Category Archive: News Wire Services
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Turtle Creek Mayor to School District: Redistrict; don’t consolidate junior highs
By ADAM R. FORGIE
Mayor, Turtle Creek
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Pittsburgh Post GazetteThis letter is in response to the comments made by Colleen Filiak, of the Woodland Hills school board, who, at the Jan. 10 board meeting, said the students of East Junior High in Turtle Creek were not receiving the same level of education as a student at West Junior High in Swissvale.
As an alumnus of Woodland Hills School District who spent my junior high years at East Junior High, as a social studies teacher of six years at East Junior High, and as the mayor of Turtle Creek, I believe I am highly qualified to voice my opinion and express my disappointment in Mrs. Filiak’s comments.
The children of East Junior High have had and will continue to have an excellent education, which is being taught by a very professional and highly qualified staff. The opportunities and curricula being taught are the same as what is being taught by my outstanding colleagues at West Junior High. If anything, the learning environment at East is much more conducive to learning because it is a smaller and more controllable student body. Consolidating junior highs will create a chaotic atmosphere that will lower PSSA scores and promote a horrible educational atmosphere.
I believe the solution is to redistrict 150 students from West to East. This will lighten the load on both the West staff and the borough of Swissvale and, furthermore, equalize the student populations in both schools. Turtle Creek and its citizens also will get to keep their historic, treasured and beautiful high school operational.
Mrs. Filiak makes me wonder, if I had not gone to East, would I still have ended up just a teacher and mayor? Her comments suggest that if I had gone to West, that I would be a superintendent and our governor.
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Prestigious award may park in Mellon Square
By Allison M. Heinrichs
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, January 20, 2007An unassuming, peaceful piece of green in the heart of Downtown has support from a national historic landscape expert to be honored as a landmark, the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy has announced.
Mellon Square — a block of green dotted with fountains and sculptures near the Mellon Bank Building — should be given National Historic Landmark status as the oldest-surviving park above a parking garage, said Charles Birnbaum, founder of the Cultural Landscape Foundation in Washington.
“Think about the green roof movement in America. This came before that,” Birnbaum said. “Think about the American fascination with the automobile in post-war America. This fed off that.
“Think about the civic-minded vision that the Mellons had: This is part of the city’s civic philanthropy.”
On Feb. 1, Birnbaum will be at The Pittsburgh Golf Club in Squirrel Hill to discuss Mellon Square’s eligibility for the national designation. His visit is sponsored by the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, which is considering to sponsor Mellon Square for National Historic Landmark status.
“We feel the space is very elegant,” said Meg Cheever, president of the conservancy. “Sometimes we take for granted what is in our own backyard.”
Mellon Square was designed by landscape architect John Ormsbee Simonds, of Kilbuck, who died in 2005. He also designed Equitable Plaza and Crawford Square — all in Western Pennsylvania — and the Chicago Botanical Gardens.
Work on the park started in 1948 and was finished in 1951.
Birnbaum said he is optimistic about Mellon Square’s chances of getting National Historic Landmark status because very little has been changed there.
Simonds directed the park’s restoration in the early 1990s — staying true to his original vision for the park, which he described as “a platform, a structure, an island, a space, a focal center, a civic monument, a gathering place and an oasis,” according to Birnbaum.
John Scholl, a senior principal at Environmental Planning & Design — a Downtown firm that Simonds founded — said Simonds would have appreciated Mellon Square getting landmark status.
“I think it’s very much appropriate, and I’m sure John would be delighted,” Scholl said.
Officials with the National Park Service would evaluate Mellon Square, based on its significance to national history and how much of its original design still exists, said national parks historian Caridad de la Vega. Usually landmarks must be at least 50 years old to get the designation.
“It’s an involved process; there are a lot of steps. You can’t just say: ‘I want to be a landmark,’ and become one,” de la Vega said.
The process usually takes about two years. If Mellon Square gets the designation, it would be among a select few.
“National historic landmarks number about 2,600 or so in America, and it is the highest honor in the U.S.,” Birnbaum said. “Of that, only 50 or so have significance in landscape architecture — so you’re talking about a very elite group.”
Allison M. Heinrichs can be reached at aheinrichs@tribweb.com or (412) 380-5607.
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Parents worried about historic school buildings
By Karamagi Rujumba,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, January 11, 2007After celebrating a quarter century of growth in Woodland Hills schools, district officials are worried about the next 25 years.
That’s what lead Superintendent Roslynne Wilson to propose a building consolidation plan that she had hoped would save the district nearly $2.5 million a year.
The school board last night, though, voted down that proposal as well as a last-minute plan pitched by board member Colleen Filiak that targeted the same three schools — Shaffer Primary, Rankin Intermediate and East Junior High schools.
Their votes were in reaction to district taxpayers’ concerns with the closings.
In Turtle Creek, school board members and about 40 people from the community met last Thursday night at Palmieri Restaurant to discuss what the school district’s plan would mean to the community.
Some parents said the superintendent’s plan, in particular, would have lead to the closing and eventual abandonment of historic school buildings in some communities.
The key question for many district parents and others at the meeting was what the school district would do with buildings such as East Junior High School when it is closed. East Junior formerly was historic Turtle Creek High School, and a group has been working for about two years to prevent it from being razed or having its facade renovated.
“That building is very important to many of us,” said Robert Mock, of Turtle Creek, who has been trying to save the school.
“We believe that, if the building is closed, it should be repurposed. What we don’t want to happen is to have the building abandoned,” Mr. Mock said.
Dr. Wilson told the group that the next quarter century would see a much smaller school district, noting that a number of factors such as Act 72 and Act 1 restrictions, declining enrollment and potential teacher retirements would force the district to trim its size, especially the number of buildings it can maintain in tight budgetary times.
“This makes an opportune time to consolidate our buildings,” Dr. Wilson said .
That is why the school district has proposed a three-year building consolidation plan, which would see the closing of three schools in three years: Shaffer, Rankin Intermediate and East Junior High School .
Dr. Wilson said the district’s plan ultimately would save the district about $2.5 million from a reduction in property, personnel and benefits expenses. Without the implementation of the plan or some other cost-saving steps, the district will be faced with some very hard decisions, including possible teacher layoffs, the superintendent said.
School board President Cynthia Lowery said she supported the building consolidation plan because, if it is not implemented, the district would have to consider making cuts somewhere else in its $80 million budget.
“We have to stop deficit spending,” Ms. Lowery said. “We have tried to listen to the community about what they want to see, but there will never be a consensus on this issue.”
(Karamagi Rujumba can be reached at: krujumba@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1719. )
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New casino had no ‘not in my back yard’ problem in Chateau; there are no back yards
A place with an identity crisisBy Diana Nelson Jones,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, December 28, 2006Contrary to previous reports, the North Shore is not getting Don Barden’s Majestic Star Casino. The lucky neighborhood is actually Chateau.
But it’s easy to understand how the North Shore is the default setting for so many people. Chateau is a neighborhood with an identity problem.
In an exhaustive search of the neighborhood, using the map on the city’s Web site, the Post-Gazette could scare up just five residences — four year-round homes on the river, all associated with boat clubs, and one in what its resident used to call “the ward.”
It was named for Chateau Street, which actually is in the adjoining neighborhood of Manchester. Chateau was once part of Manchester, but city planners designated it as a separate neighborhood after Route 65 was built and split them apart.
Chateau became further isolated from residential tradition as neighborhood support businesses gave way to light industry, warehouses and huge parking lots. The 2000 census counted 39 people as residents, but where they are or might have been is a mystery.
A paucity of habitation bodes well for a controversial development. Nary a peep was heard pro or con in Chateau while the Hill District exercised its voice in opposition to a casino. Considering what a not-in-my-back-yard issue the casino was, this may be a good time to mention that in Chateau, there are no back yards.
Its border with the North Shore is Allegheny Avenue. Heinz Field is on the North Shore side, the Carnegie Science Center is on the Chateau side.
Just beyond where the casino is slated to go, Chateau becomes its spooky-emptiest, a wasteland of lots surrounded by chain-link fences, mangled trees and overgrowth at the shoreline strewn with garbage, chunks of industrial waste covered in black soot that looks like coat dust over dirty lint, and rusted parts of old boats.
The Pittsburgh Annealing Box Co.’s warehouse of corrugated metal stretches like a stranded ghost train along the river, scrawled with the message, “Join the race to the bottom.”
Dean Bartins has lived all 46 of his years in a grand, 120-year-old house in a part of Chateau on the other side of the highway. Once his house was surrounded by houses. His immediate neighbors now are Wendy’s, McDonalds and the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society.
“Some people would say, ‘Hey, you’re surrounded by parking lots,’ ” he said. “But from the inside looking out, it’s as far as the eye can see” — views of the entire skyline and the hillside across the river.
“We always called this ‘the ward,'” said Mr. Bartins. “But I know [now] it’s Chateau.” He said he became aware of the designation “maybe 20 years ago.”
“I have always considered this Manchester,” said Peggy Baust, the owner of Peggy’s Harbor, one of three boat docks in Chateau. She and her husband, Eddie, live at the boat dock they own and operate. They moved there from Shaler in 1972 to live in a houseboat and started their dock business in the early 1980s.
Their mobile home, its side deck adorned with a red Christmas bow and pine garlands, sits several yards from the lapping Ohio River and along the trail that brings a stream of bicyclists, joggers and walkers in good weather.
Her neighbors are a refrigeration company, a company that makes metal grills and welding rods, and parking lots.
Neither she nor Mr. Bartins expressed concern about the casino.
“Absolutely not,” said Ms. Baust. “I don’t know what will happen to the part of the trail that runs beside it, but it can’t hurt me.” (Casino owner Don Barden plans improvements to the trail.)
She counts the other boat club owners who live in homes along the river as her neighbors, “good neighbors,” she said, admitting that, “when 5 o’clock rolls around,” the neighborhood is pretty empty.
Arthur Ziegler, executive director of Pittsburgh History and Landmarks and one of the preservationists who helped save much of Manchester from the wrecking ball in the 1960s, said Chateau is news to him: “I’ve never heard anyone use that name. It was all Manchester.”
He said he and other activists in the late 1960s “went to meetings because we didn’t want the highway.”
Route 65 plunged Chateau into habitation crisis. Starting in 1960, the population declined severely: From 5,251 — when it was still part of Manchester — to 681 to 322 to 12 to 39, making it the least populated neighborhood in the city.
The highway that Mr. Ziegler called “typical of planning that uprooted people and severed a neighborhood so people could get to the suburbs more quickly,” is now an asset for bringing people back, according to the state gaming board chairman. The Post-Gazette reported last week that Gov. Ed Rendell said the chairman cited access as one of the factors in Mr. Barden’s selection.
Mr. Barden has predicted that the Majestic Star Casino, a two-story, glass and steel construction, will be built in a world-beating 15 months. And Chateau has some bragging rights, for what it’s worth.
(Diana Nelson Jones can be reached at djones@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1626. )
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Property sales hailed as Downtown’s rebirth Developers say they are ready to begin long-awaited revitalization
By Rich Lord,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Friday, December 15, 2006With agreements to sell two swaths of Downtown to developers yesterday, the city started the ball rolling on stores, 50 moderately priced apartments and a series of groundbreakings and ribbon cuttings in the center of the downtrodden shopping district.
The sales are the first to result from the latest effort, begun by the late Mayor Bob O’Connor, to revamp the dowdy corridor.
“There have been so many plans through the years about what could happen here, what should happen here,” noted Urban Redevelopment Authority board Chairman Yarone Zober, who is chief of staff to Mayor Luke Ravenstahl. Now, thanks to several developers, he said, “Downtown is really on the move.”
An affiliate of Washington County-based Millcraft Industries will buy the former G.C. Murphy building and adjacent structures for $2.5 million. The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation will buy three side-by-side buildings on Market Street and Fifth Avenue for $257,000.
Illustrating the challenges of building Downtown, Millcraft gave up its exclusive right to develop three properties at 430 to 438 Wood Street, and announced it was looking around for new partners to help it build a 200-apartment building next to Market Square and south of Forbes Avenue.
Millcraft Chief Financial Officer Brian Walker said the firm has a full plate, and would welcome any URA effort to find another developer who could move quickly on the Wood Street properties, which would have been a small part of the company’s overall plans.
He said getting redevelopment of all of Downtown’s under-utilized properties under way at the same time would benefit everybody.
“Like any development project, and any revitalization effort, it’s going to take time, and it’s going to take a lot of unique ideas and thoughts,” said Mr. Ravenstahl.
On Monday, Millcraft will start constructing the store and office spaces in its Piatt Place, in the former Lazarus store on Sixth Avenue. Millcraft has lined up tenants for the 50,000 square feet of stores, and the first to open will be Capital Grill in July. The sale of condominiums in the building is going well, Mr. Walker said.
Millcraft wants the Trisanti European Market grocery store to open by the end of next year, but it has not decided whether it will be in Piatt Place or the former Murphy’s building.
The Murphy’s building “has been targeted for well over a decade now to be revitalized,” the mayor noted.
Now dubbed Market Square Place and the Market Square Lofts, the groundbreaking, such as it is, may come as soon as April. No ground will actually break, because Millcraft plans to keep the exteriors and the floors of the seven contiguous buildings intact, even while working in 65,000 square feet of stores, 42 apartments and 42 basement parking spaces.
Construction will take a year, and it won’t be easy, because the floors of the buildings don’t line up. The firm is arranging the apartments so renters will not have to climb stairs to get around their units. But the uneven floors contribute to the anticipated $32 million cost, and the need for around $6 million in state redevelopment funding, plus a yet-undetermined value of tax credits.
The state financing should help Millcraft keep the rents relatively low, by Downtown standards. The apartments, ranging in size from 700 to 2,000 square feet, will have rents ranging from $750 to $1,400, said Lucas Piatt, Millcraft vice president of real estate.
To cut costs, the firm had to abandon its intention to add environmentally friendly aspects to the design, he said. It wants to use “green building” standards on planned new construction Downtown.
That would include its South of Forbes apartment building, which the firm hopes to start building in late 2008.
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks plans to start cleaning out its new Market Street properties in January, take 12 months to renovate them, and get tenants into eight apartments in mid-2008. It will spend around $2.5 million, said Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., the foundation’s president.
“We are striving to make it a green building, a restored building,” he said.
As for the Wood Street property Millcraft can’t handle now, and the few other unclaimed Downtown spaces, they should go quickly, Mr. Piatt said.
“It’s really a snowball, and it’s going to keep going.”
(Rich Lord can be reached at rlord@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1542. )
Copyright © PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved. -
Property sales hailed as Downtown’s rebirth – Developers say they are ready to begin long-awaited revitalization
By Rich Lord,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Friday, December 15, 2006With agreements to sell two swaths of Downtown to developers yesterday, the city started the ball rolling on stores, 50 moderately priced apartments and a series of groundbreakings and ribbon cuttings in the center of the downtrodden shopping district.
The sales are the first to result from the latest effort, begun by the late Mayor Bob O’Connor, to revamp the dowdy corridor.
“There have been so many plans through the years about what could happen here, what should happen here,” noted Urban Redevelopment Authority board Chairman Yarone Zober, who is chief of staff to Mayor Luke Ravenstahl. Now, thanks to several developers, he said, “Downtown is really on the move.”
An affiliate of Washington County-based Millcraft Industries will buy the former G.C. Murphy building and adjacent structures for $2.5 million. The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation will buy three side-by-side buildings on Market Street and Fifth Avenue for $257,000.
Illustrating the challenges of building Downtown, Millcraft gave up its exclusive right to develop three properties at 430 to 438 Wood Street, and announced it was looking around for new partners to help it build a 200-apartment building next to Market Square and south of Forbes Avenue.
Millcraft Chief Financial Officer Brian Walker said the firm has a full plate, and would welcome any URA effort to find another developer who could move quickly on the Wood Street properties, which would have been a small part of the company’s overall plans.
He said getting redevelopment of all of Downtown’s under-utilized properties under way at the same time would benefit everybody.
“Like any development project, and any revitalization effort, it’s going to take time, and it’s going to take a lot of unique ideas and thoughts,” said Mr. Ravenstahl.
On Monday, Millcraft will start constructing the store and office spaces in its Piatt Place, in the former Lazarus store on Sixth Avenue. Millcraft has lined up tenants for the 50,000 square feet of stores, and the first to open will be Capital Grill in July. The sale of condominiums in the building is going well, Mr. Walker said.
Millcraft wants the Trisanti European Market grocery store to open by the end of next year, but it has not decided whether it will be in Piatt Place or the former Murphy’s building.
The Murphy’s building “has been targeted for well over a decade now to be revitalized,” the mayor noted.
Now dubbed Market Square Place and the Market Square Lofts, the groundbreaking, such as it is, may come as soon as April. No ground will actually break, because Millcraft plans to keep the exteriors and the floors of the seven contiguous buildings intact, even while working in 65,000 square feet of stores, 42 apartments and 42 basement parking spaces.
Construction will take a year, and it won’t be easy, because the floors of the buildings don’t line up. The firm is arranging the apartments so renters will not have to climb stairs to get around their units. But the uneven floors contribute to the anticipated $32 million cost, and the need for around $6 million in state redevelopment funding, plus a yet-undetermined value of tax credits.
The state financing should help Millcraft keep the rents relatively low, by Downtown standards. The apartments, ranging in size from 700 to 2,000 square feet, will have rents ranging from $750 to $1,400, said Lucas Piatt, Millcraft vice president of real estate.
To cut costs, the firm had to abandon its intention to add environmentally friendly aspects to the design, he said. It wants to use “green building” standards on planned new construction Downtown.
That would include its South of Forbes apartment building, which the firm hopes to start building in late 2008.
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks plans to start cleaning out its new Market Street properties in January, take 12 months to renovate them, and get tenants into eight apartments in mid-2008. It will spend around $2.5 million, said Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., the foundation’s president.
“We are striving to make it a green building, a restored building,” he said.
As for the Wood Street property Millcraft can’t handle now, and the few other unclaimed Downtown spaces, they should go quickly, Mr. Piatt said.
“It’s really a snowball, and it’s going to keep going.”
(Rich Lord can be reached at rlord@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1542. )
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URA is ready to sell; Millcraft is ready to start
Price tag is $2.5 million for G.C. Murphy’s parcel where apartments slatedWednesday, December 13, 2006
By Mark Belko,
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteThe city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority is poised to sell old G.C. Murphy’s store buildings and other properties to a Washington County developer for $2.5 million — another key step in the redevelopment of the downtrodden Fifth and Forbes corridor, Downtown.
Millcraft Industries Inc., doing business as Downtown Streets Pittsburgh LP, intends to convert the former store and the adjacent properties into shops and apartments targeting middle-income wage earners and renting from $750 to $1,500 a month.
“We’re finally getting it off the ground, so we’re excited,” said Lucas Piatt, Millcraft vice president of real estate. “We’re ready to start digging.”
URA board members are expected to vote tomorrow on a proposal to sell six Fifth Avenue parcels, including three that make up the Murphy’s store, to Downtown Streets Pittsburgh.
Downtown Streets is a subsidiary of Millcraft. Mr. Piatt said Ira Morgan, a friend of late Mayor Bob O’Connor, no longer is part of the development team.
The purchase price represents a bargain of sorts for Millcraft — the URA paid $3.83 million for the buildings, all of which were purchased over the last four years. Mr. Piatt said the $2.5 million is in line with the values provided by an appraiser hired by the URA and Millcraft.
Millcraft originally had looked at converting the Murphy’s store to condominiums and apartments, but switched to all apartments in order to take advantage of federal tax credits available to developers of historic structures, thus lowering redevelopment costs.
The apartments would target $40,000 to $50,000 wage earners and offer a more affordable alternative to the luxury condos under construction in the Golden Triangle, including those at Piatt Place in the former Lazarus-Macy’s building, Millcraft’s other Downtown project.
Millcraft now estimates that the cost of converting the Murphy’s store will run $30 million to $40 million, up from the initial $21 million estimate.
The URA board also is expected to act tomorrow on a proposed agreement with Millcraft on 10 other authority-owned parcels on Forbes Avenue and Wood Street in the Fifth-Forbes corridor.
They are to be developed in phases by Millcraft, and would include a $50 million, 18-story Forbes Village high-rise on Forbes near Market Square that is to offer a mix of condos, apartments and shops.
As part of the action, Millcraft would have exclusive control over the properties for an unspecified period, with redevelopment proposals to be made at a later date.
URA Executive Director Jerome Dettore could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Once the Murphy’s project gets rolling, there will be two major redevelopments occurring simultaneously on Fifth Avenue in the heart of the Downtown retail corridor.
The other, across the street from the Murphy’s construction, is the $170 million Three PNC Center skyscraper that will house offices, a hotel and luxury condos. It is expected to open in 2008. Construction has started.
Also tomorrow, the URA is expected to sell three parcels, one on Fifth Avenue and two on Market Street, to a subsidiary of Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation for $257,000.
The foundation intends to convert the vacant structures into upper-floor apartments, with street-level retail.
(Mark Belko can be reached at mbelko@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1262. )
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State Capitol is national landmark
By The Pittsburgh Tribune Review
Tuesday, December 5, 2006HARRISBURG – The ornate state Capitol building earns oohs and ahhs every day from visitors impressed by its marble, gold leaf and intricate decoration.
The building’s special place in American history recently earned it another honor, as the U.S. Interior Department has granted it National Historic Landmark status.In announcing the action Monday, the Capitol Preservation Committee said it learned of the decision last month, and expects to install a commemorative bronze plaque in the spring.
Landmark status is currently bestowed on more than 2,300 of the 76,000 entries on the National Register of Historic Places. Among the landmarks are Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the site of the Pearl Harbor attack in Hawaii, the Alcatraz prison in San Francisco and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Atlanta birthplace.
The Capitol was designed by Joseph M. Huston, with a dome patterned on St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and a grand staircase reminiscent of the Paris Opera.
President Theodore Roosevelt attended its dedication on Oct. 4, 1906.