’s married name is Blake.
(M. Ferguson Tinsley can be reached at mtinsley@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1455.) -
Replica of 1770s barn built at Oliver Miller Homestead
By Mary Niederberger,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, July 14, 2005Since 1973, when the Oliver Miller Homestead Associates took over the management and programming of the historic home site in South Park, the volunteer group has put on numerous displays and re-enactments of various aspects of pioneer life.
Now its members are excited about expanding their work to include more details about 18th-century farm life with the addition of a newly built wood barn, a replica of the original, which was built in the 1770s and razed by Allegheny County after it bought the Miller farm in 1927.
“We have great plans for some of the uses we can make of the barn. We are already deciding upon what sorts of displays and artifacts we can put there,” said Paula Bowman, publicity director for the associates.
A public barn-raising was held on a cold, snowy day in December when Amish Timber Framers, of Doylestown, Ohio, raised the frame with a crane. Construction was finished recently and the barn has been turned over to the Oliver Miller Homestead Associates to manage and program.
The first floor of the barn will be a large, open, unheated space, as in the original structure.
The associates group plans to move the trading post, a gift shop, from the log house on the property to the first floor of the barn.
The group also plans to move the original Miller family whiskey still from the log house to the barn. Along with the still, the group plans to set up a teaching display about the Whiskey Rebellion that would explain the conflict’s significance to the region and nation, Bowman said.
Plans call for the barn to hold a library/bookstore area and a place to sell items that are made at the homestead, such as metal items made at the forge and dolls that are made as part of craft demonstrations.
The basement of the barn will be heated and will serve as a meeting place for the associates group, which has about 40 members. Bowman said the group had met in recent years in the log house, but oftentimes, some members had to sit outside because there was not enough room.
Removing the still and trading post will free up more space in the log house, which will allow the volunteers to furnish and decorate it in a more authentic way.
“We want to turn the log house into a home that is representative of the period,” said Mary Olesky, president of the Oliver Miller Homestead Associates.
The group has items stored in the basement, including a rope bed and a child’s cradle, which it would like to display.
Bruder Construction Co., a North Side restoration company, built the barn using the construction mode of its era: mortise and tenon joints with wooden pegs.
The project was overseen by Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation and was financed with a $500,000 grant from the state Department of Community and Economic Development which was procured more than four years ago by former state Sen. Tim Murphy, R-Upper St. Clair, who is now in Congress.
Most of the funds were used to build the barn, but some were left over to make improvements and restorations to the stone house.
The homestead is open to the public and staffed by the volunteers from 1:30-4:30 p.m. every Sunday from April through December.
Olesky said the group hoped to get some of the new displays and activities operating during the current season, but that it was likely that some would have to wait until the off-season, when volunteers will have more time to devote to them.
“This is going to be a work in progress for a while,” Olesky said. “We have so much we want to share with the public, but it’s going to take awhile to get it the way we want it.”
(Mary Niederberger can be reached at mniederberger@post-gazette.com or 412-851-1866.)
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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For Fifth and Forbes, a place to start small and think big
By Patricia Lowry,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tuesday, June 28, 2005Preservation Pittsburgh wants to convert the first floor of the former Regal Shoe Co. building at Fifth and Market into a transit cafe, with office space above. It’s the work of Alden & Harlow, one of the city’s most prominent architectural firms in the early 20th century.
In a cartoon in the current New Yorker, a big man sitting at a big desk in a big city hands a folder to a smaller, weary man sitting across from him. The folder is labeled “Plan Z.”
“Of course,” the big man says, “if this one flops we’re done.”
Somebody ought to warn the little guy: Beware of a big man with a big plan.
Three years and three months from the day Mayor Tom Murphy announced Plan C, his revised Fifth and Forbes renewal project, we’ve got zip. In fact we’ve got a lot less zip than we had when the massive, demolition-oriented Plan A was hatched in October 1999. Back then, there were one or two empty storefronts; now there are many more as property and business owners wait for the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority, which owns several properties in the district, to make a move.
When Carl Dranoff, the most recent potential developer, pulled out a few weeks ago, there was no rush to announce Plan D. Come January, the mayor and his men will move on. The empty storefronts will be hanging around for some time.
There’s still a frightening amount of alphabet left in Fifth and Forbes, but with a new administration next year, there are new opportunities for fresh ideas.
Here’s one: Preservation Pittsburgh wants to put a “transit cafe” in a great old building at the corner of Fifth and Market. It doesn’t look like much now, but in its day it was quite the place, an elegant little shoe showroom designed by Alden & Harlow for the Regal Shoe Co., one of a chain of Boston-based stores.
Of human scale and quaint antecedent, Regal Shoe was one of two buildings inspired by the English Arts and Crafts movement that the firm designed Downtown in the first decade of the 20th century. The other, the former White Dog Cafe, was among the nine structures sacrificed for the new Lazarus store in 1996. The cafe had been remodeled, but ah, what it once was and could have been again.
We have a second chance with the Regal Shoe building, which has had a happier fate. Over time its canopy was removed and some of its windows were covered over, but its integrity has not been greatly compromised.
Downtowns need low-rise buildings like this, buildings with a social and architectural history to anchor the modern office towers, and Fifth and Forbes provide them. Plan A disregarded them, calling for the removal of 62 buildings and acquiring them by eminent domain if necessary.
But massive demolition wasn’t the only troubling aspect of Plan A. Just as wrong-headed was its intent to wrestle ownership from dozens of local and often longtime entrepreneurs and concentrate ownership in the hands of a single developer, sending all of the profits out town. Fine for a suburban mall, but this is not the way cities work. Urban retail lasts longest when it is steady and incremental, supported by government policies that understand its organic, symbiotic nature.
If you’ve ever waited for a bus or been panhandled at the bustling corner of Fifth and Market, you don’t need me to tell you how good a transit cafe sounds. A place to come in out of the cold and heat and rain, pick up a coffee and a newspaper, “maybe even a bouquet of flowers on the way home,” said architect Rob Pfaffmann, president of Preservation Pittsburgh, the nonprofit advocacy group launched in 1991 after the demolition of the Syria Mosque.
Bringing flowers back to the vacant building would be a sort of homecoming, as Lubin & Smalley operated a florist’s shop there for about 70 years after Regal Shoe moved out.
A transit cafe is just one idea; the important thing is to get a retail establishment up and running again at that gateway location. Located at one of the entrances to the Fifth and Forbes district, the building has an importance beyond it size, just 15 feet deep and 80 feet wide.
Restoring and renovating the building would show that preservation is a viable and desirable component of the revitalization as it moves forward, Pfaffmann said. Office space on the second floor could be used to house community meetings during the Fifth/Forbes planning process.
Pfaffmann thinks he knows how to keep the costs down, to about $500,000 for the building’s shell. Preservation Pittsburgh has asked Belmont Technical College in St. Clairsville, Ohio, to consider making it a class project next year.
Each year, Belmont students in the Building Preservation Technology Program put their newly acquired skills into play on a summer field project. Students have worked at Fallingwater, Grey Towers (the Richard Morris Hunt-designed, faux-French medieval castle in Milford, Pike County) and the Octagon House in Washington, D.C. Pfaffmann thinks Belmont students could, for example, rebuild the mullioned windows of the Regal Shoe building.
Closer to home, Carnegie Mellon University students could participate in transforming the building into a green, sustainable design, which should be a component of the revival.
Preservation Pittsburgh also hopes to team with Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation in making the project a case study at the National Trust for Historic Preservation conference, which comes to Pittsburgh in October 2006.
Partnerships will be a key to making this project work, as will a positive reception from the city and the Fifth/Forbes task force, not to mention interest from a shopkeeper. Task force chairman Herb Burger declined comment yesterday, saying it was the city’s decision. URA director Jerome Dettore has said that he is willing to wait for the right developer.
Pfaffmann didn’t say so, but the subliminal message of the project is critical and clear: Stop waiting for a big man with big money and big plans. Start somewhere, and start small. Just start.
(Architecture critic Patricia Lowry can be reached at plowry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1590.)
Copyright ©1997-2005 PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Preservation act / Carrie Furnace can forge redevelopment
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Saturday, June 18, 2005It was an Allegheny County initiative launched under then Chief Executive Jim Roddey. Now the deal has been sealed by his successor, Dan Onorato. In the end the public will get an historic blast furnace, which could one day anchor a steel heritage site, and 137 acres of land, which could spark business, commercial and residential development in Rankin and Swissvale.
The tentative purchase of the Carrie Furnace site from the Park Corp. for $5.75 million from a state grant will be a bargain if the county’s plans for the abandoned industrial property come to fruition. One need only look across the Monongahela River, at Park’s success in developing The Waterfront complex, to see what can be done with a former mill tract.
Mr. Onorato praised that development this week, but said there was no need to duplicate The Waterfront’s big-box, suburban-style retail mix up and down the river. Each idle, former industrial site offers its own potential, and the challenge for developers is to draw out the best from each.
A key difference with the Carrie Furnace site is it contains a hulking old blast furnace, which operated between 1907 and 1983 during Big Steel’s heyday, that will be preserved and used as an educational tool. Plans are to build an adjacent conference center and hotel.
Combine that with the restored Bost Building, the reused Pump House and the historic spot of the 1892 Pinkerton landing on the other side of the Mon, and the county stands to build a greater case for Congress one day to declare the heritage area a National Park site.
But first the county must begin soil testing to gauge the extent of contamination. If all goes as planned, money can be transferred on the purchase in 90 days and the abandoned industrial site will come under the control of Allegheny County.
Then the public sector will have the challenge in Rankin and Swissvale of doing — or maybe even outdoing — what the private sector has done in Homestead and Munhall.
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Second chance for Carrie Furnace mill site.
County to buy 137 acres of abandoned mill property, hoping to create a model for redevelopment
By Ann Belser,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tuesday, June 14, 2005After four years of negotiations that spanned two Allegheny County administrations, Chief Executive Dan Onorato got to announce the prize: The county has agreed to buy an abandoned blast furnace and 137 acres of possibly contaminated land around it for $5.75 million.
Like a home buyer looking at a fixer-upper, it’s not the problems that the county is looking at when it sees the site, most of which is located in Rankin and Swissvale. It’s the potential.
“This is going to be the cornerstone of what we do with old industrial sites,” Onorato said on a hot day that was reminiscent of the blast furnace. “We have thousands of acres of waterfront just sitting there dormant.”
The deal also includes some land in Whitaker and Munhall.
Before money is exchanged on the deal, which should be in the next 90 days, the county will begin soil testing to see how much cleanup the site needs, said Dennis Davin, director of the county’s Department of Economic Development.
He said the cleanup should take a year to 18 months before development begins.
Yesterday’s announcement was made under a tent with the old blast furnaces behind Onorato. He said the county is not only going to revitalize the site, but also the communities surrounding it.
Talking about The Waterfront, a development of shops, restaurants, a movie theater, offices and apartments in Homestead, Munhall and West Homestead, he said, “I personally love what’s going on across the river … We’re going to duplicate it up and down the river.”
Plans for development of the Carrie Furnace area were drawn up by Dick Schmitz for the consultants MacLachlan, Cornelius & Filoni in 2001, when Jim Roddey was the county’s chief executive. The county has negotiated with Kelly Park, vice president of Park Corp., since then to buy the land.
The money for the purchase, $41,970 an acre, is coming from the state, which gave the county a $6 million grant that has to be matched with federal or local money. Davin said much of that will be from federal money designated for cleaning up brownfields and from federal Community Development Block Grants.
The land use plan calls for housing in Swissvale near the Pittsburgh line with a possible marina for recreational boaters near those homes. In Rankin, the old blast furnaces would be refurbished as part of a steel heritage historical site with a hotel and conference center to be built near the museum site.
Closer to Braddock, the plan calls for building office buildings with a large parking area nearby for commuters who want to park in Braddock and travel by bus, train or water taxis to Downtown. There also are plans for a bike trail through Braddock, Rankin and Swissvale.
Onorato said the county will not wait to start revitalizing the towns until it can build on the site. The county already is working with Braddock and Rankin officials to build housing.
In Braddock, a move to rejuvenate Braddock Avenue will include working with UPMC Braddock, which currently has an unattractive loading dock on the avenue, to develop a hospital entrance there. Small shops with apartments above them would be built along Braddock Avenue and light industry would be located between Braddock Avenue and the river and near the Edgar Thomson plant.
(Ann Belser can be reached at abelser@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1699.)
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Central Catholic setting the stage
By Tony LaRussa
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, June 6, 2005A $1.8 million renovation of the Central Catholic High School auditorium is being paid for with a donation by alumnus John McGonigle, chief legal officer of Downtown-based Federated Investors.
Little has changed at Central Catholic High School since it opened in Oakland in 1927.
The Christian Brothers still provide the school’s educational and spiritual foundation. Dress shirts and ties remain the order of the day. And recreation after lunch periods consists of walking the quad.
A major change, however, is under way in the Flemish Gothic style building on Fifth Avenue, which the city has designated a historic landmark.
Workers are restoring the school’s 900-seat auditorium to its original appearance while adding modern features to enhance performances.
A Mass and performance to mark the completion of the work is scheduled for Aug. 21.
The $1.8 million project is being paid for with a donation from John McGonigle, who graduated from Central in 1956. McGonigle, 67, is chief legal officer of Downtown-based Federated Investors.
McGonigle’s father, Henry, graduated from Central in 1933. His sons also are graduates, Kevin in 1982 and Patrick in 1985.
“As I’m sure it did for other Central graduates, the auditorium played an important role in my life as a student,” McGonigle said. “I have many fond memories of celebrations of liturgies, musical productions, pep rallies and other activities.”
“In thinking about this project,” McGonigle said, “I realized that one of my own personal goals was to see the auditorium restored to its original condition, returning it to what it must have looked like on the first day of school in 1927.”
Brother Richard Grzeskiewicz, the school’s principal, believes the work being done at the school is “a good sign for the future of Catholic schools in the area.”
“I think it shows that we are building for the future,” Grzeskiewicz said. “We are truly indebted to the McGonigle family for their overwhelming generosity in funding this project.
Central’s enrollment is expected to be 843 students for the 2005-06 school year. The school’s capacity is 880.
Grzeskiewicz said the renovations to what will be called McGonigle Auditorium are particularly important because many of the programs conducted there, such as plays and concerts, involve students from nearby Oakland Catholic High School, which is an all-girls school.
“The performing arts programs are vital in creating a strong bond between the two schools,” Grzeskiewicz said.
Work on the auditorium includes cleaning the red brick, which is set in a herringbone pattern throughout much of the interior, and restoring painted surfaces to their original hues.
One of the most painstaking restoration processes has been cleaning the orange, green and blue-colored wood slats in the ceiling, which originally were finished with an animal fat-based paint that typically cannot be repainted.
“We learned that trying to paint the ceiling wouldn’t work, so workmen had to get up there and clean each of the sections with a vacuum,” said Richard Fosbrink, who heads the school’s performing arts program.
Among the biggest changes is the addition of air conditioning and the replacement of the tattered seats with thick-cushioned, theater-style seats that will be spread out to provide more leg room.
A good deal of the work being done in the auditorium is taking place behind the scenes but will be clear to those who attend performances there.
A modern sound system using linear array speakers set in clusters throughout the room will be installed along with computer-controlled lighting and rigging systems.
“It’s very exciting to see this wonderful room, with all its history, coming back to life,” Fosbrink said. “And the addition of state-of-the-art sound and lighting systems will allow us to improve the quality of our performances and teach the students much more about the operations of a theater, which is our primary focus.”
Tony LaRussa can be reached at tlarussa@tribweb.com.
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Purchase deal boosts Carrie Furnace plans
By Ann Belser,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Friday, June 03, 2005Allegheny County is close to an agreement to purchase the Carrie Furnace site, which has been vacant since the old iron-making facility on the banks of the Monongahela River closed in the mid-1980s.
The purchase of the former blast furnace should allow the county to proceed with a multi-million dollar plan to revitalize the Mon’s north bank from Swissvale to North Braddock.
The development is expected to include a steel industry museum, conference center, housing, offices, a transportation center and light industry.
Dennis Davin, director of the Allegheny County Department of Economic Development, said he hoped the purchase will be announced within the next week or two, but the county will not actually take over the property until the end of the summer.
The financial details were incomplete and the purchase price wasn’t available yesterday.
The news was greeted with a cheer from William H. “Lucky” Price III, the Rankin Council president who has been a member of the county’s Carrie Furnace Steering Committee for the last five years.
“That’s sounds good. I hope that’s true,” he said.
In September, Gov. Ed Rendell gave the county $6 million to be used for the site from the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program. That money has to be matched dollar for dollar by either local or federal money. It can be used to buy the site and for environmental cleanup and infrastructure improvements.
The 103-acre parcel is currently owned by the Park Corp., which bought the property in Rankin and Swissvale in the same sale in which it acquired U.S. Steel’s Homestead Works, which was a 311-acre site.
Park bought the land on both sides of the Monongahela River from the steelmaker in 1988 for nearly $3 million. The land in Rankin and Swissvale was valued at that time at $500,000.
In 2001, the county hired the architecture firm of MacLachlan, Cornelius & Filoni to develop a master plan for 205 acres that includes the Carrie Furnace site and areas of Braddock and Rankin between Braddock Avenue and the Monongahela River to the Edgar Thomson Works. The plan was put together after a series of meetings with residents in Braddock, Rankin and Swissvale.
The county has been negotiating with Park since 2001 to buy the Carrie Furnace property.
A redevelopment plan for the Carrie Furnace site and lower Braddock calls for the furnace to be refurbished into an exhibit as part of the Steel Industry National Historic Park, with a hotel and conference center built near the furnace, which is in Rankin.
The plan calls for building housing on 44 acres to the west of the furnace in Swissvale and office buildings to the east in Rankin.
The hot metal rail bridge that connected Carrie Furnace to the Homestead Works is slated to be converted to a automobile bridge connecting to the Waterfront development, a popular retail, office and housing development built on the former site of the Homestead Works. That development spans three communities, from Munhall through Homestead and into West Homestead.
The redevelopment plan goes beyond property that formerly made up Carrie Furnace and includes a large parking area that could serve as a park-and-ride for commuters using buses, water taxis and, possibly, light rail. The transportation center, to be built on 15 acres, would tie into a tramway running above the area. It would also be linked to the Eliza Furnace Trail for bicycles and pedestrians, extending it through Hazelwood and Duck Hollow to connect to the Carrie Furnace site.
In Braddock, the plan calls for encouraging small businesses, shops, and studios to locate along Braddock Avenue at street level with apartments above. There would also be housing built between Braddock Avenue and the river with light industry placed along the river and near the Edgar Thomson Works on the North Braddock border.
The Homestead Works is now nearly completely redeveloped. John Dindak, the mayor of West Homestead, recently announced that Costco, the chain of warehouse clubs, plans to build a store between the smokestacks and Sandcastle Water Park.
Other brownfields in McKeesport and Duquesne are now controlled by the Regional Industrial Development Corp. Businesses are already located on those sites, though there is more land available at both properties.
(Jerome Sherman contributed to this report. Ann Belser can be reached at abelser@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1699.)