Category Archive: News Wire Services
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Garfield project may get go-ahead
By Bonnie Pfister
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, May 9, 2007The Urban Redevelopment Authority is poised to approve nearly $1.2 million in loans and more than $700,000 in grants to help develop an 18-unit residential and commercial building in Garfield.
The URA board is expected to vote Thursday on proposals to help finance the $6.17 million “Glass Lofts” development on Penn Ave and North Fairmount Street. The developer, Friendship Development Associates, has worked with architect Arthur Lubetz Associates and Sota Construction.The project would include 3,200 square feet of ground-floor commercial space intended for a restaurant, 1,100 square feet of office space, and four artists’ studios.
The URA also is scheduled to discuss redevelopment efforts at Wood Street Commons, a 16-story building at the corner of Third Avenue and Wood Street, Downtown, which offers affordable housing to the working poor and those at risk of homelessness.
Operated since 1987 as a partnership of the nonprofit Community Human Services Corp., developer Mistick PBT and local government agencies, it houses 259 apartments and six floors of commercial space. But Mistick PBT is liquidating its assets and must be removed from the ownership structure, according to URA documents.
The Allegheny County Office of Community Services will vacate its office space there in June 2008, resulting in a loss nearly $1 million in annual income for the building owners.The URA board will vote on a reimbursement agreement with the county to help pay Baker Young Corp. to reassess the building’s value and potential redevelopment of the commercial floors. The county would reimburse the URA half the cost to conduct the study, up to $25,000.
Officials from the URA and Friendship Development Associates did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment Tuesday.
Bonnie Pfister can be reached at bpfister@tribweb.com or 412-320-7886.
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Cork Factory apartments get bubbly reviews
By Ron DaParma and Sam Spatter
For the Tribune-Review
Saturday, May 5, 2007Debbie Dougherty gushes superlatives when she describes the two-bedroom loft apartment that she and her husband, Bill, share at the new Cork Factory apartments in the Strip District.
“It’s just so wonderful. We’re enjoying every minute of it,” said Dougherty, whose seventh-floor corner unit offers views of both the Allegheny River and Downtown. “We have brick walls and 17-foot ceilings, and it’s incredible,” she said.
Because her husband is retired and their four children have grown and moved, Dougherty said the couple decided to downsize from their large family home in Murrysville. They moved in March to the 297-unit luxury Cork Factory complex, which celebrated its grand opening Friday.
With 135 apartments — about 45 percent of the units — already scooped up by renters, the $70 million project is well ahead of its leasing goals, said Daniel McCaffery, of Daniel McCaffery Interests of Chicago.
“We’re very pleased,” said McCaffery, who developed the site in partnership with Charles Hammell III and Robert Beynon, the local businessmen who own the property on Railroad Street between 23rd and 24th Streets.
“The important thing is we are making our rental rate and renting at a pace that’s faster than we predicted,” McCaffery said.The developers expect the percentage figure will be close to 70 percent as early as the fall.
In addition to the apartments, interest also is high in the 48,000-square-feet of retail space available, he said. Leasing deals may be pending with two upscale restaurants and a local grocery store, he said.
The three-building complex originally was built as the home of the Armstrong Cork Co. in 1901. The estimated development is privately financed although federal tax credits for historic sites cover some of the costs.
So far, tenants are a mixture of young single professionals, many newcomers to the Pittsburgh, a smattering of suburbanites and elderly residents, said Debbie Roberts, Cork Factory general manager.
“We’ve met so many nice people,” Debbie Dougherty said. “We’ve even formed a dinner-out once-a-month group with people here, and it’s all ages — the young, the baby boomers and so forth.”
Now that leasing of apartments is well under way, the development team can move ahead on their plans to develop a private marina on the Allegheny River for the exclusive use of Cork Factory residents.
Also ahead is a river walk that will allow tenants to walk the grounds of the complex.
Other features include the historic, fully restored smokestack and engine room.
Under its current configuration, the complex offers 206 one-bedroom units; 73 two-bedroom, two-bath units; and 18 three-bedroom, two-bath units.
Studio apartments rent from $1,200; other one-bedroom units from $1,009 to $2,480; two-bedrooms from $1,499 to $2,850; and three-bedrooms from $3,430 to $3,800.
The complex offers a game room, 24/7 concierge service, complimentary wireless Internet in select common areas, and out-of-town services such as mail, newspaper and package pickup.
Other features, either already available or scheduled to be opened in the future, include patio/lounge area with fire pit, riverview barbecuing, swimming pool with landscaped deck, hot tub/spa, a courtyard garden, a fitness center, business center, dry cleaners and a 450-car parking garage located across Allegheny Valley Railroad Street.
As the Cork Factory nears completion, Hammel and Beynon can look back on nearly 11 years of frustration since they bought the property in a bankruptcy court sale in 1996.
Several times other investors had come board to help with the project, only to drop out before it could move forward.
“Today is culmination of a lot of hard work,” said Hammell, owner of the Pitt-Ohio Express trucking company in the Strip District. Beynon is owner of Beynon & Co., a Pittsburgh-based real estate and insurance company.
“I think it’s awesome what they’ve done with that building,” said Larry Lagattuta, owner of The Enrico Biscotti Co., an Italian bakery and cafe at 2202 Penn Ave. in the Strip.
“I think this can only help the Strip when you have more people living here,” said Lagattuta, whose has operated his business within two blocks of the Cork Factory for 15 years.
Lagattuta said his only concern is that the Cork Factory and other new developments in the Strip could attract national chains and franchise retailers, coffee shops, and the like that could possibly hurt locally owned businesses.
“We have to be careful about how those things happen,” he said. “But otherwise, lets get the people moving in and start shopping in the Strip,” he said.
“The Cork Factory is an excellent addition to the downtown housing mix,” said Patty Burk, vice president of housing and economic development for the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership.
“It adds to the diversity of units and income ranges that we are trying to achieve Downtown. It also represents the ‘New Downtown,’ which is becoming a mixed-use environment.”
“Even when were living in Murrysville, we would come into the city at the minimum, three days a week, for cultural events and ball games,” Dougherty said. “We loved the city so much, so we visited a few other loft apartments, but when we walked into the Cork Factory, we stopped. We said this was it.”
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Tour forges link to steel-making past
By Andrew Conte
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, May 3, 2007Jim Kapusta tells his granddaughter plenty of stories from his 20 years as a journeyman at the Carrie Furnaces of U.S. Steel’s former Homestead Works.
Few of the tales made much sense to the 13-year-old until Kapusta took her on a tour of the rusting, graffiti-covered hulk — now open for tours as part of the Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area.“Pittsburgh as a steel area is gone now,” said Kapusta, 61, of Peters. “To keep the thoughts and heritage going, we need something like this. It’s almost like going to the Carnegie museum.”
Rivers of Steel gained tour access last year to the Carrie Furnaces site — stretching along the Monongahela River in Rankin, Braddock and Swissvale — after Allegheny County purchased the former mill.
The tours help the heritage area deliver on its mission of bringing to life Western Pennsylvania’s industrial history, said Augie Carlino, president of the Steel Industry Heritage Corp., which oversees the seven-county heritage area.
About 2,000 people toured the furnaces last year, yet names remained on a waiting list. Rivers of Steel plans to start offering the tours again this month.“There’s a big difference,” Carlino said. “It’s not imaginary anymore. The scale and magnitude and what the potential is I don’t think comes home to anybody until they’re walking around there.”
The National Park Service last year designated the furnaces as a historic landmark, and backers are hoping to win congressional designation as a full National Historic Site within the next two years.
The furnaces would be on par with the Gettysburg Civil War battlefield and Grand Canyon in terms of prestige, federal marketing and park service staffing, Carlino said. The site could draw hundreds of thousands of tourists a year.
A futuristic vision includes a monorail snaking around gleaming factory buildings, while visitors linger on wide brick walkways and at open-air cafes. At night, fireworks and flaming gas plumes would erupt from a factory trimmed in decorative lighting.
Federal and state governments could share the $100 million to $120 million cost with local foundations, Carlino said.
The plans seem far-fetched — especially from the barren mill site, choked with weeds — but have roots in similar industrial tourism sites in Germany. There, a former steel mill has been turned into an amusement park with rock climbers scaling iron ore storage bins and scuba divers swimming in a seven-story water tank.
“It’s not a museum only,” said Janis Dofner, the heritage group’s spokeswoman. “You’ve got to have other amenities.”
For now, the Rivers of Steel tour allows visitors to simply walk beneath and around the 92-foot blast furnaces as they stand silently among chirping birds. The cast house, where molten iron once poured from the furnace amid showering sparks, stands as an open-air cathedral.
Kapusta and former mill workers volunteer their time to share stories of wrestling with oversized valves and the fire-breathing machines.
“It was like you’re controlling a volcano,” Kapusta said. “It was probably the same heat and everything.”
Andrew Conte can be reached at aconte@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7835.
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Mt. Lebanon Municipal Golf Course: A slice of history for 9-holes
100th anniversary to be celebrated July 7Tuesday, May 01, 2007
By Gerry Dulac,
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteIt will never hold a U.S. Open, not like the more famous Western Pennsylvania course that happens to have one of the same founding fathers. Nor will it be able to list a course-record score for 18 holes — at least, not anymore.
But there is a celebration going on this summer at Mt. Lebanon Municipal Golf Course, and it shares a slice of history with another local club planning a big summer celebration — Oakmont.
Mt. Lebanon will celebrate its 100th anniversary July 7, commemorating the history and origin of a course that began as a private 18-hole layout known as Castle Shannon Golf Club and was built by an erudite Scotsman named George Ormiston, one of the original members at Oakmont. What’s more, eight of the original greens remain at the municipal course — greens that appear to have been influenced by the great Scottish designer, Donald Ross.
“A lot of people have cut a lot of balata balls and lost a lot of balls there,” said Tom Butcher, a member of the golf committee appointed by Mt. Lebanon commissioners to oversee a five-year course renovation.
Appropriately, the course’s centennial anniversary will nearly coincide with the U.S. Open, which will be staged just three weeks earlier at Oakmont.
And, like Oakmont, the nine-hole golf course has been designated an historical Western Pennsylvania landmark through the Pittsburgh History & Landmark Foundation.
Mt. Lebanon Golf Course is something of an anomaly because it has lasted a century in one of the most desirable areas to live in Western Pennsylvania.
Built on 99 acres less than a mile from Castle Shannon Boulevard, it has avoided the real-estate or commercial development that has swallowed a number of public and private courses around the country.
Butcher said real-estate developers have estimated the value of the property site between $10 million and $17 million.
“It’s amazing we’ve lasted 100 years,” Butcher said.
But, it has, generating somewhere between an estimated 1 million to 1.4 million rounds of golf and employing only four head golf professionals in the course’s 100-year history.
The latest is Matt Kluck, a master PGA professional and one of the top instructors in the country.
He has been at Mt. Lebanon since 1983.
“Public golf courses have really been on the rise, particularly those that keep developing them and keep them up to snuff,” Mt. Lebanon councilman Dale Colby said. “With the cost of gasoline these days and people struggling to find time to play, it doesn’t pay in many respects to drive great distances to the golf course anymore.”
Mt. Lebanon was built by Ormiston, a former accomplished amateur player and first winner of the West Penn Amateur championship in 1899 when it was played at Schenley Park Golf Course, then known as the Pittsburgh Golf Club.
He was also president of the West Penn Golf Association from 1914 until his death in 1940.
Ormiston was born in Haddingtonshire, Scotland, in 1874 and migrated in 1888 to the Pittsburgh area, where his father owned a law firm and printing company. He was a close friend and associate of Oakmont founder Henry C. Fownes, who built the course that would go on to host 17 national championships in 1903.
Ormiston played at Oakmont and, along with Fownes, dominated amateur golf in Western Pennsylvania for much of the early 1900s. He also was on the committee for the first U.S. Open that was held at Oakmont in 1927. There is a picture in the Oakmont guesthouse of the first Oakmont golf team, and Fownes and Ormiston are seated next to each other.
It is not known how much input, if any, Ormiston had in the construction of Oakmont. But, in 1908, he was contracted to build an 18-hole golf course on a portion of farmland owned by William Smith, who bought the property located near the Pittsburgh & Castle Shannon Railroad in 1846.
Smith was the first to begin construction on the course, building three holes in the summer of 1907 before Ormiston was hired to lay out the course on paper.
Castle Shannon Golf Club opened nine holes on July 4, 1908 and expanded to 18 holes in 1910, according to documents contained in the club’s application for landmark status. Membership was $25.
“The railroad came right down here in Castle Shannon,” Kluck said, sitting inside the Mt. Lebanon clubhouse that was built in 1961. “People would get off the train and take buggies to the golf course.”
But here’s another twist:
Ormiston and Fownes spent winter months in Pinehurst, N.C., and Ormiston would often take his friend to visit another Scotsman who lived there, Donald Ross. The three would play golf together, and it is widely believed Ross, who would become one of America’s leading course architects, had an influence on the design of Oakmont’s world-famous greens because they bore similarities to the crowned surfaces at Pinehurst No. 2, a Ross masterpiece.
There has never been any documentation to suggest Ross helped Ormiston with the design of Castle Shannon’s greens. But, Kluck said, “I guess it’s possible.”
Indeed, when Craig Schreiner, a Myrtle Beach, S.C.-based architect, was retained by the municipality to oversee the course renovation, he detected more than a trace of Ross’s influence when he toured the nine-hole layout. Schreiner, a native of Akron, Ohio, who designs courses for The First Tee, specializes in restoring Ross designs.
“He said, ‘Someone was copying his philosophy,’ ” Butcher said.
Castle Shannon was reduced to nine holes in 1919 after a two-year period in which the club was inactive because of World War I and also lost members to the newly formed St. Clair Country Club.
It stayed that way till 1947, when Mt. Lebanon purchased the course and opened it to the public.
The golf professional at the time was Wally Grant, who was hired in 1937. He remained in that position until he died in January 1983.
Mt. Lebanon, which recently received landmark status, will have a July 7 celebration that will include family and sponsor tournaments, cocktail reception and entertainment.
Meantime, the course has just embarked on a five-year renovation plan that, if funding is appropriated, will ultimately include a new clubhouse, indoor learning center and outdoor practice range by 2010.
A new double-row irrigation system was installed in the fall. Construction will begin shortly on multiple tees on every hole, as well as all sand bunkers and greens complexes, a project Kluck hopes will be completed by June 1. Colby said the municipality has budgeted approximately $400,000 this year for the course renovation.
A new clubhouse is essential because Mt. Lebanon does not serve food or drinks, except from a vending machine. That prevents the course from holding outings, typically a great source of revenue.
“We want the kind of improvements that will make it more profitable and more of a broad facility, not just for Mt. Lebanon residents but South Hills residents, as well,” Butcher said. “With Baldwin, Bethel Park, Peters Township, Scott, you have a tremendous demographic with all kinds of people.”
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Bridge built before the automobile age sparks talk of preservation for its history, condition, age
An antique with a futureThursday, April 19, 2007
By Carole Gilbert Brown
Pittsburgh Post Gazette WireThe single-lane, single-span Dorrington Road Bridge crossing the rushing waters of Robinson Run in Collier rates highly with bridge experts and history lovers for its design, condition and age.
But those are the factors that have placed the 119-year-old span on the endangered list.
The state Department of Transportation wants to replace the 60-foot-long bridge, which is 19 feet wide, with a concrete box-beam bridge that would be wider for two traffic lanes, would have expanded approaches for improved sight distance and would be have a stronger structure that would remove the current nine-ton weight restriction.
PennDOT wants to demolish the bridge and erect its replacement within two years.
PennDOT, the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation and Collier officials met last month to discuss relocating the structure, which is eligible for national historical registry designation, to an undeveloped 50-acre park near Nevillewood, where it could be situated over a gully near the old Woodville cemetery.
Several other township sites are potential relocation places, too, including on the Panhandle Trail.
“It would be most appropriate to keep the bridge in Collier, but it could go elsewhere,” said Louise Sturgess, Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation executive director, who believes retention of the structure is necessary to show the evolution of bridge design science during the 1800s.
Retaining the structure locally is important to the region, too, because of Pittsburgh’s designation as “the city of bridges,” she said.
Mrs. Sturgess has enlisted the aid of Todd Wilson, a 2006 civil engineering graduate of Carnegie Mellon University and a bridge enthusiast since childhood, to develop cost estimates.
Mr. Wilson, a traffic engineer for DMJM Harris who has a copy of the original drawings for the bridge, believes the structure could be a tourist attraction, even on a national level. He also sees it as an educational tool and a community landmark.
What makes the pin-connected Pratt pony truss bridge, built in 1888 by the Pittsburgh Bridge Co., unique is its basic design and vertical end posts, which are now covered by black-and-yellow road markers.
In most standard truss bridges, the end posts are inclined. The use of vertical end posts is more typical of earlier 19th-century designs which went by the wayside because they used more material and, thus, were more expensive.
Another unusual characteristic is that the bridge is made partially of cast iron instead of steel.
“It’s the oldest metal truss bridge that is unaltered and still open to traffic,” Mr. Wilson said. “The Dorrington Road Bridge represents an archaic design, even for 1888. Though Allegheny County once had several similar bridges, they have all been demolished.
“If any bridge is saveable and worth saving, it is this one,” he said.
Wherever the bridge ends up, it’s clear that funding will be needed.
Mrs. Sturgess indicated the foundation could apply for a History Channel grant, as well as coordinate fund-raising campaigns.
“I really see this as a wonderful community project,” she said, pointing out that university students as well as Chartiers Valley students could get involved.
Mr. Wilson said professors from Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh had expressed interest in supplying students for the relocation project.
In last month’s meeting with PennDOT, the history foundation and Collier, Mr. Wilson ended his presentation with these words, “The Dorrington Road Bridge has served Collier Township for over five generations. Dating from a time before the automobile was invented, it is a rare surviving piece of transportation history. By relocating the bridge to a park or trail, we can preserve this structure and create a ‘bridge’ to the past for many more generations to enjoy.”
The Dorrington Road Bridge is featured on the Web site, www.historicbridges.org.
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New life proposed for former South Hills High School
By Jeremy Boren
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, April 19, 2007The former South Hills High School soon could be given new life after sitting dormant for 20 years in the heart of a Mt. Washington residential neighborhood.
“It’s been a white elephant for a long time,” said Mt. Washington resident Virginia Gates, a 1959 graduate of the school, which was built in 1916 and closed in 1986. “You can see from the sheer size of it what an impact its (revival) is going to have on the whole community.”
North Shore-based developer a.m. Rodriguez Associates Inc. has prepared a $20 million redevelopment plan to build 84 one- and two-bedroom apartments and 25 two-bedroom, market-rate rental lofts in the building.
The apartments would be marketed to senior citizens. The first floor could have more than 10,000 square feet of commercial space and a health center.
Room for off-street parking should be plentiful once the developer removes three sections of the mammoth building to bring its size to 155,000 square feet.
“In terms of why it’s important to bring this building back, it’s a huge building that at one time was a landmark and center of activity for that community,” said Tom Link, manager of the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s business development center. The URA has targeted the school for redevelopment.
Gates, chairwoman of the South Hills High School committee, believes the renovation project will boost property values around the site and drive out drug dealers and vandals.
Link and Gates said many developers have tried over the past 20 years to devise ways to renovate the building, but none has come as far as Rodriguez Associates.
Victor Rodriguez said his company has applied for $12 million in tax credits from the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency. If those credits come through in September, an estimated 15 months of construction could begin as soon as June 2008.
“There’s a great market for this up there, especially for seniors,” he said.
Ethan Raup, executive director of the Mt. Washington Community Development Corp., credited Gates and the URA for helping to persuade the building’s owner — Pittsburgh Public Schools — to make the property more enticing to developers by removing asbestos, adding a new roof and doing other renovations.
“To me, it’s going from having an enormous dead space in the middle of a residential community to injecting it with new life,” Raup said.
Jeremy Boren can be reached at jboren@tribweb.com or (412) 765-2312.
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Repairs on North Side library branch expected by early summer
By Bill Zlatos
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, April 10, 2007The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh expects to finish repairing damage done by a lightning bolt at the former Allegheny branch by early this summer.
“In the next few weeks, they’ll place the actual capstone upon the clock tower,” said library spokeswoman Suzanne Thinnes.Lightning struck the 117-year-old, Romanesque-style library in the North Side’s Allegheny Square on April 7, 2006. It has been closed since, and plans call for it to no longer be used as a library.
A piece of granite weighing several hundred pounds fell into the lecture hall on the second floor, and a one-ton chunk destroyed the building’s heating and cooling system and damaged waterlines.
The collapse did not injure anyone or damage the library’s collection.
The repairs will cost an estimated $2 million. Insurance will cover most of that, Thinnes said.
North Side-based Mascaro Construction is doing the work. “We chose them because they have expertise in repairing historical buildings,” she said.
The building was named a historic landmark by Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation in 1970 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places four years later.
“The work that’s going on is helping its historical fabric, not hurting it,” assured foundation President Arthur P. Ziegler Jr.
Carnegie Library is planning a new building along Federal Street, and will not be using the Allegheny branch building after the repairs are done.
The New Hazlett Theater and a city senior citizen center occupy the building. Landmark Design Associates, a South Side firm, is studying possible uses for the space once used by the library.
Ziegler said one option is office space, possibly for a nonprofit group.
The library hopes to break ground on the Federal Street building this fall, Thinnes said.
Bill Zlatos can be reached at bzlatos@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7828.
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Old church murals cast in new light in Strip District
By Angela Hayes
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteJosie Santapietro always had a habit of looking up while praying in church, but during tonight’s Easter vigil she and other parishioners may find new inspiration to worship.
During the Mass, which begins in total darkness and then gradually illuminates with light, St. Stanislaus Kostka Church in the Strip District will unveil its new lighting system, a project that will bring the church’s 120-year-old ceiling murals to life.
Before, “you always looked at them but you didn’t really see them,” said Ms. Santapietro, the rectory secretary.
“I equate it to our own kind of Sistine Chapel,” said Derris Jeffcoat, the sacristan.
The project was started after a smoking chandelier prompted a visit from the city Fire Department. Fire officials at the time told the Rev. Harry Nichols, pastor of the church, to replace the electrical wiring immediately.
With a wealth of history behind the church, the decision to renovate was obvious. So far, the church has received $80,000 in donations to help fund the $300,000 project.
Although the project began as a safety necessity, Father Nichol’s saw it as an opportunity to emphasize the building’s architecture and paintings.
Lighting designers from Astorino, the Downtown architectural firm, used new lamp designs to enhance and protect the paint of the murals and to bring out the ornate detail of wooden columns in the church, down to the tiniest leaf.
“It’s showing up things in the church we’ve never seen before,” Father Nichols said.
In a church where it used to be difficult to read a book of hymns, the new light system is something the parish is celebrating.
Each of the murals represents a significant event in either the history of the Catholic Church or in Polish history.
During a test-run of the lighting project, Mr. Jeffcoat saw the difference in visibility of the murals. With the lights switched on, he saw a mural painted around 1900 of Polish king Jan Sobieski defeating the Turkish army in the battle of Vienna in 1683 and pointed out the vivid color.
“No one’s ever seen the murals like this,” he said.
During the project, lighting designers worked with Mr. Jeffcoat and Father Nichols to ensure that the approximately 106 new light fixtures were carefully hidden from view. The team also chose two custom-made chandeliers that fit the church’s present architecture, matching a pattern found in the church pews.
Unveiling the project at tonight’s Easter vigil is symbolic to Mr. Jeffcoat and the congregation because the Mass is actually a ceremony to honor light.
“We couldn’t think of a better time to inaugurate the lighting,” he said.
“To have Christ light up our church and to have our church physically light up — it gives me goosebumps.”