Category Archive: Neighborhood Development
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Grant may get Dormont residents in the pool
By Rick Wills
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, June 13, 2007The state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources is giving Dormont $250,000 to boost efforts to restore the borough’s 87-year old pool.
The borough must match the grant. If that happens, the amount raised will be $812,000, the bulk of the $1 million needed to fully upgrade the pool, said John Maggio, president of Friends of Dormont Pool and a Democratic candidate for borough council.“I am confident we can match the grant,” Maggio said. “We have been able to match other grants we have gotten.”
The state money will pay for rebuilding the pool tank and filtration system, deck paving and landscaping — most of the needed repairs.
“This is the biggest gift we have had so far, and a grant of that magnitude goes a long way toward the pool’s renovation and future,” said Dormont Mayor Thomas Lloyd.
The landmark art-deco pool, which opened in 1920, is believed to be the largest public pool in the state. Other than the addition of a community recreation room in 1996, the facility has undergone little renovation.“It’s important to our borough, and we certainly want to maintain it,” Lloyd said.
State Rep. Tom Petrone, who helped secure the state money, said the pool is one of the region’s most popular attractions.
“The pool is a real selling point for the borough. It’s really a recreational facility for the whole area, and the quality of life in the South Hills would be affected without it,” said Jon Castelli, research analyst for the House Urban Affairs Committee, which Petrone chairs.
In the past 18 months, plans for the pool and surrounding Dormont Park have generated controversy, sparking a grassroots effort to save the pool as some borough officials discussed closing it.
In January, many residents protested after learning that some council members met with private developers interested in commercially developing parts of the park in exchange for building facilities there.
Last month, three Dormont council members, including the council’s president, were ousted in the Democratic primary.
Rick Wills can be reached at rwills@tribweb.com or (724) 779-7123.
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Former X-rated Garden Theatre set for a porn-free play
By Bonnie Pfister
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, June 11, 2007The infamous Garden Theatre on the North Side will have its first post-porn performance this week.
Quantum Theatre, a group noted for its offbeat choice of venues, will produce a new play, “The Collected Works of Billy the Kid,” from Thursday through July 1 in the space at 12 W. North Ave. that until March was an X-rated movie theater.The city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority acquired the 93-year-old theater, capping a decade-long legal battle with the Garden’s New York-based former owner. The URA purchased the building — long seen as a major barrier to redevelopment of the North Side — for $1.1 million.
Quantum Theatre is best known for staging its productions in distinctly nontraditional spaces, such as a midnight performance in Allegheny Cemetery or in an empty swimming pool in Braddock.
The play, based on a book by Booker Prize-winning writer Michael Ondaatje, specifically calls for an abandoned theater space, Quantum director Karla Boos said. The sudden availability of the Garden was a felicitous piece of timing, she said.
“The community is not really going to see a renovated theater,” Boos said. “But I hope that they’re going to feel, as we do, that there is a lot that should be preserved about the building.”
Quantum has built a massive platform of seating over the heavily stained vinyl folding seats. “It made sense from both a hygienic standpoint and an artistic standpoint,” Boos said, laughing.
Despite grimy carpets, a peeling black ceiling and red walls, URA director Jerry Dettore described the space as “surprisingly intact.”
“It’s an interesting old theater,” he said. “I hope it can play a role in the arts and theater scene on the North Side, which is pretty cool when you think about it. The art museums, the Children’s Theater, the New Hazlett. It could be part of that chain, the linkage between all those institutions.”
The URA received 11 proposals to redevelop the Garden Theatre and surrounding block and will discuss plans with community groups in the next month, Dettore said. His staff plans to present proposals for a URA board vote this fall.
Among those submitting bids was Aaron Stubna, owner of the Lincoln Barber Shop in Bellevue and an independent filmmaker. Stubna, 36, said he has partnered with theater contractor Bill Porco to plan a refurbished space seating about 300, to regularly show independent and foreign films, as well as concerts and locally made movies. He proposed a wine bar and art gallery.
Stubna said he expects the URA to “mix and match and patch people together” who have plans for the Garden’s future.
Another bidder is The Rubinoff Co., developer of the North Side’s Alcoa Business Services Center, Washington’s Landing and Summerset at Frick Park. Rubinoff Principal Craig Dunham said the company has tapped Eve Picker’s No Wall Productions as well as artistic managers from the New Hazlett and Pittsburgh Filmmakers for advice on a plan.
“We are working with a team …. to figure out how to first refurbish, reuse and rejuvenate it as an anchor for the block,” Dunham said. “Our whole proposal is figuring that out.”
Other development under way in the North Side includes a branch of the Carnegie Library on Federal Avenue; a branch near the Children’s Museum closed in April 2006 after being struck by lightning. Library spokeswoman Suzanne Thinnes said a fall groundbreaking is planned.
At its meeting Thursday, the URA board is to consider the final design and financing of Federal Hill, a 60-unit mixed income housing development nearby.
Bonnie Pfister can be reached at bpfister@tribweb.com or 412-320-7886.
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URA marks milestone in facade program
Friday, June 08, 2007
By Diana Nelson Jones,
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteThe city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority celebrated a milestone in commercial facade renovation yesterday on Broad Street in East Liberty, one of 32 neighborhoods that has benefited from the authority’s Streetface loan-to-grant program.
Ed Lesoon’s three-story yellow-brick building at 6022-24 is the 1,200th facade to have been spruced up with help from the URA, according to records that date to 1983. But his own investment in the neighborhood goes back to the 1970s and has figured in the millions.
Broad Street, between Highland and Sheridan avenues, is heavily traveled, with diagonal head-in parking on one side and a cropped curb on the other. Its facades are largely stale, but that is changing.
Yesterday, a day after Washington, D.C. developer Nigel Parkinson announced plans for a $40 million renovation and a construction complex involving half of that block, the URA saluted the investment Mr. Lesoon has made on much of the other half.
The property that drew about 50 people yesterday — including Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and state Sen. Jim Ferlo, D-Highland Park — once was a furniture store. It was caving in and needed a new parapet wall when Mr. Lesoon bought it in 2000. Besides having sustained fire damage, the building was bricked up except for two little windows in front.
After a complete gutting, it is massive and airy. Each 5,000-square-foot floor has a large bank of windows and elevator access. The interior reconstruction created tie-ins to both upstairs floors of the building beside it, which fronts on Sheridan Avenue and houses a Family Dollar store.
Mr. Lesoon said he wants to rent the first floor of the old furniture store as restaurant or retail space and the upstairs as offices.
Working with architect Cherie Moshier, he and his crews have converted four of seven properties on the block.
They gutted the former Veterans of Foreign Wars club at 6020 Broad and added a partial second-floor overlook that suggests a bistro or club.
Next door is the former Walsh’s Lounge & Bar, which Mr. Lesoon bought last year.
“We removed 500 gallons of grease and dirt out of there,” he said yesterday, adding that he plans to remove the glass-block front and open up the facade.
All told, Mr. Lesoon has restored and renovated 20 of 23 buildings in East Liberty with $208,825 in Streetface grants, said URA spokesman Julie Deseyn.
The facade money, even when it’s a relatively small portion of some of his facade costs, “is such a good incentive that I have been doing this for 20 years,” Mr. Lesoon said. “But I get hooked on buildings. I think of them as my Eliza Doolittles.”
Building owners in qualifying commercial corridors can get 40 percent of the project cost, up to $30,000, said Anita Stec, business development specialist at the URA. The money starts as a loan, but for each of five years that the property is maintained as approved, the URA converts 20 percent of the loan to a grant, she said.
In 25 years, the URA’s $13 million investment in facades has leveraged an additional $50 million in investments by private interests, said Jerome Dettore, executive director of the URA.
Mr. Lesoon said he and his father were inspired by Ward Olander and his company, Real Estate Enterprises, which has been investing in East Liberty properties since 1970. Today, Mr. Lesoon and his son develop properties as the Wedgwood Group.
(Diana Nelson Jones can be reached at djones@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1626. )
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East Liberty’s Broad Street getting face-lift
By Jeremy Boren
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, June 8, 2007East Liberty’s Broad Street once was little more than a drug-trafficking depot sandwiched between two nuisance bars and a few tumble-down buildings, city officials said Thursday.
But that’s changing with new attention from police, Pittsburgh’s Urban Redevelopment Authority and developers such as Edward Lesoon of The Wedgwood Group, which is renovating five Broad Street buildings in hopes of attracting retailers and restaurateurs.“What we have done is taken the seed, or the core of East Liberty, and we’re going to make it blossom,” said Lesoon, as he stood yesterday in the partially renovated, three-story Hart Building.
He hopes the building will attract a company that wants to put in office space or a store once he completes more than $250,000 in improvements to the facade and interior, including a new elevator.
The key is to beautify Broad Street with building renovations and more than $300,000 in public and private money for street resurfacing and sidewalk amenities such as decorative lamp posts, lights and trees, city officials said.
“It’s so someone doing a curb check won’t be scared away,” said Robert Rubenstein, URA economic development director. “There’s a lot of (potential) business owners who don’t know about this yet.”
Lesoon hopes a second building he’s renovating — which once held Walsh’s Bar, a nuisance bar with an art-deco theme — will turn into a family restaurant.
Pittsburgh real estate marketer CB Richard Ellis is looking for businesses to move into buildings in a three-block section of Broad Street renovated by Wedgwood and other companies.
State Sen. Jim Ferlo, D-Lawrenceville, was on hand yesterday with Mayor Luke Ravenstahl to dedicate the URA’s facade-improvement program. He applauded the street’s building owners for agreeing to contribute money to fixing the crumbling street and sidewalks.
Finding people to patronize a new restaurant or clothing store in East Liberty’s core likely won’t be difficult, said Rob Stephany, East Liberty Development Inc.’s director of commercial development.
Stephany said there will be many new residents living nearby soon in two large mixed-income housing developments planned for either side of the improved section of Broad Street, which is between North Sheridan Avenue and North Beatty Street.
Developer McCormick Barrons is working on leasing 120 homes in what will be a 200-home residential development; and ELDI will begin construction next year on Mellon’s Orchard South, an 80-home mixed-income development.
“Broad Street is going to be more defined by the people who can walk it,” Stephany said.
People will want to shop there now that crime is under control and new development is coming, he said.
“It was for a long time completely miserable,” Stephany said. “It’s a totally different place.”
Jeremy Boren can be reached at jboren@tribweb.com or (412) 765-2312.
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Mon Valley needs newcomers to revitalize, officials say
Thursday, June 07, 2007
By Karamagi Rujumba,
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteThe consensus among Allegheny County and state officials and economic-development types is that if many of the old steel mill towns of the Mon Valley are to make a comeback, the valley not only needs key revitalization dollars, but people like John Potter.
The Valley, they say, needs longtime residents or even newcomers who are willing to buy new and refurbished homes in downtrodden neighborhoods of communities like North Braddock and Braddock.
On a balmy afternoon last Thursday, Mr. Potter, 74, a longtime North Braddock resident, stood under a shade tree as state and county officials lauded him for buying a new house in the municipality.
Mr. Potter, a retired Ford Corp., supervisor, is the first buyer of one of six single-family detached homes being built along North Braddock’s Baldridge Avenue, and financed by a collaboration of state, county, and regional nonprofit agencies.
The six new houses comprise the new development known as the Braddock Field Housing Development in North Braddock.
“Isn’t it great talking over construction noise? I love it. It’s much better than talking over silence,” Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato told a group of residents and officials who gathered at the construction site during a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
“This is what it means to build new. We want to have an impact. We’re not talking about building just one house. We want to build entire blocks of new housing,” Mr. Onorato told the group of about 30 residents and officials.
The new housing project in North Braddock together with the East Braddock Housing Development in Braddock is the latest revitalization initiative by a consortium of public and nonprofit agencies.
The project, officials said, represents an investment of more than $10 million in high-quality affordable housing for more than 50 families in the area.
The consortium consists of a number of Allegheny County and Pennsylvania state departments, the Mon Valley Initiative, and the Braddock Economic Development Corp.
“Braddock’s Field will spur the revitalization of the neighborhood surrounding Library Street and Jones Avenue. Our goal is to help revive these once prosperous communities through affordable home ownership, elimination of blight, and an increased tax base,” said Laura Zinski, executive director of the Mon Valley Initiative.
The houses in North Braddock are being sold for $70,000, of which $15,000 will be a “soft,” or subsidized, second mortgage, held by Allegheny County, explained Doug Van Haitsma, real estate development director of the Mon Valley Initiative.
In Braddock, the group of officials, which included Brian Hudson, executive director of the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, and Pennsylvania Treasurer, Robin Wiessmann, launched the renovation of two historic buildings on Corey Avenue, which will make available 17 new apartments.
The Corey Avenue project will also see the demolition of four dilapidated buildings that will make room for the construction of two duplexes and a single family home.
The houses in Braddock will be sold for $52,000, with the same financing scheme as those in North Braddock, Mr. Van Haitsma said.
“Dan Onorato has not forgotten the Mon Valley and we are so appreciative of that,” said Jesse Brown, president of the Braddock’s council.
“We were waiting for many years to see some things happen here and now we see [the houses] coming,” Mr. Brown said.
(Karamagi Rujumba can be reached at krujumba@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1719 . )
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Firm unveils plans for $40 million E. Liberty restoration, development
Thursday, June 07, 2007
By Diana Nelson Jones,
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteA Washington, D.C., firm presented plans yesterday for The Montrose Exchange, a $40 million hotel, office and retail development in the heart of East Liberty, at a meeting with the Urban Redevelopment Authority.
Six buildings would be restored and one built on the site of nine existing buildings, said architect Andrew Moss. Montrose Exchange refers to the name of East Liberty’s former telephone exchange.
The Morgan Development Group began securing land four years ago. It has a franchise agreement with the Hotel Indigo, a member of the Intercontinental Group, for a 135-room boutique hotel. It would consist of four buildings in the block bounded by Highland Avenue and Broad, Kirkwood and Whitfield streets, said Nigel Parkinson, the firm’s principal.
The now-dilapidated six-story Kirkwood Hotel would be restored as the historic reference and the tallest building of the multistory hotel, said Mr. Moss. The hotel components would be connected and a new public plaza created in the block.
A large, modern office building beside the Kirkwood Hotel would be completely redesigned and reconfigured. Two buildings across Highland and one across Broad from the hotel would become two stories of retail and office space.
The plan includes restoration of the former American Legion building, the proposed location of a sister restaurant of Latin Concepts in Washington, D.C., said Mr. Parkinson.
He said Pittsburgh’s character and “great institutions” beckoned him to invest here.
“Last year, I was at a class reunion, and one of my professors was from Carnegie Mellon,” he said. “When I told him about my project, his wife’s eyebrows shot up and she said, ‘I’m from Shadyside!’ ”
Jerome Dettore, executive director of the Urban Redevelopment Authority, said the plan “is very, very solid, very impressive.”
“These guys have put their money where their mouth is. They have assembled the property, they have agreements in place and are ready to move,” he said.
From the URA, the developer is requesting gap-financing assistance, grants for facade restoration and help with public rights of way, infrastructure and parking areas.
“When there’s simply financing in the way, that’s the best role we can play,” said Mr. Dettore, whose staff often has to assemble sites for developers. “The chances of this [project] happening are extremely good.”
Mr. Moss said local businesses would have opportunities to locate in the retail spaces, which include seven in one building, three in another and an undetermined number in an additional 6,900 square feet.
Besides offices, a ballroom, meeting space or a nightclub are possibilities for a portion of the second floors, said Mr. Moss.
Part of the plan is to redesign an open space on Broad Street as a public green space “with a kiosk, a cafe with outdoor tables and an area for small events,” he said.
A Marriott Spring Hill Suites being planned two blocks up Highland made the agreement easier for the Hotel Indigo, said Mr. Moss. “They didn’t want to be the only one. There’s a lack of hotels” in the East End neighborhoods compared with demand, mainly because of nearby medical facilities.
Mr. Moss said the plan was to restore the hotel for certification by the U.S. Green Building Council.
(Diana Nelson Jones can be reached at djones@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1626. )
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Homewood pride comes before bricks and mortar
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
By Elwin Green,
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteThe redevelopment of Homewood will be more a matter of community pride than of bricks and mortar, the keynote speaker at a workshop on commercial development said yesterday.
“We’ve got to lift the community up and highlight the positive things,” said Clarence F. Curry Jr., Minority/Woman Owned Business Enterprises coordinator for the Sports and Exhibition Authority. “We’ve got to toot our own horn.”
Mr. Curry said the community’s redevelopment should build on “magnets,” such as the library, the Alma Illery Health Center and the neighborhood campus of the Community College of Allegheny County, which already attract visitors to the neighborhood.
“They come here to the library, they leave with their money in their pocket.” he said. “We need something to encourage them to stop and spend their money.”
Mr. Curry was one of four speakers at the workshop sponsored by the Homewood Brushton Community Coalition Organization, held at the Homewood branch of Carnegie Library. HBCCO has a community plan for development and is looking for an executive director, but has no land bought and no finances finalized.
Robert Rubinstein, director of economic development at the Urban Redevelopment Authority, offered a glimpse into the information-gathering process that major retailers use when deciding where to locate. Based on data about the area within a half-mile radius of one of the neighborhood’s busiest intersections, at Frankstown and Homewood avenues, he said residents could be expected to spend $9 million on groceries in 2008. Since the average grocery store needs $20 million in annual sales to be feasible, that makes the neighborhood an unlikely target for such a store.
However, he said, Homewood could be a good place to develop “convenience retail” stores such as the Family Dollar slated to open this summer on Frankstown Avenue. It also could offer opportunities for developing light industrial space for manufacturing such goods as T-shirts or compact discs, or for use as artist studios or galleries.
Countering the perception that the URA funds only large-scale developments, Mr. Rubinstein said 90 percent of what the organization finances is “small neighborhood projects.”
J. Arthur Gilmer, project manager for FaithWorks, a Homewood-based nonprofit organization that offers training and consulting to other nonprofits, said the glimpse of a developer’s perspective on the neighborhood was valuable. “We see it one way, walking around the community, and other people see it differently.”
(Elwin Green can be reached at egreen@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1969.)
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City approves tax break for new housing in 29 areas
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
By Mark Belko,
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteCity Council approved tax breaks yesterday designed to spur new housing Downtown even as it expressed misgivings about excluding some neighborhoods from the program.
The measure, approved 8-0, will waive the first $2,700 in city property taxes for 10 years on new housing units built Downtown and in 28 other city neighborhoods.
“It’s symbolic of our effort to prioritize and give incentives for people to move back Downtown and to create incentives for people to move back into neighborhoods that haven’t seen investment for some time,” Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said.
Approval came even though several council members complained about neighborhoods being excluded from the program, which based eligibility in part on a “vitality index” that factored in population losses, education levels, single-parent families, poverty, low home ownership, high vacancy, tax delinquency, violent crime and other factors.
In fact, several Fairywood residents made a last-ditch appeal to council to be added among the eligible neighborhoods, but their pleas fell on deaf ears.
“We never get anything in our neighborhood. We’re always left out, except for things that don’t work,” Donna Washington, a member of the Fairywood Citizens Council, said afterwards.
Councilman William Peduto, who had proposed a competing tax break that would have applied to Downtown and adjacent neighborhoods, said the residents had a point.
“When you choose 29 neighborhoods to be the winner, you’re also choosing 60 neighborhoods to be the loser,” he said.
Several other council members, including Daniel Deasy, who represents Fairywood, also expressed disappointment about neighborhoods being left out but at the same time expressed hope that the program could be expanded in the future.
The Ravenstahl administration has said that going citywide would have cost the city $75 million over the life of the program. As structured, the abatement is designed to replace the new property tax revenue the city is giving up with gains in wage and other taxes.
Mr. Peduto said one possible avenue to explore in years ahead would be income-based property tax breaks as well as incentives built around green buildings, historic preservation and public art.
While the program isn’t perfect, it does lend assistance to efforts to bring more housing Downtown, he said.
Lucas Piatt, vice president of real estate for Millcraft Industries, the Washington County developer bringing condominiums to the former Lazarus-Macy’s building and apartments to the old G.C. Murphy’s store Downtown, described the abatements as a “good start.”
“I think it’s definitely going to help us,” he said.
He said he was also hoping that Allegheny County and the city school district would adopt similar measures. He said abatements in Philadelphia have helped to revitalize that city.
Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato expects to have an announcement soon relating to a possible county tax abatement program, spokesman Kevin Evanto said. For the initiative to be successful, Mr. Onorato believes the city, county and school district all must participate, he said.
While Fairywood residents complained about being left out, representatives from several other neighborhood groups spoke in favor of the program before the vote.
Cindy Cassell, who heads up economic development and project management for Neighbors in the Strip, said the program could help to stimulate the redevelopment of about 100 vacant properties in the Strip District.
“It makes urban living in Pittsburgh more affordable for more people,” she said.
The city is still writing regulations for the program, a process that could take at least a month. Abatement applications will be accepted for five years.
(Rich Lord contributed to this story. Mark Belko can be reached at mbelko@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1262. )