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Category Archive: Neighborhood Development

  1. 2 Lawrence buildings start falling

    Convention center, paint factory demolition begin

    Tuesday, June 12, 2001

    By Tom Barnes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

    It was a bad day for Pittsburgh buildings named Lawrence.

    Demolition began yesterday on the original David L. Lawrence Convention Center — a youngster only 20 years old — as it was slammed by a machine called a Komatsu Excavator nicknamed “Bad Boy.”

    Most of that building at Penn Avenue and 10th Street will be demolished by conventional methods, although a small implosion will be used this summer to take down a section of the roof.

    The building, which opened in 1981, had only 131,000 square feet of exhibit space, which is considered tiny by today’s convention center standards. Demolition is to be completed by mid-August so that phase two of construction of the new convention center can proceed. The first phase of the new building is well under way on the western side of 10th Street.

    Tom Kennedy, project manager for the Sports & Exhibition Authority, said the old convention center had to be razed “because the design wasn’t compatible” with the new $328 million center, which was designed by architect Rafael Vinoly of New York City.

    Six events planned for the latter half of 2001 had to be moved to other venues in the area or rescheduled because the old convention center is being demolished. The first phase of the new, larger building will open in January in time for public events such as the annual boat and auto shows.

    While the convention center was being razed Downtown, demolition cranes were also whacking into a brick wall at the 99-year-old Lawrence Paint Co. building on the south side of the Ohio River. It’s just west of Station Square and faces the Point fountain across the river.

    That industrial structure was built in 1902 and has been closed for more than 30 years. Much of the roof has withered away over the years, allowing rain and bird droppings to get inside and damage the interior. Demolition is expected to take 60 to 90 days.

    Some historic preservationists had looked at the building in recent years as a possible site for high-end apartments or condominiums, but the extensive interior damage and the narrow site — squeezed in between railroad tracks and Carson Street, a state road — made reuse of the structure prohibitively expensive.

    A master plan for the entire 50-acre Station Square site, which had been done in 1992 by Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation when it owned the property, called for the preservation and renovation of Lawrence Paint.

    But after the prime riverfront property was sold in 1994 to Forest City Enterprises of Cleveland and Tennessee-based Promus hotels and casinos, approval was obtained from the city to demolish the old paint building.

    Forest City later bought out Promus, but Promus still holds an option on the land until 2007 in case Pennsylvania should legalize floating or land-based casinos.

    At least until the option held by Promus expires, the Lawrence Paint building will be replaced by a small park with industrial artifacts.

    “We regret that the master plan, which PHLF submitted to the city in 1992 and which required preservation of Lawrence Paint, is not being followed,” said History & Landmarks spokeswoman .

    Even after the property was sold by Landmarks in 1994, “we assumed the approved master plan would be followed,” she said.

    She acknowledged that Forest City, in the late 1990s, went to the city planning commission to obtain approval to demolish the building, saying it had become too damaged to be renovated.

    McCollom said History & Landmarks “will work with Forest City on a commemorative industrial display” to go where the building has long stood. The display will include some artifacts from the building, she said.

    This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette

  2. Morning Glory’s owners work to bring Victorian look to inn’s garden

    Saturday, June 09, 2001

    By Virginia Peden
    Pittsburgh Post Gazette

    Five years ago, when Dave and Nancy Eshelman bought their South Side bed & breakfast, the Morning Glory Inn, they wanted it to be as authentically Victorian as possible. So it seemed perfectly proper that the garden be Victorian, too.

    About two years ago, they turned to Barry Hannegan, director for historic design programs for the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation.

    “For a total historical image, the garden is as important as the house,” he said. “I suggested plant materials for a garden compatible with that house and courtyard. In early days, the yard would have been used for hanging laundry, chicken coops and to store coal and wood.”

    Today, the inn’s yard is more likely to be the scene of weddings, parties and alfresco breakfasts. Two years of work have created the beginnings of a true Victorian garden, and Nancy, who is learning as she goes along, is determined to keep it that way.

    For example, her trailing geranium has plain leaves because the variegated types were developed too late for Victorian use.

    “I pulled out the evergreens,” she said. “The working class on the South Side at that time would not have been able to afford them. The man who built this house in 1862, John G. Fisher, was a brick maker.”

    On Thursday, Hannegan will lead a free informal garden seminar beginning at 2 p.m. in the courtyard of the inn on Sarah Street. He will discuss techniques and plants compatible with a Victorian garden, using Nancy’s “work in progress” as an example.

    Nancy, 58, teaches a family and consumer science class at Sto-Rox High School and tends the garden on Saturdays. On Thursday, she will talk a little about her handiwork; she calls gardening her therapy.

    “It’s almost a woodland Victorian garden because of the shade,” she said.

    A pussy willow and a silver maple tree that reach nearly out of sight catch the sun in their tops, forcing Nancy to use almost entirely shade plants. There’s solid green boxwood, honeysuckle, sweet pea, white bleeding heart, goat’s beard, hosta, jack-in-the pulpit, liriope, ferns and oak leaf hydrangea. A pale green bamboo bush bends into an arc.

    Hannegan’s advice didn’t require the removal of many plants in the existing garden. Most had been popular for more than a century.

    “This ground cover, pachysandra, was called ‘poor man’s ivy,’ and that’s Boston ivy climbing up the wall next door. It dies in the winter and then comes back,” Nancy said.

    “The bay magnolias have interesting branches with different shapes and don’t lose their leaves until spring. And this Carolina silver bell gets little white bell-shaped blossoms.

    “I’m learning a lot,” she said.

    Greg Yochum, a horticulturist with History & Landmarks, also offered the Eshelmans some advice. Hannegan said creating a garden that is compatible with a Victorian home is often a question of what not to do.

    “Avoid impatiens at all costs. They have been around for only 30 years. And Bradford pear trees are very much of the late 20th century,” he said.

    Other flowering ornamentals, such as crabapples or hawthorns, or a lilac pruned as a tree, are much more appropriate, Hannegan said. He said the inn’s garden is not an attempt at an exact re-creation of a Victorian garden. It fits the house and Nancy’s own requirements, which included a variety of strong fragrances and something blooming from February through late November. She also wanted all new flowers to be white, for a moonlight effect.

    “When the white flowering redbud blossomed in spring, it looked like Christmas lights at night,” she said.

    The Eshelmans made few structural changes in the garden. Dave, 58, relaid the courtyard’s red bricks in a herringbone pattern, in a more formal shape. Spotlights are tucked around the edges of the courtyard, and candles are used for evening functions.

    Like earlier residents, Nancy cooks with herbs from her garden — lemon verbena, mint, flat-leaved parsley, lemon balm, rosemary and basil. She lines cake pans with scented geranium leaves and uses herbs in egg and mushroom dishes for guests.

    The garden is a bit between blooms right now. A French silk lilac bush near the front entrance has finished blooming, as have the violets, daffodils and lilies of the valley nestling in a niche. Only one pale peach “wonderfully fragrant” rosebush is in full bloom.

    English ivy greens the ground and a neighboring wall, where snow peas are sowed. Two window boxes, made of wrought iron to match the fence, are lavish with pansies, English ivy and clematis. History & Landmarks publishes a brochure on Victorian flower boxes, in which plants can be changed with the seasons.

    In July, the inn’s namesake, morning glories, will wind through the front fence, and red rambler roses will one day twine around a graceful iron trellis. Nancy is planting moonflowers, evening primroses and nicotiana for fragrance. She’s also tending planters holding hydrangeas from the garden of her mother, Thelma Harris, in Sheraden.

    Soon, she hopes to add a water feature, but not an elaborate Victorian fountain. She and Hannegan have discussed a stone water trough with a gentle burble.

    “The sound is important to me,” she said. “I want it to be soft, subtle, sort of ‘I wonder where that’s coming from?'”

    Virginia Peden is a free-lance writer

    This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette

  3. New looks for old steel sites

    Tuesday, May 01, 2001

    By Patricia Lowry, Post-Gazette architecture critic

    By coincidence, two day-long charrettes will be held Saturday to help plan for the future of two struggling neighborhoods, both shaped by the steel industry’s rise and fall.

    The closing of the LTV coke plant in Hazelwood, said Pittsburgh city planner Maureen Hogan, “was a real opportunity to think through new uses for the site, and also look at Hazelwood in general and figure out what kind of neighborhood it should it be, how we should position it, how to revitalize it and what resources should be directed to it. We want to take the neighborhood through a planning process to see what would be appropriate to the [LTV] site.”

    Several buyers are interested in the 180-acre site, and the planning process will help the community articulate to buyers its goals for the site and the neighborhood.

    This “strategic visioning process” will identify Hazelwood’s role in the region’s economy and establish guidelines for appropriate land uses and infrastructure improvements. It will focus on Hazelwood in the context of the region, the city and the surrounding neighborhoods — with an eye to strengthening connections to Oakland and the Pittsburgh Technology Center. It also will explore options for the redevelopment of Junction Hollow, to create more opportunities for both Oakland and Hazelwood.

    The charrette will be facilitated by The Saratoga Associates, an architecture and planning firm from Saratoga Springs, N.Y. It will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. (with registration at 8:30 a.m.) at Carnegie Mellon Research Institute, 700 Technology Drive, Pittsburgh Technology Center, followed by a neighborhood reception and celebration from 4 to 5 p.m.

    For information, call: Hazelwood Initiative at 412-421-7234 or Wanda Wilson, city Planning Department, at 412-255-2223.

    Meanwhile, in Homestead, local architects will lead a charrette that follows up on a recently completed comprehensive plan for Eighth Avenue, the town’s historic main street.

    “The idea is to look at [making] connections and sparking ideas in the community for the next place they might go,” said Anne Swager, director of the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Institute of Architects, one of the charrette’s three sponsors.

    “We’re going to look at connections to the residential districts, to the Waterfront development and to the river, to the proposed Steel Valley Heritage Park, to the historic churches and the ethnic community,” Swager said. The charrette also will examine how to better link Eighth Avenue with its neighboring, parallel streets in the National Register Historic District.

    The charrette will be held in the Moose Building, 112 E. Eighth Ave., from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., with the public invited to hear the results at 4 p.m.

    On Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the Carnegie Library of Homestead, Duquesne University professor Bob Gleeson will launch the charrette with a talk about Homestead’s history and its impact on the town’s economic future. Gleeson heads Duquesne’s Institute for Economic Transformation.

    For information, call the AIA at 412-471-9548.

    Touring Beech and beyond

    “Take a Walk on the North Side” is the title of a new walking tour of Allegheny West’s Beech Avenue. One of the city’s most architecturally intact and historically significant streets, Beech Avenue was home to the infant Gertrude Stein, to Mary Roberts Rinehart (who lived at 954 Beech when she published “The Circular Staircase” in 1908), and to many prominent 19th-century industrialists and businessmen and their families.

    The tour, to be led by staff members from Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, also includes Calvary United Methodist and Emmanuel Episcopal churches. It will be given Saturday from 10 to 11 a.m. and continue year-round on the same day and time (except the second weekend of December). The tour costs $3 per person and begins and ends at Calvary United Methodist Church (Allegheny Avenue entrance). Large groups are asked to register in advance, but individuals can just show up.

    The walking tour brochure also includes self-guided tours of Millionaires’ Row along Ridge Avenue and Brighton Road, the upper-middle-class houses of Lincoln and Galveston avenues, and nods to the Mexican War Streets and Manchester neighborhoods and North Side attractions.

    The brochure is available upon request from two of its sponsors — the Landmarks Foundation at 412-471-5808, Ext. 516; and the Office of Cultural Tourism at 412-281-7711 or 800-359-0758. The Allegheny City Society and the Alcoa Foundation are also supporting the tour.

    This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette

  4. Rebuilding needs input, not secrecy

    Wednesday, October 06, 1999
    By Sally Kalson
    Pittsburgh Post Gazette

    There’s never been any question that something must be done about Pittsburgh’s Forbes-Fifth corridor, a grim expanse with too many indications of a center-city in decline.

    But now we’re seeing what happens when the plan for “something” is hatched in secret, by a few people, with no input from those most directly affected, and without consulting any of the myriad local experts who could have helped shape the project and build community support.

    Without that kind of participation, Mayor Murphy’s newly unveiled plan for Market Place at Fifth and Forbes feels like it’s being done more TO us than WITH us. And that’s a shame.

    I, for one, would love to get behind a major Downtown revitalization project. But as it stands, this one gives me the willies.

    It feels out of balance, both too much and not enough — too much demolition, not enough preservation; too much commercial development, not enough residential (none, actually); too much emphasis on national chains, not enough on retaining homegrown business; too much telling how it’s GOING to be, not enough conferring on how it OUGHT to be.

    The plan has its merits, to be sure. Of the $480.5 million package, about 89 percent will come from the private developer, Urban Retail Properties of Chicago, and the prospective tenants. The buildings are to be in scale with Downtown’s current proportions, and all the stores are to have street entrances instead of inward-facing, mall-type corridors.

    But — and this is a very big but — the plan calls for the city to acquire 64 buildings and demolish 62 of them. Only 10 facades are to be saved and incorporated into the new designs.

    That’s not revitalization; it’s clear-cutting. And even if the new buildings that take their place are nicely designed, will there be anything distinct about them? Anything that says Pittsburgh, as opposed to Cleveland, Denver, Atlanta or Fort Worth?

    How many structures that are worth saving could have been kept in the picture if Murphy and his point man on the project, Deputy Mayor Tom Cox, had invited Pittsburgh History and Landmarks and Preservation Pittsburgh into the process, instead of holding them off?

    Having been excluded, they’re now working on alternative plans of their own. How much time, energy and expense could have been saved if they’d all worked together from the get-go?

    And how many Downtown business owners could have been won over, fired up or, at the very least, assuaged if the mayor’s office had found a way to include them? Now they’re angry as hornets, vowing to dig in and hold out, threatening lawsuits.

    It was all so predictable, and so unnecessary. Sure, some opposition is inevitable in a project of this scale. All the more reason to accept the help of potential allies when it’s offered instead of shutting them out.

    Arthur Ziegler of Pittsburgh History and Landmarks summed it up, saying he was “most disappointed that the city has ignored all those people and organizations that want to help. There was an opportunity here to encourage terrific local community energy and commitment through broad participation.”

    This, I think, is one of the most unfortunate characteristics of Murphy’s tenure. I believe he loves this city and cares deeply about its future. If only he could recognize that other people do, too.

    Sally Kalson’s e-mail is:skalson@post-gazette.com

  5. Urban writer scoffs at corridor plan

    By Jeff Stacklin
    TRIBUNE-REVIEW
    October 6, 1998

    By redeveloping the Fifth and Forbes corridor with national retailers and restaurants, city planners will blow an opportunity to “do something interesting and innovative that won’t bankrupt the city,” an urban critic said Wednesday.

    Instead of investing in a national developer, city leaders should assist local businesses by helping them market their wares and by government-funded programs to improve roads and buildings, said Roberta Brandes Gratz, a journalist, author and critic from New York City.

    Gratz, author of “Cities Back from the Edge, New Life for Downtown,” spoke as part of the Making Cities Work lecture series. The lecture was sponsored by the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation and the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Pittsburgh Branch.

    With slides, Gratz showed redevelopment projects that have worked in other U.S. cities and some that have not. She made a distinction between the reborn and rebuilt city – and favors the reborn city.

    A rebuilt city is one where buildings are razed and replaced with new structures. A reborn city utilizes what’s already in place.

    She scoffed at the proposed overhaul of Fifth and Forbes avenues as a rebuilding project that won’t work and will cost too much.

    The plan, which has not been finalized, tentatively calls for the city to buy the properties lining the corridor, and then sell them to Urban Retail Properties, a Chicago-based firm.

    The firm, which did not return phone calls yesterday, promises to attract an All-Star Cafe, a Planet Hollywood with a 24-screen movie theater and several national retailers.

    The project is also expected to get plenty of tax dollars. Already, Gov. Tom Ridge has pledged $10 million in state grants. Mayor Tom Murphy has said he wants to provide $7 million in taxes reaped from a new Mellon Bank operations center. The project, which Urban Retail Properties brochures have called the Market Place at Fifth and Forbes, has been estimated to cost $170 million.

    The developer and the city have yet to disclose how much of that cost will be underwritten by private sources.

    Although many people can relate to the national chains, Gratz said her studies of other cities show they won’t attract more people Downtown.

    “Why would someone come Downtown to a store they can find in a mall in the suburbs?” she asked.

    The Fifth and Forbes corridor already is loaded with unique stores that offer a distinct flavor. It’s an area that can be reborn, Gratz said.

    She suggested the city catalog existing businesses and what they sell. With that information, the city should launch an advertising campaign to market the area. She’s betting that within a year more people will come Downtown to patronize the stores.

    “I don’t think people know how many local businesses will be displaced” by the redevelopment, Gratz said. “Local businesses should be treasured, not replaced.”

    After her lecture, Gratz toured the Fifth and Forbes corridor, and stumbled upon The Headgear hat shop on Fifth Avenue. From cowboys hats to baseball caps, the store sells all styles and fashions of hats. It’s in a building that will be razed if the city’s plan is carried out.

    “This goes?” she asked, shaking her head in dismay. The plan “makes less sense seeing it on the street than it did when I just heard about it.”

    City Councilman Sala Udin is confident that the unique stores, such as the hat shop, will be relocated into the new development – although he could not guarantee that every wig shop and manicurist along the corridor would survive.

    “Efforts are being made by the mayor’s office and the Urban Redevelopment Authority to find local businesses that contribute a progressive urban character and keep them in business and keep them in the mix,” Udin said.

    Margaret McCormick Barron, the mayor’s spokeswoman, said that some businesses might be temporarily relocated while construction is taking place. She said “it’s premature” to say what businesses, if any, would be forced out of their buildings because of the development.

    Udin said he appreciated many conclusions drawn by Gratz. However, the final plan for the Fifth and Forbes corridor has not been completed.

    “The jury is still out on it,” Udin said. “What the final configuration of the Downtown ownership will look like is still to be determined.”

    Barron said that the city’s new Downtown Plan includes market research that supports the Fifth and Forbes plan, and concludes that the national retailers and restaurants will draw customers.

    “We stand by the plan,” she said. Gratz’s remarks suggested that “she seems to think we’re building a mall.” That’s not the case, Barron said.

    Meanwhile, the mayor’s office said last night that Murphy planned an important economic development announcement this afternoon at Mellon Square, Downtown.

  6. FIGHTING FOR OUR OLDER SCHOOLS – AND COMMUNITY SOUL

    By Neal R. Peirce

    America’s maladies of giantism and mindless standardization aren’t just matters of the craze for bigger highways that paved the way for Wal-Mart and McDonalds and their imitators, erasing the distinctiveness of our communities.

    Our public schools are being impacted just as gravely. Grand old structures continue to be mindlessly demolished, replaced by nondescript, low-slung buildings in seas of parking lots on the outskirts of towns.

    And not always by accident. Just as there’s a highway lobby — the asphalt and concrete gang, engineers and state highway departments — there’s a powerful lobby for tearing down old schools and building anew. It includes school construction consultants, architects, builders, and their rule-writing allies in state departments of education.

    Take the school construction saga of Brentwood, a working class old trolley suburb about 5 miles south of Pittsburgh. In 1995, the local school board was talking of closing the two elementary schools and attaching them to the existing middle- and senior high school in a single giant K-12 education complex.

    Ronald Yochum, a professional working with the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, thought that was a terrible idea. So did several others who ran with him for the school board, promising to save Brentwood’s neighborhood schools. They unseated the incumbents with a 70 percent vote.

    Once elected, they faced a mountain of Pennsylvania Department of Education space minimums and code requirements. A school building consultant was hired, who reported the two old schools were substandard, that they should be demolished and replaced with new structures costing $11.2 million.

    The consultant was asked– What about comprehensive renovations instead of demolition? His reluctant answer: Maybe you could do it. But you’d have to put a stucco shell on that old building to get satisfactory energy efficiency. The job would cost, he estimated, $8.6 million.

    Yochum and his board allies wanted nothing of a plan that would destroy the building’s historic aesthetics. So they located a local architect who wasn’t wired into the Pennsylvania school-building game. With him, they devised a plan to renovate the two old schools in a way that preserved the aesthetics of the facade and interior, insulated the walls and roofs, rewired the rooms for Internet technology, and met every state building requirement. The final cost: $5.9 million, just over half the consultant’s first figure.

    Even then, the price was $850,000 more than it had to be to satisfy a state regulation mandating steel and concrete wherever the old structures had wood load-bearing walls and wood floors. The state regulators wouldn’t budge on their rule, even though the revamped buildings would have full fire sprinkling. The rule, says Yochum, makes it difficult to rehabilitate any school building more than 30 or 40 years old.

    Similar stories, says Constance Beaumont of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, are being echoed across America, in one state after another. In her book, “Smart States, Better Communities,” she identifies typical “guidelines” — from the Council of Educational Facility Planning, for example — which escalate from at least 10 acres of land for every elementary school to 50 acres for community colleges, plus extra acres (based on total enrollment) for playing fields and lots of parking spaces.

    Another guideline recommends against renovating any school if the cost is more than 50 percent of total replacement. States don’t need to adopt these guidelines — but they frequently do. Communities that want state school aid are forced to abandon still-serviceable historic buildings.

    The result: “school sprawl” that makes towns less attractive and marketable, feeds exurban growth, forces many students from their bikes onto buses, removes students from the lively daily flow of town life, and indeed simply feeds the isolation many of today’s teenagers feel.

    J. Myrick Howard of Preservation North Carolina charges that his state’s Department of Public Instruction not only promulgates “ridiculous” acreage and size standards for new schools but has adopted regulations which actually limit preventive maintenance of fine old school buildings. It’s “poor stewardship of public resources,” says Howard.

    Maryland appears to be the grand exception. Recently backed up by Gov. Parris Glendening’s campaign to restrain sprawl, a set of counter-guidelines — for preservation — are being enforced by Yale Stenzler, director of the state’s public school construction program.

    And with clear results: From 1991 to 1997, the percentage of Maryland’s school construction funds supporting renovations and additions to existing schools — rather than new structures — soared from 34 percent to 82 percent.

    “Older school buildings can be renovated and revitalized to provide for the most up-to-date educational programs and services.” says Stenzler. Remade schools in existing neighborhoods “will encourage families to stay, … to use the existing roads, parks, libraries, public facilities.”

    Will other states start shifting course? Maybe, with progressive (and smarter) governors. But more guerilla action at the school district level, like Brentwood’s, may be vital to convince the public of how much is really at stake.

    ©1997, Washington Post Writers Group.

Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation

100 West Station Square Drive, Suite 450

Pittsburgh, PA 15219

Phone: 412-471-5808  |  Fax: 412-471-1633