Category Archive: Main & Elm Street Programs
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Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation Announces New Non-profit Corporation
Mark Bibro, Chair, announced today the formation by Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation (PHLF) of a new non-profit corporation to expand PHLF’s activities in neighborhood and urban revitalization. The Chief Executive Officer will be Howard B. Slaughter, Jr., and Arthur Ziegler will serve as president.
The new non-profit, Landmarks Community Capital Corporation (LCCC), will build a financial base by obtaining loans, grants, and investment capital and in turn will finance and develop projects that assist in the revitalization of urban centers, towns, and neighborhoods. The corporation may undertake the actual developments, and co-develop or lend funds to community development corporations and others that undertake such work. It will also work to support expansion of the regional employment base and energy conservation, green and sustainable goals, and assist rural and farm economic developments. LCCC will also contract with government and private agencies to define such projects and conduct feasibility studies for them.
Dr. Howard B. Slaughter, Jr., who resigned last week after eight years as the Director of the Pittsburgh Fannie Mae Community Business Center, will become one of Pittsburgh’s newest Chief Executive Officers. Dr. Slaughter will now serve as the CEO of the newly established company, Landmarks Community Capital Corporation. The company’s focus will be on providing equity, debt, short and intermediate term financing for housing and economic development activities in Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio, and West Virginia markets.
Slaughter will utilize his vast experience, which includes serving as the former Vice President of Dollar Bank’s Community Development group and past Director of Preservation Services of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. Brian Hudson, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, said,
“Howard’s new role as CEO of Landmarks Community Capital Corporation will benefit the State by ensuring that more capital is deployed in this market, which will have a significant impact in Pennsylvania. We are fortunate to have someone with Howard’s skills serving at the State level and as the CEO of LCCC.”
Arthur Ziegler said of Howard, “He has been deeply involved in community development financing from every perspective and we are certain he will lead our new non-profit to excellent results. He has been deeply involved in preservation nationally as the former PA Advisor to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.”
Slaughter said, “There is an opportunity in the market to provide appropriate financing for existing and new developments independently and in collaboration with other financial intermediaries and developers. Landmarks Community Capital Corporation will be a private-sector catalyst and a participator in financing housing, mixed-use, and commercial developments. It will also focus on public sector policy initiatives and work with legislators as well as utilize tools like the New Market Tax Credits to bring additional needed capital to the region.”
Brief background of Dr. Howard B. Slaughter, Jr.: He holds five earned degrees, including a Master’s Degree from Carnegie Mellon University in Public Management and his Doctorate in Information Systems and Communications from Robert Morris University. He also attended Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, completing the Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government. He completed course work on Fundamentals of Real Estate Finance at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Real Estate. Slaughter is also a Fannie Mae Foundation Fellow and serves on the Board of the Urban League of Pittsburgh, and on the Board of the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, receiving a gubernatorial appointment from Governor Ed Rendell. He is also the Founder of the Financial Literacy Program of Pittsburgh at Robert Morris University. He will start his new job on October 15, 2007.
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Spinoff targets urban revitalization
By Ron DaParma
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, September 18, 2007The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation is forming a new nonprofit corporation to expand its activities in neighborhood and urban revitalization.
Mark Bibro, chairman of the South Side-based preservationist organization, announced Monday the foundation had hired Howard B. Slaughter Jr., who recently left his job as director of Fannie Mae’s Pittsburgh Community Business Center, as the unit’s CEO.The new nonprofit — Landmarks Community Capital Inc. — will provide equity and debt financing for housing and economic development in Western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio and West Virginia, said Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., the foundation’s president.
“This broadens the tools with which we can work,” said Ziegler, who also will serve as the new corporation’s president. “It enables us to tap the capital markets on a broader basis, and we can do more things within the very broad interpretation under which we operate for historic preservation.”
Cities and towns throughout Western Pennsylvania are historic, but restoring historic buildings isn’t the only way they can be revitalized, Ziegler said.
“You need new construction, you need new businesses on Main Street, or you may need new housing or new forms of green energy,” he said.
The idea of the new corporation is to raise funds through grants, loans and investments that the foundation can use for grants, loans and investments in such projects. Roles it can play include developer, co-developer or lender to community-development corporations and others that undertake such work.
It also hopes to contract with government and private agencies to define such projects and conduct feasibility studies for them, according to a news release. Goals include expanding regional employment, promoting energy conservation and assisting in rural and farm economic development.
“There is an opportunity in the market to provide appropriate financing for existing and new developments independently and in collaboration with other financial intermediaries and developers,” said Slaughter, 49. His appointment is effective Oct. 15.
Ron DaParma can be reached at rdaparma@tribweb.com or 412-320-7907.
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Allegheny County Designates PHLF to Spearhead Main Street’s Program
Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato announced at a press conference in Swissvale yesterday the initiation of a large-scale Allegheny County Main Streets program. Four pilot communities will be involved: Swissvale, Elizabeth, Tarentum, and Stowe. Landmarks has been designated to operate the program in conjunction with the Allegheny County Department of Economic Development.
Landmarks has selected Town Center Associates of Beaver County to serve as sub-consultant with responsibility for communications with local officials and property and business owners, development of a website and a newsletter, and conduct demographic research.
Landmarks will analyze the historic buildings, prepare recommendations for restoration, develop a real estate strategy for improving retail offerings, conduct market research, assist the County with major facade grant and low-interest loan programs, all designed to help revitalize these Main Street communities.
Funding is coming from Allegheny County and private foundations in Pittsburgh.
Landmarks will field a team of staff members with a variety of experience that will be useful for a comprehensive program, including market research, real estate financial analyses, design, graphics, planned giving, construction and real estate development.
Work begins immediately.
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County to provide aid to business owners outside Pittsburgh
By Justin Vellucci
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, September 12, 2007When Karen Larson opened Hometowne Tavern in Swissvale five years ago, bankers hardly gave her the time of day.
“We couldn’t get a loan for any part of our business,” said Larson, 52, of Swissvale, who owns the commercial building where the tavern she owns with her husband is based. “When it came to getting our business going, we were really on our own.”
Not anymore.
Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato announced a program Tuesday that will provide grants, tax abatements and no-interest loans to business owners looking to revitalize 43 local business districts outside Pittsburgh. The program — dubbed Allegheny Together — will begin in Swissvale, Tarentum, Stowe and Elizabeth Borough, and also help those hit hardest by the remnants of Hurricane Ivan in 2004.
“The big projects get all the attention through the media … and they’re needed and they help,” Onorato told an audience packed into Swissvale’s municipal building yesterday. “But we also wanted to make it clear we understand the benefits of small businesses.”
The county plans to commit $500,000 to $1 million a year to the program, which officials said could provide $1 million to $1.5 million in funding each year. Foundations have pledged an additional $500,000. Officials plan to seek about $500,000 from the state.
“What we all already know is we have 43 community (business districts), all historic,” said Arthur P. Ziegler, Jr., president of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. “We look on Main Street as a real estate development, just the way they look at a mall as a real estate development out in the suburbs.”
In those 43 communities, eligible property and business owners can be covered for up to 60 percent of total project costs or $50,000, whichever is less, county officials said. Half the money will come as a grant, and the other half as a zero-interest loan payable over a maximum of seven years.
Some of the work covered by the program includes improving facades and sidewalks, correcting code deficiencies, erecting signs for businesses, and improving accessibility to businesses for the disabled, county officials said. A display showing potential changes to Swissvale’s business district was shown yesterday.
Residents could start to see improvements made through the program in six months to a year, said Dennis Davin, the county’s director of economic development.
Local officials celebrated the program for its specific benefits, as well as the message of support it carries.
“It’s something we’ve been waiting for for years and years,” Swissvale Mayor Deneen Swartzwelder said. “This is an amazing opportunity for us. And we promise not to let you down.”
For more information on the Allegheny Together program, call 412-350-1000.
Justin Vellucci can be reached at jvellucci@tribweb.com or 412-320-7847
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Vandergrift Gift to Make History
In 2004, a group of concerned citizens came together to form the Vandergrift Improvement Program (VIP) with the goal of revitalizing the town’s business district.
Last June, the VIP asked Landmarks Development Corporation, a wholly owned Landmarks subsidiary, to manage Vandergrift’s Main Street Program. Preservationists learned in the 1960s that preservation-sensitive development works, but demands a broad-based neighborhood approach to be successful. Signs of residential enthusiasm are now afoot in Vandergrift.
Recently, a resident of this Frederick Law Olmsted community and owner of the J. C. Penny Building met with the VIP and Landmarks to discuss donating the building to fund a charitable gift annuity. Such a gift would result in lifetime income and income tax benefits for the donor and would allow the VIP to acquire a key building that could stimulate similar gifts to help develop the central business district. In addition, a Named Fund would be created at Landmarks to support preservation projects in Vandergrift.
In early March, Landmarks’ Planned Giving Office was notified that the building owner has contracted with a qualified appraiser to determine the value of the building and is proceeding with the gift. We plan to feature more information about this gift and its impact on Vandergrift in the next issue of Landmark Legacies.
For now, anyone interested in exploring a gift of real property in the Vandergrift area is asked to contact Shaun Yurcaba, Main Street Manager at 724-567-5286.
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Historic Vandergrift looks to future
By Marjorie Wertz
FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, November 19, 2006In 1901, six years after the establishment of Vandergrift, Westmoreland County, Steel Workers Magazine called the town a “working man’s paradise.”
Designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the architect of New York’s Central Park and the grounds of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Vandergrift was a planned community founded by George G. McMurtry, president of the Apollo Iron and Steel Co., Apollo. It was named after Captain J.J. Vandergrift, a director of the steel mill.
“McMurtry was one of the first industrialists who gave respect to the working man,” said Ken Blose, a member of the Victorian Vandergrift Museum and Historical Society. “He believed that educated, churchgoing men who owned their own homes in their own community would make the best workers. These were radical thoughts at that time.”
McMurtry needed to expand his galvanized steel mill, so he bought a 650-acre farm site several miles downstream on the Kiskiminetas River. Olmstead designed the town so that the streets followed the natural slope of the hills and the curve of the river. The mill was constructed; streets were graded; utilities were installed; trees were planted; and street lights were erected.
“There were 14 main streets in the original design and only one place where two streets crossed,” Blose said. “There are no real corners. Every corner is a sweeping curve.”
Once the town was laid out, lots were sold only to men who worked in the mill. McMurtry established a bank so mill workers could buy homes at rates they could afford.
“For a man working in a mill in 1895, the opportunity to purchase his own home was practically nil,” Blose said.
McMurtry continued his philanthropic actions through the purchase of pipe organs for all the town’s churches. He also donated land for schools and the fire department and bought the fire department’s first equipment. Blose said McMurtry also sold land for $1 to the town for a cemetery.
“And what land that was undeveloped, he allowed the townspeople to use for recreational purposes,” Blose said.
At the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Vandergrift won two gold medals for best town design, and, in 1907, the Vandergrift steel mill was the largest rolling mill in the world, producing high-quality silicon steel.
“The steel for the centerpiece of the 1964 New York World’s Fair; the Unisphere, the largest metal sculpture in the world, was finished and polished in Vandergrift. Some of the steel for the St. Louis Arch was produced in Vandergrift, and the hinges for the gates and other parts of the Panama Canal were produced in the Vandergrift Foundry,” Blose said.
McMurtry also was the primary contributor to the construction of the town’s municipal building, which housed the jail, administration offices and a 500-seat theater. That building, the Casino Theatre, is undergoing renovations by a group of volunteers, Casino Theatre Restoration and Management.
“The theatre was being used by the borough for storage,” said Mary Lee Kessler, treasurer of the organization. “The theatre seats, stage curtain and all the decorative items within the theatre had been removed. There were rumors that the theatre was going to be torn down. We couldn’t let that happen.”
Built in 1900 in the Greek revival style, the theatre was a popular venue on the vaudeville circuit. President William H. Taft, boxing champ Bob Fitzsimmons, composer Hoagy Carmichael, Tex Ritter and the Three Stooges visited the Casino.
The Casino was remodeled in 1927 as the area’s largest movie theater, and in the ’50s, it was converted to show wide-screen movies. It closed in 1981.
“The east wing of the building still houses the library, and the west wing has the offices of the borough secretary, the jail and police station,” Kessler said. “The theatre was in great disrepair, but the borough was very open to a responsible group attempting to revive it, so they leased it to us for $1 a year with the understanding that we would apply for grants to renovate it.”
Kessler has been successful in obtaining grants for renovation projects. The organization was able to locate 475 seats for $5,000 and install electrical wiring, lighting and sound. A group of volunteers, affectionately called the Tuesday Night Work Crew, arrive at the theatre Tuesday evenings and “do what needs to be done,” Kessler said.
“We replaced the four wooden ionic columns in the front of the theatre, excavated in the basement, and now there’s a very pretty ladies lounge there. We also reopened the mezzanine level and renovated the front lawn,” she said.
The discovery of two old movie window cards netted the organization about $37,000, which was used to repair the theatre’s roof. A group of Eagle Scouts was cleaning out a portion of the theatre’s upper floor when it located an old desk with an ink blotter. Under the blotter, the group found a perfectly preserved window card for the 1927 science fiction movie “Metropolis,” directed by Fritz Lang.
“One of the volunteers contacted a fellow from Greensburg who was extremely excited because memorabilia from that move is very collectible,” Kessler said. “That window card was auctioned off by Sotheby’s, and we netted $24,000.”
A second window card for the movie that had a small bend in one corner was auctioned several years later and sold for about $13,000.
The Casino Theatre officially reopened its doors in August 1995. Three years ago, Mickey Rooney performed there, and in April, trumpeter Maynard Ferguson gave one of his last performances before dying Aug. 23.
“Every year we do a magic show for children at the end of October, and during the first weekend of December, we self-produce ‘Hometown Christmas.’ This year, it will be a musical revue,” Kessler said.
On Nov. 25, 14 bands will put on a benefit concert at the Casino to help the organization pay the heating bill.
“This is a fun place to be. The people who volunteer here are very enthusiastic,” Kessler added.
The Vandergrift Improvement Program — VIP — is another nonprofit organization comprising local residents, businesses, municipal and state government officials working to protect, preserve and restore the community through the National Trust for Historical Preservations’ Main Street approach.
“We had 15 vacant storefronts out of 100 stores in our town. We didn’t want the town to rot away,” said Wayne Teeple, vice president of the 100-member VIP.
The premise of the town’s Main Street approach is to encourage economic revitalization through a four-pronged system — design, economic restructuring, promotion and organization — to address all of the commercial district’s needs.
The town, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is in the first year of the Main Street program.
“We had to raise $94,000 to obtain funding for a Department of Community and Economic Development Main Street grant,” Teeple said. “Within a three-month period, the residents and Vandergrift government pledged that amount over a five-year period.”
The Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, a nonprofit historic preservation group, was hired to manage the Main Street program, said Eugene Matta, director of the foundation’s real estate and special-development programs.
Shaun Yurcaba, of History and Landmarks, is Vandergrift’s Main Street coordinator. She is helping VIP coordinate its efforts.
“The four committees working in design, economic restructuring, promotion and organization fulfill the requirements of the Main Street program,” Yurcaba said.
The design committee is developing guidelines for the protection of historical buildings during changes or renovations. Those on the economic restructuring committee are determining how many businesses are downtown and what types of businesses are in place in order to gauge what improvements are needed.
“The organization committee works on establishing relationships with other community organizations such as the Casino Theatre renovation group and the historical society,” Yurcaba added.
Trying to bring people into town is the work of the promotion committee, which sponsors events such as a summer car cruise and a 2007 pet calendar contest, in which people cast ballots for their favorite pet photos at Vandergrift businesses.
“Once we go into year two of the Main Street project, we become eligible for an $80,000 grant — $30,000 of it will be available to downtown building owners in the form of grants,” Teeple said. “They can apply for a $5,000 matching grant for renovating the facades of their buildings. We already have five building owners interested in this.”
Other groups are working toward Vandergrift’s revitalization, as well.
“Sustainable Pittsburgh is working with us so that Vandergrift becomes a green sustainable development,” Matta said. “And the Mascaro Sustainability Initiative through the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Engineering is also working on quite a project in Vandergrift.”
Sustainable Pittsburgh served as the “matchmaker” between the initiative and Vandergrift, said Eric Beckman, co-director of the Mascaro Sustainability Initiative.
“The goal of MSI is to create the next generation of technology that is cost-effective and sustainable,” Beckman said. “We brought in a team of undergraduate engineering students into Vandergrift and asked them if they could bring energy conservation to the Casino Theatre. The question became ‘How do you lower energy bills without destroying the historic value of the community?’ ”
The shallow, yet swift-flowing Kiski River, which surrounds Vandergrift on three sides, might be able answer, Beckman said. The group submitted a proposal to the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance for a sustainable creative energy grant.
“We went in on this proposal with Sustainable Pittsburgh. Whatever we come up with in Vandergrift, we could use in other parts of the state,” Beckman said. “Eventually, we want to create something that will generate electricity and try it out in Vandergrift. The town will be our test bed.”
All the partnerships have helped VIP pick up steam on revitalization projects.
“Other towns are calling us for information. Everyone has a passion for this, and it’s something that’s really taking off,” Teeple said.
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- Carino’s, which closed several years ago, was housed in one of Vandergrift’s signature buildings. — Bob Fritz/For the Tribune-Review
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- John Pomfret repainted a turn-of-the-century tin ceiling in his store, Pomfret’s Paint and Variety. — Bob Fritz/For the Tribune-Review
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- The Casino Theatre was remodeled in 1927 and again in the ’50s before closing in 1981. It reopened in August 1995 after undergoing extensive work. The building houses a library, municipal offices and a police station. — Bob Fritz/For the Tribune-Review
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- Mary Lee Kessler is treasurer of Casino Theatre Restoration and Management, a group of volunteers renovating the theater. — Steven Dietz/For the Tribune-Review
Marjorie Wertz can be reached at .
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