Category Archive: Neighborhood Development
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Hazelwood welcomes new houses
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
By Diana Nelson Jones,
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteCity officials and neighborhood leaders broke ground yesterday on the future site of two new townhouses, among six three-bedroom residences to be built in Hazelwood. They will be the first new homes in the neighborhood in about 15 years, said Jim Richter, executive director of the Hazelwood Initiative.
The $1.5 million project featuring four townhouses and two single-family homes is being developed under the auspices of the Urban Redevelopment Authority. It has been planned for six or seven years, said Jerome Dettore, executive director of the URA.
Four townhouses will be built on Sylvan Avenue, across from the long-vacant Gladstone School. Monongahela Street and Homewood Avenue will each get a new single-family detached home. The townhouses are expected to sell for $129,500, the houses for $135,500. Two homes will be subsidized for home owners who make less than 80 percent of the area’s median income, according to the mayor’s office.
Vanessa Anderson has lived between the two townhouse lots for nine years. They have been vacant for much longer, said Arlene Dobbs, a 45-year resident of the street.
“I’ll be glad to see the weeds go,” said Ms. Dobbs. “Glad to see the land put to good use.”
“It’ll be a brighter place,” said Ms. Anderson, who considered the prospect of four new households on each side of her, saying, “I hope they’re good neighbors.”
She said she has walked to the curb regularly to confront people hanging out in cars whom she presumed were there to sell drugs, she said.
The Rev. Tim Smith, board chair of the Hazelwood Initiative, also has confronted visitors with questionable intentions.
“It has been quiet for the past year, and I think that’s why,” she said, adding that otherwise, the street is peaceful, with lots of homeowners.
As District 5 Councilman Doug Shields described Hazelwood, “You’re six minutes from Oakland and connected to everywhere.”
To give the Hazelwood housing development a boost, the city committed community development block grant money to cover an almost $300,000 gap in financing, Mr. Richter said.
“It’s a sunny day in Hazelwood,” Mr. Richter said yesterday. “Maybe it’s a sign of a sunny future.”
(Diana Nelson Jones can be reached at djones@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1626. )
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Rebuilding Wilkinsburg
By Justin Vellucci
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, May 24, 2007Deanna Steele looks at Jeanette Street’s boarded-up rowhouses — their lawns choked by shoulder-high weeds — and remembers children playing on the brick-lined Wilkinsburg street when she lived there 20 years ago, long before she settled in Murrysville.
Mary Cathcart wanders through an abandoned, five-bedroom house around the corner and sees, instead, the foundation of a future community — a neighborhood built on the potential of four soon to be refurbished historic homes.“I love old houses, and it overjoys me that, instead of knocking something down, they’re rebuilding it,” said Cathcart, 49, of Wilkinsburg, as she descended a dusty staircase in a home under renovation Wednesday evening.
“They’re beautiful. And they have such good bones. They don’t build things like this anymore.”
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation is working to ensure they’re not demolished, either. So, it secured two $500,000 grants from the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the Allegheny County Department of Economic Development to acquire and restore the four roughly century-old structures.
Once the work is done in June or July, each will be sold for $75,000 to $95,000.
Yesterday, most neighbors who flocked to a block party to walk through the homes were less excited about mortgage discounts for prospective buyers than what the investment means to the revitalization of their community.
Sherman Moye lives around the corner from the cluster of homes developers call Hamnett Place. He sees that investment every day when he drives to work.
“I’m glad somebody’s fixing it,” said Moye, 54, of Wilkinsburg. “I know it’s going to be nice.”
Michelle Malito, a Shadyside resident thinking about buying one of the four homes, was impressed by the architectural details the developer is preserving.
Jack Schmitt, who owns a massage therapy business in Squirrel Hill, liked the idea of linking the preserved homes together as part of a sustainable neighborhood.
“I have a business in Pittsburgh, but I want to have a community,” said Schmitt, 38. “I see the vision for the future. I see an eco-village (and) a group of like-minded people.”
Others see the project as a way to improve a residential neighborhood while triggering revitalization elsewhere.
“You work incrementally, and you work your way in,” said Michael Gleba, executive vice president of the Sarah Scaife Foundation, which has funded historic redevelopment in the South Side and in the Mexican War Streets on the North Side. “You have an opportunity.”
Some see Wilkinsburg’s past in the historic homes, while others see its future. Michael Sriprasert, of Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, simply sees the houses themselves.
“I see the houses as they fit into the context of what’s here,” said Sriprasert, as he strolled down the stone alleyway that runs next to one of the restored homes.
“There’s a perception of what Wilkinsburg is. People don’t realize it’s something more,” he said. “That’s what is going on here. … That’s why we’re saving these buildings.”
Justin Vellucci can be reached at jvellucci@tribweb.com or 412-320-7847.
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North Side homes delayed-Sewer regulations force developer to seek aid
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
By Diana Nelson Jones,
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteA slope of grass on Federal Street, freshly mown days ago, was to have had six townhouses by now. But no deadline ever takes complications into consideration.
After a November ground-breaking for the Federal Hill townhouse project on the Central North Side, the developer’s engineering firm was planning to handle the water and sewer connections.
But when the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority received plans from the engineers, after requesting several revisions to each of the first two, it informed the co-developer, the Central Northside Neighborhood Council, that sanitary and storm sewers had to be separated and the main line replaced.
Jerome Dettore, executive director of the Urban Redevelopment Authority, said that as more planning became necessary, “it became clear that public funds were needed.”
The URA recently requested $400,000 from the water and sewer authority board for the project, which calls for 60 homes, 40 condos and a smattering of apartments, most on Federal Street, some on connecting side streets.
The soonest the authority would act on the request would be at its June board meeting.
“Our hope now is to get a tap-in plan approved for the entire development,” said Rebecca Davidson-Wagner, executive director of the Central Northside Neighborhood Council. “Even if we can get [approval] for the first six houses, we may be under construction by August or September.”
Mr. Dettore said developers often pick up the tab for small infrastructure upgrades, but for a project this large, and one that involves the city, the water and sewer authority typically allocates the money for water and sewer reconstruction. The URA will pay for street and sidewalk upgrades, including an island planter that will separate northbound from southbound traffic on Federal.
The first phase of six homes is being financed by a variety of sources for $1.8 million.
Water and sewer authority spokeswoman Holly Wojcik said the agency originally requested corrections and changes on preliminary designs from Trant Engineering. Early this month, however, she said the URA hired Michael Baker Corp. to design the improvements.
Ms. Davidson-Wagner said the company was chosen for its experience with city infrastructure.
About 80 percent of sanitary and storm sewer lines in the city are combined, said Ms. Wojcik. “When we have significant rainfall, they overflow,” delivering sewage into groundwater. “Ultimately, you want them to be separated.”
(Diana Nelson Jones can be reached at djones@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1626. )
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Urban planning expert urges leaders to make local neighborhoods walkable
By Tony LaRussa
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, May 19, 2007An urban planning expert urged local leaders Friday to adopt “smart growth” principles as they map out a strategy for the region’s future.
“There are a lot regions in this country and around the world where people have started to realize that things such as transportation and housing need to be planned in a very deliberate way,” said David Chen, founder and executive director of Smart Growth America, based in Washington.Chen was the keynote speaker at the seventh annual Southwestern Pennsylvania Smart Growth Conference at the Omni William Penn Hotel, Downtown. About 250 business and community leaders attended.
Smart growth involves comprehensive regional planning that, among other things, takes into account environmental issues, global competitiveness, transportation, housing, changing demographics and social equity.
Given the Pittsburgh region’s aging population, Chen said community planners should make neighborhoods more walkable and less reliant on cars by improving the quality and availability of public transportation.
He suggested using smart growth principles when redeveloping older towns and neighborhoods, and when planning new communities.
“While there is still a demand for conventional developments, the market is shifting and we are beginning to see a greater desire for urban living,” Chen said.
With so many townships and boroughs, the region’s fractionalized bureaucracy creates a “significant challenge” when trying to plan on a regional scale, but it has been done in other parts of the country without annexation, Chen said.
“New Jersey has successfully linked different transit systems to create a more integrated system,” said Chen, who noted that some communities in upstate New York have begun to share municipal services.
During a question-and-answer session, David Ross, the planning director for Castle Shannon, drew attention to a lack of governmental cooperation by asking for a show of hands from representatives of local government.
Only four people responded.
“We live in a very parochial area,” he said. “Many of the issues we are discussing today have to be dealt with from the bottom up rather than the top down. That means getting local officials on board with the idea of working together. That will take time.”
Chen announced yesterday that Smart Growth America decided to hold its first national Reclaiming Vacant Properties conference Downtown in September.
Tony LaRussa can be reached at tlarussa@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7987.
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Pittsburgh residents’ labor leads to neighborhood revival
By Mike Cronin
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, May 19, 2007Some of Garfield’s “steps to nowhere” are finally headed somewhere.
The Bloomfield-Garfield Corp. has spent about 25 years buying abandoned buildings and empty lots whose concrete stoops still blight the neighborhood. In some spots, green grass and new homes stand in their places.“God bless these folks,” Aggie Brose, deputy director of the nonprofit, said of the people who bought the homes. Even though some still have blighted structures as neighbors, the new homeowners are “visionaries,” she said.
It takes patience to transform depressed neighborhoods like Garfield into vibrant centers, said those who have pushed for development there and in East Liberty, the South Side Slopes and Tarentum.
Coming up with just a plan might take a year, and executing it can take decades. Leaders of development corporations like Brose’s said residents, business owners and government officials must cooperate to bring a neighborhood back to life.
“With community planning, the way you start is always the same: You find out what’s important to the residents of the neighborhood,” said Maelene Myers, executive director of East Liberty Development Inc.In South Side Slopes, residents and groups have tried to promote affordable housing, Downtown views and cleanup efforts to attract new neighbors. A fire helped, too.
Bev Boggio, 41, cofounder of the South Side Slopes Neighborhood Association, credits a 1998 fire that gutted three houses on Holt Street for mobilizing her neighbors.
“We put signs on poles saying we needed to save our housing stock from fires,” Boggio said. “So many people showed up, we decided we should have our own neighborhood group.”
Judy Dyda, South Side Local Development Co.’s manager of community planning, said older residents learned they needed to embrace young professionals, like Boggio, who started moving in.
“We’ve worked together to do neighborhood cleanups and lighting for pedestrian bridges,” said Joan Burke, 62, a lifelong resident of the slopes.
Brose and Richard Swartz, executive director of the Bloomfield-Garfield Corp., have focused on bringing new residents and business owners to Garfield. They’ve worked with the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority to buy and renovate properties. A 50-house project is underway, and all but one of the 23 built so far have been sold. The homes sell for $120,000 to $131,000.
“We’re deliberately pushing the market up and selling at two to two-and-a-half times what a house here typically sells for,” Swartz said. “It’s a signal to the private market that this area is not going to stay depressed forever.”
A walk along Penn Avenue reveals the resurgence. Many artists own the shops where they sell their work and others’. That’s unusual, said Laura Jean McLaughlin, 41, owner of The Clay Penn.
Neighborhood groups like the Penn Avenue Arts Initiative help artists get grants and loans so they can take ownership of the area’s improvement, McLaughlin said.
“I purchased this building for $15,000,” said McLaughlin, who’s received a grant and loan from local groups to refurbish her property and create two apartments upstairs. “I’m gaining equity. I’ll be able to sell and make a profit.”
Affordable housing is one way Tarentum residents hope to draw people to their borough, where houses cost between $40,000 and $60,000.
“We’d like to have a Shadyside kind of thing,” said George Gatto, owner of a motorcycle shop, a diner and other businesses. “People like to shop in towns.”
Borough Manager Bill Rossey held a meeting last year to gather ideas from the community. Hundreds attended, and since then Rossey has applied for nearly $50,000 in state grants to plan the development of Tarentum’s riverfront, railroad areas and West Seventh Avenue business district.
“People are waiting to get on board with what Tarentum’s going to do,” said Debbie Shiring, 39, who has lived most of her life in the borough and is handling the public relations campaign for the revitalization. “There’s definitely a groundswell of energy and support.”
Mike Cronin can be reached at mcronin@tribweb.com or 412-320-7884.
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$1.5M will help arts center transformation in McKees Rocks
By Sandra Fischione Donovan
FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, May 18, 2007A $1.5 million grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation will help a McKees Rocks community group continue its transformation of an old storefront into the Sto-Rox Cultural Arts Center.
“Oh, it’s going to be grand,” said the Rev. Regis Ryan, executive director of Focus on Renewal, a nonprofit that operates a health center, credit union, high-rise apartment building and social services programs.The agency is remodeling the former Desks Inc. on Chartiers Avenue. After buying the furniture store two years ago, the group began remodeling with $500,000 from Allegheny County and another $500,000 from the Grable Foundation, Ryan said.
The $3.4 million center will include a 130-seat auditorium, art studios and classrooms. The nonprofit expects to finish work by the end of the year.
Focus on Renewal currently runs its cultural arts programs — music, theater, dance, visual arts and literature — in Sto-Rox schools. Once it’s complete, the arts center will host those classes and performances. Movable seating will enable the auditorium to be used for receptions, Ryan said.
Officials said $1 million of the Richard King Mellon grant is unrestricted; the remainder will come as a match if the McKees Rocks group raises another $500,000.“We are in the process of raising the rest,” Ryan said.
The group is soliciting donations from former McKees Rocks residents involved in the arts, through its Where Are They Now Committee.
A spokeswoman for the Richard King Mellon Foundation said any comment on the grant would have to come from the foundation’s director, Scott Izzo, who was on vacation and unavailable.
Ryan predicts the center would be used throughout the day. Programs for young people would be scheduled after school and on weekends. But he hopes to convince school officials to allow students to take some classes there. The center would be open during the day for adult programs and classes.
“It will be a wonderful asset for the whole region,” Ryan said.
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Abolished commerce taxes spurrs growth in Avalon
By Richard Byrne Reilly
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, May 12, 2007Attorney Steven Shreve has no regrets about moving his busy Downtown law firm to Avalon last year.
The sleepy town of 5,000, less than six miles from Pittsburgh, has well-maintained homes, low crime and stable property prices, Shreve said. He purchased a former movie theater with high ceilings and brick walls on California avenue and moved in with his staff in November. He closed another office he had in adjacent Bellevue.
“There’s a congenial environment for business and for living here. You can walk on the main drag. Avalon is strategically located. I can access (Route) 65 and (Interstate) 279 easily, and I have two ways of travelling north and south,” Shreve said.
He isn’t the only one. Doctors, attorneys, accountants and other small-business owners are increasingly setting up shop in vacant storefronts and houses, said borough manager Harry Dilmore.
They are doing so, merchants say, because they don’t have to pay business privilege and mercantile taxes. The borough abolished the taxes in August. The roughly $30,000 a year it lost in revenue, Avalon more than makes up in new commerce and vitality.
Two attorneys opened offices last year, Dilmore said, in addition to accountants, a private detective agency, and a computer communications specialist. Eight doctors and other medical professionals have a presence on California Avenue, Avalon’s main thoroughfare.
Dilmore, borough manager for five years, sees a future predicated on a successful small business community.
“We’re altering zoning ordinances that will spur small business development,” said Dilmore, who favors golf shirts tucked into Dockers-style khakis.
Dilmore will propose a measure May 16 to prohibit buyers from converting large, single-family residences into multi-apartment units. The borough wants to attract families and businesses that will keep the homes intact and in good condition. Financial grants the borough obtained through Allegheny County would help qualifying small-business owners clean up property and install facades, Dilmore said.
Like much of the county, Avalon deals with declining population, says Constance Rankin, head of the North Suburban Chamber of Commerce. Rankin is an attorney and publisher of a small newspaper in Bellevue. The borough’s population dropped from 5,294 in 2000 to 4,962 in 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“Avalon is doing something about it. There’s an emphasis on code enforcement. A quality of life committee, residential cleanups, Dumpster days. They have brought in outside experts. They’ve done useful things to improve the quality of life,” Rankin said.
Avalon attorney and borough Councilman Patrick Narcisi, whose office is a few doors down from Shreve’s, founded the Avalon Quality of Life Committee last year. Tax abatement and tax breaks for home buyers and tweaks to zoning ordinances to prevent slum or absentee landlords to rent apartments to irresponsible tenants are crucial, he said.
“We’re really kind of on the edge. The borough can go down rapidly. You need to work hard to keep it from doing so,” Narcisi said.
His committee brings together the police, the building inspector, fire chief and representatives from local churches. He stresses the importance of property owners maintaining homes, and it recommends to the borough deteriorating properties whose owners should be fined. He wants to launch a database using a color-coded system that would rate properties from good to poor.
“We’re hoping this will have a positive impact on the borough,” he said.
Vicky Tedesco will open her children’s clothing boutique on California Avenue on Monday. Affordable rent, location and steady traffic flow sold her on Avalon. She is located across the street from the borough’s $2.2 million municipal building, which opened last year.
Press Craft Printers Inc. has been in the same location on California Avenue for 47 years. Owner Bill Miller inherited the commercial printing business from his father. He welcomes the newcomers — and efforts Dilmore and others are making to accommodate them.
Dilmore “is addressing different problems. He is trying to take the borough to the next level,” Miller said.
Richard Byrne Reilly can be reached at rreilly@tribweb.com or (412) 380-5625.
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New homes in Hill open doors to first-time buyers
By Jeremy Boren
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, May 11, 2007Goldie Harris likes the look of the tidy, new, two-story houses next to her home in the heart of the Hill District, but she’s not sure who can afford to live in them.
“The most important thing is to make them affordable,” said Harris, 76, who has lived on Roberts Street for 11 years.Her new neighbors are the first eight of 29 planned houses — called Bedford Hill Homes — by the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh. The homes are the newest part of an existing 400-unit, affordable housing development.
Harris said the Bedford Hill Homes’ $150,000 price tags could be steep for some first-time home buyers.
Tom Cummings, housing director for the Urban Redevelopment Authority, disagrees.
He said zero-percent federal and URA deferred loans are available to cut drastically the cost of new mortgages — as long as the new owners are first-time home buyers and meet income requirements.The brick-faced homes have individual entrances and small front yards — a type of design that’s slowly replacing the Housing Authority’s much-maligned public housing high-rises, authority officials have said.
The homes were developed by Hanson Design Group, Steve Catranel Construction Co. and others.
“We believe these are more than just buildings behind us. This is an investment in the community,” said A. Fulton Meachem Jr., the housing authority’s executive director. “We are making home ownership available to all residents in the city of Pittsburgh.”
Buyers have applied to purchase five of the eight first-phase homes, Cummings said.
They’re expected to close those sales by the end of the month, when the second round of eight homes will begin going up, he said.
None of the potential buyers attended a dedication ceremony Thursday in the Hill. Attending the event were Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and Council President Doug Shields.
Howard Cooper, 72, another Roberts Street resident, said a rowdy dive bar — and others like it — used to occupy the land where the model Bedford Hill home sat open yesterday for tours.
“There’s been a whole lot of changes here,” said Cooper, who stopped by the ceremony to snap photos with his camera. “There used to be a lot of bars around here, and they caused a lot of problems” with drugs and crime.
“I’m hoping some kids will move in now,” Cooper said. “It’s a lot better here.”
Jeremy Boren can be reached at jboren@tribweb.com or (412) 765-2312.