Category Archive: Neighborhood Development
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Baltimore-style revitalization eyed for Pittsburgh
By Sam Spatter
FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, August 4, 2005Pittsburgh leaders should look to the southeast for a guide on redeveloping Fifth and Forbes avenues Downtown, the president of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation said Wednesday.
The Murphy administration’s plan to enlist one developer hasn’t worked, said landmarks President Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., so the city should consider copying Baltimore’s continuing effort that has revitalized part of its downtown.
“If that single developer steps forward, that would be fine,” Ziegler told members of the Pittsburgh Rotary Club. “But so far, it has been an elusive goal. We believe the Baltimore plan that worked there very well should be examined again.”
Ziegler referred to Baltimore’s $800 million project driven mainly by private investment and fueled by historic preservation tax credits that has renewed a 26-block area over the past several years.
The city packaged buildings, determined specified uses and quality levels, and offered the packages on the open market, he said.
If Pittsburgh officials adopted a similar plan, national and local developers might be persuaded to take a look at redeveloping pieces of Fifth and Forbes, Ziegler said.
Three developers have considered becoming the master developer for Fifth-Forbes, only to walk away. Dranoff Properties of Philadelphia is the most recent.
Ziegler said he’s been approached by at least two local developers interested in Downtown redevelopment, but not the entire Fifth-Forbes corridor.
“If a major developer can’t be located, then obviously other options would have to be considered,” said Herb Burger, who is leading a private effort to revitalize the corridor. “But I believe a major developer will participate in Downtown renewal.”
The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, founded in 1964, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preservation.
One of its major successes is Station Square on the Monongahela River on the South Side. The entertainment and office complex was developed in a former Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad warehouse site.
The redevelopment, which began in 1975, owes much of that success to nearly $12 million in private money provided through the Allegheny Foundation, Ziegler said. Richard M. Scaife, owner of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, chairs the Allegheny Foundation.
Ziegler said that many of the Downtown developments subsidized by taxpayer money — such as the Lazarus-Macy’s department store and the conversion of the former Mellon Bank headquarters into a Lord & Taylor store — have failed.
He said tax credits have helped finance the Heinz Lofts on the North Side and the Cork Factory redevelopment in the Strip District. Tax credits also could help transform the former Nabisco plant into housing in East Liberty.
Staff writer Ron DaParma contributed to this report.
Sam Spatter can be reached at sspatter@tribweb.com or .
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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Landmarks group aids in Wilkinsburg
By Ron DaParma
TRIBUNE-REVIEW REAL ESTATE WRITER
Wednesday, July 20, 2005The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation has joined an effort to preserve a number of older, abandoned buildings in Wilkinsburg.
The local foundation and community leaders say the wrecking ball is not the best way to deal with some Wilkinsburg structures that may be architecturally noteworthy or historically significant and able to be restored to worthwhile use.
Such efforts are favored by Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato as a way to help rebuild the tax base in Wilkinsburg and other financially struggling “ring” communities just outside Pittsburgh such as Braddock and Rankin, said Dennis Davin, the county’s economic development director.
“This is a very valuable and exciting relationship,” said Denise Edwards, a Wilkinsburg councilwoman and a participant in the Wilkinsburg Neighborhood Transformation Initiative. “This is an effort to retain the integrity of the community and make it economically feasible to restore this neighborhood.”
Patterned after a program used in Philadelphia, the effort is focused on revitalizing a six-block area near St. James Church known as the Hamnett Place neighborhood, said Cathy McCollom, the foundation’s chief programs officer.
As an alternative to demolition, plans are to rehabilitate six abandoned buildings along Jeanette Street and offer them for sale to create opportunities for new single-family housing.
The foundation, which is acting as developer and project manager, hopes to acquire the properties in the next several months and start work by early next year.
Two of the buildings — 520 and 522 Jeanette — will be completely restored, including interior finishes, while two others — 508 and 516 Jeanette — will undergo “shell rehab” including an exterior renovation and installation of utility connections. Interior finishes will be left for a new owner, McCollom said.
The remaining two — 517 and 524 Jeanette — which are in the worst condition, will be cleaned and their structures stabilized, with repairs for the roof, foundation and windows.
The hope is to convince other developers or individuals to acquire or restore other properties and spark additional revitalization in Wilkinsburg.
The buildings targeted for restoration have been abandoned for some time and their condition is detrimental to the rest of the neighborhood, said Wilkinsburg resident Zita Ann Berry, a member of a project steering committee comprised of about 40 to 50 people.
“There are some lovely restored houses already in Wilkinsburg,” she said. “We’ve had an influx of young people who have been updating and done wonderful things with some old Victorian houses here.”
“Wilkinsburg has many fine buildings, houses particularly,” added Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., the landmarks foundation president.
The foundation became involved about 18 months ago after residents became concerned about a development proposal that called for extensive demolition in the area, which also includes parts of Lamar, Rebecca and Whitney avenues and Mulberry Street, McCollom said.
She is a member of Allegheny County’s Vacant Property Commission, which reviews such plans in various communities.
“When I saw some of these buildings had some good bones, so to speak, I realized that rehabilitation was possible,” McCollom said.
After discussions with community officials, including Mayor Wilbert Young, a study conducted by the foundation and community volunteers identified 54 parcels in the area, of which 19 were unoccupied buildings, five were vacant lots and eight were tax delinquent.
In addition to restoration, the study recommended clearing some of those unoccupied properties for new construction, parking or green space.
An overall budget is not finalized, but McCollom estimated the cost to redo the initial six properties could range between $90,000 and $130,000 per unit.
Allegheny County has agreed to provide about $500,000 for the project, said Davin, the county’s economic development director. Matching funds will come from the Landmarks Foundation and probably the state, he said.
Ron DaParma can be reached at rdaparma@tribweb.com or 412-320-7907.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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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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County’s purchase of Carrie Furnace property sparks visions of past and changes to come
By Ann Belser,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, June 16, 2005The potential of Carrie Furnace truly is in the eye of the beholder.
When August R. Carlino looks at the furnace, he sees a representation of the history of steelmaking.
When Charles H. Starrett III sees the property, he sees the future of economic revitalization for the Mon Valley.
The announcement Monday by Chief Executive Dan Onorato that Allegheny County has reached an agreement with the Park Corp. to purchase the furnace and 137 acres for $5.75 million brought people with many visions of the area together on the site.
“This is where our fathers and grandfathers worked,” said U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Swissvale, whose grandfather worked at Carrie Furnace for 40 years. His father worked across Braddock at the Edgar Thomson Works for 31 years. He said their labor, like that of so many others in the mill, made it possible for his generation to go to college.
Standing on the ground where his grandfather worked, Doyle said his generation will be the one to preserve that history.
“This is a good day and this site will be developed in our lifetime,” Doyle said. “We’re going to leave this better for our kids and grandkids and they’re going to know what our parents and grandparents went through.”
Doyle’s bill to make Carrie Furnace a national historic site has been passed twice by the U.S. House of Representatives. He introduced the measure again Monday afternoon and said this year he was going to try to get U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., to get the measure through the Senate.
And now the pressure is really on Carlino, the president of the Steel Industry Heritage Corp., to get the money to refurbish the old blast furnaces that make up Carrie Furnace.
County Executive Dan Onorato said it’s up to Carlino and his group to raise the money needed to turn the furnaces, which are rusting and have trees growing from the upper levels, into a historic site.
The heritage corporation has estimated that the stabilization and renovations of the furnaces, built in 1907, would cost about $78 million. The renovation will include a series of walkways around the furnaces.
“We’ve got all of our hard work ahead of us now,” Carlino said.
But while some are interested in the past, Starrett, the coordinator of the Enterprise Zone Corp. of Braddock, said the redevelopment of the 137-acre site, which includes some land in Munhall and Whitaker, will help spur the redevelopment of Braddock and Rankin. The plan that was developed for the site extends along the north bank of the Monongahela River from Swissvale to the Edgar Thomson Works in North Braddock and includes land between Braddock Avenue and the river in Braddock.
“This is all a state enterprise zone area,” Starrett said. He said that means that any companies that chose to locate there would qualify for state and county financing programs with 3 percent interest and qualifying companies can get a 20 percent state tax credit on property acquisition and construction costs.
The Carrie Furnace property probably will not be ready for new construction for at least 18 months while the county cleans up any environmental problems left over from years of producing iron on the site.
Onorato said Tuesday that at least the county would be moving toward redeveloping the land instead of letting it sit idle.
“A year and a half is nothing considering the steel mill left in 1983,” he said.
The redevelopment plan calls for a residential development on the property in Swissvale and the historic site with a hotel and conference center, offices, and a transportation center all in Rankin. Braddock would have areas in which more housing is built to fill in where some of the older homes have been abandoned or demolished and near the Edgar Thomson Works the county has planned to locate light industry and warehouses.
The overall redevelopment in the three boroughs encompasses 205 acres.
County Economic Development Director Dennis Davin said work has to be done to spruce up the area near Carrie Furnace. On Monday, as the dignitaries and members of the media were driving to the site, the signs to the Carrie Furnace directed them right past a home that was being demolished and through a neighborhood in which many of the buildings have been left neglected.
Davin said while the former steel site is being cleaned, Braddock Avenue is going to be spruced up, including the buildings at 849, 851 and 853 Braddock Ave. that had been renovated by the Braddock Enhancement Task Force but have been left vacant and need further renovations. Davin said the county’s Department of Human Services plans to move offices in there.
Another move on Braddock Avenue will be to create an entrance for UPMC Braddock on the Braddock Avenue site of the building. Currently that is the back side of the hospital and functions as a loading area while patients and visitors enter from Holland Avenue, a parallel street one block up the hill from Braddock Avenue.
(Ann Belser can be reached at abelser@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1699.)
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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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Historic designation OK’d for Buhl building
By The Tribune Review
Wednesday, May 4, 2005The Pittsburgh Planning Commission on Tuesday approved a historic designation for the former Buhl Planetarium building on the North Side.
Built in 1939 on the site of the former Allegheny City Hall and donated to the city by the Buhl Foundation, it was among the first planetariums in the country.
The square structure of Indiana limestone topped by a copper dome was spared when the heart of the North Side was razed in the 1960s to make way for the Allegheny Center. After a decade of dormancy, the planetarium building has since 2004 been incorporated into the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. The designation now needs the approval of City
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South Side church becomes restaurant
By Johnna A. Pro,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, April 14, 2005The historic Cleaves Temple on the South Side had been left to deteriorate in recent years, its stained glass windows covered in grime, its majestic columns and dome towers marred by the hands of vandals and Mother Nature.It was little more than a crumbling eyesore on Carson Street between 10th and 11th streets, a fate hardly befitting a building that served as a place of Christian worship for nearly 100 years.
Since January, though, contractors and artisans working for developer and restaurateur Clint Pohl have worked painstakingly to recapture the building’s past while readying it for a future as a restaurant, the Halo Cafe, much to the delight of the city’s historical preservationists.
“It’s going to be fabulous,” said Maria Burgwin of the city’s Historic Preservation office, which approved the renovation plans in the fall. “We hate to see vacant buildings in historic districts.”
The project is the second one undertaken by Pohl, who spearheaded the renovation of the St. Elizabeth Catholic Church in the Strip District, turning it into Sanctuary, a nightclub.
While records about Cleaves Temple are sometimes sketchy, the building was constructed in 1913 by J.O. Keller at the behest of a congregation of Ukrainian Presbyterians formed several years earlier. At the time, the two existing churches that served the large Ukrainian population living on the South Side were Byzantine Catholic churches.
The newly formed congregation found a patron in a wealthy woman named Mrs. William McKelvey of East Liberty Presbyterian Church. She donated the money to construct the church, a building with an exterior reminiscent of an ornate Eastern European church and an interior reflecting a classic Calvanist tradition. On the outside, the red-brick facade featured an entrance reminiscent of a Greek Temple with a wide staircase leading from the sidewalks and four massive columns supporting a triangular gable. On either side of the building were twin hexagonal towers capped at some point by Byzantine onion domes, each topped with a traditional Orthodox three-bar cross. Stained glass windows adorn the building.
Inside, rich woodwork, clean lines and simple frescoes were the church’s hallmarks.
The church was initially called the First Ruthenian Church. In 1949, that congregation merged with South Side Presbyterian, which today remains one of the most vibrant churches in the neighborhood.
Some historians have written that the building’s onion domes were added in its early history and it was used as a Greek Catholic Church, although none of the experts cite a specific reason for that conclusion.
What is certain is that by the 1950s, members of the South Side Christian Methodist Episcopal Conference owned the building and had renamed it Cleaves Temple CME Church. It would remain an active congregation through the turn of the century until the building was put on the market.
Enter Pohl — owner of Andora restaurant in Ohio Township — who was looking to do a project on the South Side. While much development in the neighborhood is occurring on the far end of Carson Street at the South Side Works, Pohl was drawn to blocks near the 10th Street Bridge, where an eclectic array of businesses are.
While he wasn’t looking for a church in particular, Cleaves Temple caught his eye.
“I was looking for a real estate investment and it happened to be a church. It’s good architecture and it’s inexpensive,” said Pohl, who paid $135,000 for the property, but will invest 10 times as much on the renovations. He also will provide parking at a lot less than a block away.
“I see this as the entrance to the South Side,” Pohl said.
He enlisted the design help of architect Felix G. Fukui of Fukui Architects, who also helped to create Sanctuary.
“Structurally, it’s great,” Fukui said. “The challenge is to marry the new and the old. To tie the rhythm and the form of the church together with the modern design.”
In this case, that means restoring stained glass, bringing the woodwork back to it original luster, using the former balcony space for seating and designing lighting so that it fits with the interior space.
Because the building sits back from the street, Fukui has redesigned the entrance so that a center staircase will lead from street level down to a lower level lounge. Two other staircases will sweep from street level up either side to the portico and the restaurant’s main entrance.
The restaurant, expected to open in early June, will feature intimate booths and table seating surrounding a main bar. The separate spaces are meant to provide patrons privacy while allowing them to be part of the activity. Additional dining space will be in the former balcony.
Jeff and Laura Mae Greene of Greene Glass in Sharon have overseen the restoration of the two dozen stained glass windows.
“I just loved the building from the first time I saw it,” Jeff Greene said. “I just was fascinated with the idea of fixing a building like that up.”
The stained glass was less damaged than it appeared, Greene said.
“In the scale of what we have seen over the years, it was in pretty good shape. To the untrained eye, it can often look pretty bad. It was not in disastrous condition. The painting is beautiful, well done, and the colors are fantastic. The bulk of the effort was just cleaning them.”
Louise Sturgess of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation said that one of the reasons the South Side remains a vibrant neighborhood is because so many of its former churches have found new uses.
Cleaves Temple, while not one of the largest, has always attracted attention because of its charm.
“It’s been scaled to fit right in that block of workers rowhouses,” Burgess said. “It should be grander but humbly fits in there with the streetscape. When you think about the scale of things it takes you by surprise to see this ethnic church.
“I think it’s great that it’s being reused. We’re all for imaginative reuses as long as the historical integrity is retained. It’s wonderful how generally on the South Side, historic churches have been treasured, given a new life and a new use. They create a quality of life that wouldn’t exist without them. They help people feel connected to the story of a neighborhood’s history.”
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Saving Carson Street’s history
By Ron DaParma
Tribune Review Real Estate Writer
Thursday, April 7, 2005Hundreds of young “historians” from four local schools will join their adult counterparts from the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation and The History Channel today to celebrate a project designed to bring to life the history of East Carson Street on the South Side.
The pupils from Phillips, Arlington and Murray elementary schools and Bishop Leonard Catholic — all in or around the South Side — already are deeply involved in the project funded by a $10,000 inaugural “Save Our History” grant to the foundation.
The grant’s purpose is to raise awareness about East Carson, a historic main street lined with Victorian-style commercial buildings.
The landmarks foundation is one of only 29 organizations across the country chosen for the newly established History Channel grants, which are for “innovative, educational projects designed to bring communities together and engage children in the preservation of their local history.” Today’s event is set for 1:30 p.m. at the Phillips school on the South Side.
“We expect the auditorium to be packed,” said Louise Sturgess, the foundation’s executive director and overseer of the East Carson project.
Students in grades kindergarten through eight are integrally involved, she said, handling tasks ranging from conducting research and community interviews to sketching buildings and presenting oral histories.
In all, about 500 students are expected to participate in the project, which is to run through May 15.
“People from The History Channel are coming to recognize the work that the students have been doing since we received the award in January,” Sturgess said.
They will be bringing with them project banners and enamel plaques to present to the participating schools.
“There will be some really neat stuff,” Sturgess said. “It will help the kids understand that they are part of one of the few programs in America who are getting the chance to do a project that really helps preserve a part of history.”
“We are thrilled to see the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation work hand-in-hand with local students to teach them about the great city around them,” said Judy Klein Frimer, director of brand enhancement for The History Channel.
As part of the project, students have been working in pairs to identify and document more than 20 historic main street buildings along East Carson.
They also have interviewed senior citizens to document how South Side buildings have changed over the years, created silk screens of some of those buildings and composed poems, sketches and other artistic pieces.
The foundation also has worked in conjunction with “The Saturday Light Brigade,” a family-oriented public radio program on WRCT-FM, to host chat sessions between students and community members.
Plans are to record and archive these recollections of the neighborhood and the main street in particular.
Officials today also will announce plans for “Spotlight on Main Street,” a major community event planned for April 30 at the South Side Market House and along East Carson, between 10th and 22nd streets.
“That will be a highlight of our project,” Sturgess said. It will feature a scavenger hunt, entertainment and a live radio broadcast conducted by the “Saturday Light Brigade” from the street.
After the Save Our History project concludes on May 15, plans are to launch a new interactive Internet site that will feature the buildings identified by the students, as well as “fun facts” and trivia about the buildings and neighborhood.
Ron DaParma can be reached at rdaparma@tribweb.com or 412-320-7907.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review