Category Archive: News Wire Services
-
Historic status for ex-factory site crumbling
By Sandra Tolliver
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, June 24, 2004The owner of the former Nabisco bakery in East Liberty has asked the city to withdraw a nomination to designate the building a historic site because the property owner was not party to the request.
The Historic Review Commission bylaws, however, say a nomination can be withdrawn only by the nominator, although a building’s owner has the right to speak at a public hearing.Both the Regional Industrial Development Corp. (RIDC), which owns the building, and the Young Preservationists, which nominated it for city historic status, will send representatives to the commission’s July 7 meeting.
Robert Stephenson, president of RIDC, said historian Lu Donnelly should have contacted his organization to discuss the idea before nominating the former Nabisco factory. Donnelly filed the nomination on behalf of the Young Preservationists as a member of the group’s advisory board.
“I think it’s very rude for people to take it upon themselves, without discussion, to go forth and make a nomination like that,” Stephenson said.
In a June 14 letter to the city’s Department of Planning, the RIDC president had asked the historic-preservation staff to withdraw the nomination.
“We certainly weren’t trying to ruffle anybody’s feathers,” said Deborah Gross, vice chair of the Young Preservationists.
She said the organization still believes the Nabisco plant is a valuable part of Pittsburgh’s history.
“It’s significant architecturally. It’s significant in terms of national industrial history,” Gross said. “It’s certainly a visual landmark and a real place-making piece of architecture for the East End.”
Nabisco built the factory in 1918 and operated it until 1998. A second operator, Bake-Line Group, reopened the plant as a bakery for four years but closed it in March.
RIDC — a private, nonprofit economic-development corporation — continues to evaluate proposals for the building’s re-use, Stephenson said.
“We’re trying to do something with the property, and it will be done in a first-class, quality fashion,” Stephenson said, declining to comment on specifics of any proposals. “The bakery concept is still being somewhat looked at.”
Historic designation by the city does not affect a building’s use but does require approval by the Historic Review Commission if a property owner wants to alter a building’s exterior, change signage or demolish a building.
Sandra Tolliver can be reached at stolliver@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7840.
-
PennDOT, Riverlife panel to seek plan for Route 28
By Joe Grata,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Wednesday, June 23, 2004“Alternative 13” could prove a lucky number for resolving controversy over a two-mile stretch of Route 28 between the North Side and Millvale.
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation will organize a special task force in cooperation with the Riverlife Task Force to resolve differences and develop a consensus for how the narrow, congested and outdated four-lane road will someday be reconstructed.
The Riverlife Task Force and other entities have objected to 12 previous designs, including the latest one PennDOT calls a “hybrid” because it was thought to have addressed issues and concerns expressed in public meetings last summer.
The public-private collaboration will include as many as two dozen other interested parties, including the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, Washington’s Landing Homeowners Association, Mount Troy Citizens Council, Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese and the city planning department.
Stakeholders in the long-standing project are to hold their first workshop within a month and then meet biweekly thereafter. The goal is to reach agreement on a preliminary design by the end of the year, when a public hearing will be held.
PennDOT officials said they want to keep the up-to-$180 million project on track for a fall 2008 groundbreaking. Construction could take four years and inconvenience more than 60,000 cars and trucks a day.
The strategy to resolve differences about the highway design, including whether to save historic St. Nicholas Roman Catholic Church, was disclosed yesterday during the third and last open house held by PennDOT to review its three latest proposals.
“[Reaching consensus] will enable us to build the best and safest highway we can while being as sensitive as possible to the environment,” said Earl Neiderhiser, acting PennDOT District 11 executive. “I believe we can do it.”
PennDOT has spent about 10 years and $10 million on engineering and other facets included in an environmental impact statement that federal agencies must approve before land acquisition and final design can start.
Besides saving St. Nicholas Church, Troy Hill homes and Rialto Street, differences have ranged from geometrics at the 31st Street and 40th Street bridges to building six miles of retaining walls — up to 65 feet high — by digging deep into the hillside over much of the two-mile stretch.
PennDOT’s hybrid alternative, although it is the 12th plan presented over the years, is called Alternative 6M, with the “M” designating a modification that would make Route 28 an urban boulevard for the East Ohio Street portion past St. Nicholas and a faster, safer expressway over the remaining 1.5 miles to Millvale.
The Riverlife Task Force has been the main opponent of the high-speed section, objecting mostly to the number, length and height of retaining walls that would scar the hillside above the narrow shelf of land where Route 28 is to be reconstructed.
The 5-year-old organization formed by civic leaders to enhance the city’s waterfronts wants lower walls and bifurcated walls to preserve a “green look” through the river corridor and landscaped plazas at bridge interchanges serving local traffic. It wants urban design features to be incorporated in the project, noting that Route 28 is a major gateway to Pittsburgh.
Ed Patton of Vollmer Associates, the specialized highway design firm engaged by the Riverlife Task Force, said he was optimistic the task force could succeed in creating an environmentally friendly project.
So was Todd Kravits, design location engineer for PennDOT. “We can work together,” he said.
PennDOT officials said they want to keep the up-to-$180 million project on track for a fall 2008 groundbreaking. Construction could take four years and inconvenience more than 60,000 cars and trucks a day.
(Joe Grata can be reached at jgrata@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1985.)
-
Route 28 plan called intrusive by some
By Joe Grata,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, June 17, 2004A number of Pittsburgh groups, including the Riverlife Task Force, have suggested that the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and its consultant go back to the drawing board with alternatives for rebuilding Route 28.
They suggested that a new PennDOT “hybrid” plan, with six miles of retaining walls 40 to 60 feet high along a two-mile stretch between the North Side and Millvale, would gouge the hillside and fly in the face of efforts to preserve and enhance Pittsburgh’s famous river corridors.
The hybrid grew out of recommendations made a year ago, and thought to have been embraced by PennDOT, to minimize the walls, save historic St. Nicholas Church and homes atop Troy Hill, and create a less intrusive urban boulevard that would still provide for a nonstop flow of traffic on Route 28.
But many of 120 people who turned out for an open house at the Washington’s Landing at Herrs Island boathouse yesterday expressed disappointment with the new proposal.
“We really thought a design would be presented to accomplish goals that I thought we agreed to,” said Ted McConnell, chairman of the Riverlife Task Force Transportation Committee.
The task force has sent a protest to state Transportation Secretary Allen D. Biehler.
“What’s bad is that they still have monstrous retaining walls,” said George White, speaking for the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. He accused PennDOT of pussyfooting about acquiring the railroad land below Route 28 at the expense of digging into the hillside next to the roadway.
“We still haven’t recovered from scars on the landscape” when PennDOT carved Route 28 into the bottom of high hills farther up the Allegheny Valley, said Terry Wirginis, president of the Gateway Clipper Fleet that operates cruises on the three rivers.
As a resident of Indiana Township, Wirginis said, he would have no problem commuting on a new Route 28 with a 35 mph speed limit instead of the 45 mph limit that is part of PennDOT’s proposal.
PennDOT revealed last week that it had narrowed an original 11 alternatives for rebuilding the congested stretch of Route 28 to three options, including a new one known as “Alternative 6M.”
That option, expected to cost an estimated $180 million, includes an urban-type of boulevard with curbs and sidewalks at the North Side/East Ohio Street end — a feature that has seemed to generate little opposition in two meetings held thus far.
It’s the other end, starting just east of St. Nicholas Church, that has drawn the criticism. PennDOT proposes higher speeds, limited-access features with 10-foot-wide shoulders and wider ramps. While those may be safer, they also require more horizontal space, and therefore multiple retaining walls, from the 31st Street Bridge to the 40th Street Bridge.
For example, a profile of PennDOT’s plan shows four “thru” lanes, two ramps, barriers and all shoulders would take up 136 feet of horizontal space compared with 92 feet in the Riverlife Task Force’s plan, which was prepared by an independent consulting engineer versed in urban highway design.
The task force plan also proposes several “steps” or much lower walls where trees and shrubs would be planted, as well as landscaped plazas at the two bridges and Rialto Street, where all local traffic would intersect.
Lisa Schroeder said the task force does not want to delay PennDOT’s timetable, which calls for starting four years of construction in fall 2008.
“Early community consensus can help move it through the federal approval process,” she said. “We also think using our proposal around the most critical point [the 31st Street Bridge] will save time and money.”
PennDOT design development engineer Todd Kravits said he and the state’s consultant, Michael Baker Inc., which has been paid about $10 million so far, thought the changes made in Alternative 6M would satisfy diverse public and private interests while maintaining consistency with the rest of Route 28.
Kravits said the department would be happy to meet again with the Riverlife Task Force but said the group should be more specific and provide more information about its demands.
A third and final open house will be held from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Tuesday on the 31st floor of the Regional Enterprise Tower, Downtown. Formal public hearings are to be held in the fall.
-
Historic status sought for Nabisco
By Sandra Tolliver
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, June 14, 2004As factories go, the Nabisco bakery in East Liberty was a trend-setter, built to advertise the quality of the packaged cookies and crackers that helped foster America’s fondness for convenience foods.
The brown brick building, with Mellon Park as its front lawn, dominates two blocks in East Liberty. It is a neighborhood landmark that provided thousands of Pittsburghers with careers before its closing by Nabisco in 1998 and, after a four-year revival by Bake-Line Group, again this spring.Now the Young Preservationists Association has nominated the building for historic designation by the city’s Historic Review Commission. The structure is part of Pittsburgh’s industrial past and stirs sentimental memories for residents who awoke to the smell of cookies baking, one group member said.
“When Nabisco was there, I’d walk out of my house in the mornings and go, ‘Wow, if only the whole city could smell like this,'” said Miriam Meislick, who lived a block away. “You’d walk around hungry all day.”
The designation must be approved by the city’s Historic Review Commission and Planning Department, along with city council. Though the nomination has just been filed, Maria Thomas Burgwin, of the Planning Department’s historic preservation staff, said the factory meets five of the 10 criteria for historic structures. It must meet only one in order to qualify for the designation. If the designation were approved, the Nabisco plant would join 68 other buildings designated as historic by the city.
“Most buildings like this are just overlooked. We take them for granted. When there’s been a lot of extra thought and detail put into a building like this, we should notice,” said Lu Donnelly, a historian and adviser to the Young Preservationists.
The Regional Industrial Development Corp. bought the building after Nabisco’s departure and does not want historic designation to limit its options for the site, said Bill Widdoes, project manager.
“If for some reason there’s a use or proposed use that comes in that requires the building to be demolished, it would prohibit that,” Widdoes said. “We don’t have any such plans now, but if that kind of use comes along, we couldn’t pursue that. Right now, we need all our options.”
Arthur Ziegler, president of the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, said his organization supports the Nabisco nomination.
“It’s a handsome plant, in a prime location, and we are very much hoping that a new use will be found for it,” Ziegler said. “The listing would at least give us all a chance to comment on future plans and draw public attention to it.”
National Biscuit Company built its Pittsburgh plant in 1918 as part of a nationwide expansion that followed successful branding of its products. Nabisco hired an in-house architect because the company’s president, Adolphus Green, wanted his factories to have style and dignity that would inspire worker loyalty, Donnelly said.
Architect Albert G. Zimmermann’s Nabisco designs were featured in American Architect magazine in 1912 and 1916.
“If you think about factories at that time period, most of them were big, red brick mill buildings with no decorative style, just utilitarian,” Donnelly said.
The Nabisco plant had showers and locker rooms for employees, fireproof stairways, and large windows providing natural light. The original building stands seven stories, with two eight-story towers. Additions were built in 1928 and 1948.
The factory is among dozens of buildings in Western Pennsylvania identified by the Young Preservationists as potentially historic. The group, formed in 2002, has more than 50 members. Its vision is “a future in which young people are at the helm of historic preservation,” according to its Web site.
“It just seems like there’s so many people now who don’t really seem to care about saving our historic buildings, who say, ‘It looks kind of old. Let’s just demolish it and put up a subdivision,'” said Sean Capperis, an intern with the group. “I grew up in a subdivision, and it’s so sterile.”
—
Criteria for historic designation
A building must meet at least one of 10 criteria to receive historic designation from the city:
1. Location at a significant historic or prehistoric site.2. Identification with one or more people who significantly contributed to the cultural, historic, architectural, archaeological or related aspects of the city, state, region or country.*
3. Exemplification of a distinguished or unique architectural type, style or design.*
4. Identification as the work of an architect, designer, engineer or builder whose work is historically significant.*
5. Exemplification of important planning and urban design techniques.
6. Location as a site of an important archaeological resource.
7. Association with important cultural or social aspects or events in history.*
8. Exemplification of neighborhood development or settlement significant to cultural history or traditions.
9. Representation of a cultural, historic, architectural, archaeological or related theme expressed through distinctive areas, properties, sites, structures or objects.
10. Unique location and distinctive physical appearance represents an established and familiar visual feature.*
* Criteria touted for Nabisco plant
Source: City of Pittsburgh Department of Planning
Sandra Tolliver can be reached at stolliver@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7840.
-
Birru did his best under tough circumstances, some say
By Dave Copeland
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, May 28, 2004Whether the high-profile projects he led caused the city’s financial crisis will be debated for years, if not for decades.
But observers of outgoing Urban Redevelopment Authority Executive Director Mulugetta Birru said Thursday that the city’s money woes might have played a role in his decision to leave for a new job with Wayne County Economic Development Corp. in Michigan. Detroit is the county seat.
“This could easily mean fewer deals to do and a lot of retrospection about the Downtown retail situation and, hopefully, some serious self-examination about the low level of commercial occupancy,” said Robert P. Strauss, a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University’s H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy.
“In this sort of cutback environment, it’s entirely reasonable to expect somebody with Mulu’s energy level to seek another venue where he can build public-private partnerships,” Strauss said.
Birru, 57, wouldn’t give specific reasons for his departure yesterday, saying only the new post is a better opportunity that nearly doubles his current salary.
Under Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy, Birru and a URA staff of more than 100 carried out one of the city’s most ambitious and controversial urban-renewal programs since Mayor David L. Lawrence’s Renaissance in the years following World War II.
One of Birru’s biggest proposals never came to fruition.
In the late 1990s, the Murphy administration pushed for a $520 million Downtown overhaul called Marketplace at Fifth & Forbes. The effort was turned back by a grassroots coalition of property-rights advocates and historic preservationists and a loose-knit group of young professionals, artists and city residents.
“That disappoints me a lot,” Birru said.
Murphy scrapped the plan in November 2000. Subsequent efforts to redevelop the Downtown retail corridor, dubbed Plan C, have stalled. Two department stores that Birru helped lure with a variety of subsidies also failed. The Downtown Lazarus-Macy’s closed earlier this month, and Lord & Taylor will close next year.
Birru defended the department-store deals, comparing them to the public investments by Westmoreland County in an auto-manufacturing plant that failed in 1988 but was converted into a Sony manufacturing plant in 1992.
“I honestly have no regrets about the Lazarus building or the Lord & Taylor building because now we have discussions with developers on those two buildings,” Birru said.
A co-founder of Ground Zero — an activist group formed in part to oppose the Marketplace plan — said the URA’s successes in housing and in using the Main Street redevelopment model in small, neighborhood business districts would be a good model for future efforts.
“With the director of the URA leaving, and against the backdrop of extremely substantial financial problems for our region, this would be a good time to re-examine the development tools and organizations we have at the city, county and regional levels,” said Ground Zero’s Pat Clark.
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation President Arthur Ziegler, who also opposed the Marketplace plan, described Birru as “congenial and forthright” in those and other discussions. Ziegler said he did not see Birru as the impetus for many of the Murphy administration’s redevelopment strategies, but as the person who carried them out.
“I always felt he was doing the best he could for the city within very restricted circumstances because I always assumed that the chairman of the authority (executive assistant Tom Cox) set the agenda and goals, rather than Mulu,” Ziegler said. “I feel he was sensitive to historic preservation, but I don’t think he was able to act on behalf of preservation as he might have wished — and certainly not as much as we might have wished.”
Former Allegheny County Executive Jim Roddey echoed Ziegler’s comments, saying Birru had not been given the “right directives.”
“The efforts to put retail Downtown were doomed from the beginning,” Roddey said. “If they had assumed a strategy of putting all our resources into housing instead of retail, if they had found a way to get people living there, the private sector would have taken care of retail on its own.”
Until July 2000, Birru also headed Allegheny County’s economic-development department.
Roddey said yesterday he asked Birru to step down from the $82,800-a-year job because “economic development is too important to the county to have a part-time director.”
Before joining the URA in 1992, Birru, an Ethiopian immigrant, headed the Homewood-Brushton Revitalization Corp. He earned a doctorate in public and international affairs from the University of Pittsburgh in 1991 and has been an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz school.
Birru said his greatest legacy is in the “strong” URA staff he put together. He has complained in recent months that some of his best people have left the authority as it has come under increasing scrutiny by state lawmakers, who question its investments and want to sell off its assets.
“People in Pittsburgh are really spoiled,” Birru said. “They think these things happen easily.”
Dave Copeland can be reached at dcopeland@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7922.
-
End may be near for H. Samson
By Ron DaParma
TRIBUNE-REVIEW REAL ESTATE WRITER
Tuesday, April 27, 2004For 145 years, the H. Samson Funeral Home has served a Pittsburgh clientele that includes the city’s most prominent, historic and best-known families — Heinz, Mellon, Scaife, Hunt and Hillman, to name a few.
Soon, Samson itself could become history, if plans to sell the funeral home property are completed.Possible uses for the property, at 537 N. Neville St., Oakland, include housing, possibly condominiums.
A spokeswoman for Samson’s owner, the Cincinnati-based Alderwoods Group, confirmed Monday that a deal to sell the property is pending.
“The property currently is under a conditional contract at this time, but no deal has been finalized so we can’t disclose any terms,” said Tamara Malone.
The county values the property at $1.26 million.
If Samson does close, Malone said, its business will be transferred to Alderwoods’ two other local funeral homes: the more than 100-year-old H.P. Brandt Funeral Home in the Perrysville section of Ross and the Burton Hirsch Funeral Home in Squirrel Hill.
What is certain is the pedigree of the business, founded in 1859 by undertaker Hudson Samson, a Pulaski, N.Y., native who moved here at the age of 19.
“Hudson was an innovator who made strides to be in the forefront of the funeral service business,” said Heather Rady, the funeral director at Samson. “And the reason the funeral home became so prominent, I believe, was the caring, compassionate nature of the Samson family. They were very much involved in the community and established a rapport with many people.”
“In their heyday, they probably were the most prominent funeral home in the city,” said Kermit D. Dyer of Monroeville, who served as funeral director at Samson from 1954 to 1977. He recalls the names of such famous Pittsburgh personalities as Rosey Rowswell, who preceded Bob Prince as the voice of the Pittsburgh Pirates; Hall of Fame Pirates third baseman Pie Traynor; and William Larimer Jones, of Jones & Laughlin Steel, among those whose funeral arrangements were handled there.
“I can still see people lined clear up Neville Street to see Rosey Rowswell,” said Dyer.
“They had a really good reputation of being the creme de la creme of funeral homes,” said Rose Carfagna Au of Ralph Schugar Chapel Inc., and a board member of the Allegheny County Funeral Directors Association.
According to the firm’s history, Samson’s original location was on the site of the old post office building at Smithfield Street in the heart of the city’s Golden Triangle. There, beginning in 1859, Samson ran a one-man operation, making his own coffins and then hitching up a horse to deliver them to homes or cemeteries.
After a short time operating at another location on Seventh Avenue, Samson eventually moved in 1884 to a new building at 433 Sixth Ave., which is believed to be the first structure in the United States built exclusively for a funeral home. It housed, among other things, the first crematory installed within a municipality in the nation, and a chapel, now a standard funeral home feature.
The three-story building “was the expression of remarkable imagination and foresight for the year 1884, and many architects and morticians from other cities came to Pittsburgh to examine the facilities and consult with the owner,” according to the company’s Internet site. “There were also living quarters for employees who remained on call 24 hours a day.”
After Samson’s death in 1902, the business was passed to his son, Harry G. Samson, who moved the funeral home to North Neville Street in 1922. The move to “an attractive residential area with the quiet of wide, tree-shaded lawns” was made to escape the growing congestion Downtown, the company said.
The property, which consists of two buildings connected by a glass-enclosed walkway, can be likened to a mid-Victorian Italian villa, according to Walter Kidney, historian for the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
Through most of its years, the business was in Samson family hands, with Harry’s son, Howard, taking control after Harry’s death in 1948. Howard’s wife, Elinor, assumed responsibility when he died in 1974.
Other innovations pioneered by the family included the first motorized funeral hearse to be used in Pittsburgh, in 1910. In later years, the business also owned a private plane that was used to transport the deceased from other locations back to Pittsburgh, Rady said.
Family involvement ended with Elinor’s death in 1995. The business was transferred to another family-owned funeral home organization, CMS West, owned by the Stoecklein family.
In 1997, Samson was among six funeral homes and about 35 cemeteries sold by CMS to the Loewen Group International of Canada. Loewen declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1999 and in 2002 emerged as the reorganized company known as Alderwoods Group.
Alderwoods is the second-largest operator of funeral homes and cemeteries in North America, behind Service Corporation International of Houston. As of January, Alderwoods operated 730 funeral homes, 150 cemeteries and 60 combination funeral home-cemeteries in the United States and Canada.
—
Mighty Samson
The H. Samson Funeral Home has handled funeral arrangements for the following families and individuals:
Heinz (H.J. Heinz Co.)Mellon (Mellon Bank)
Hunt (Alcoa Inc.)
Scaife (philanthropy)
Jones (Jones & Laughlin Steel)
Hillman (Hillman Co.)
Richard S. Caliguiri (Pittsburgh mayor)
Pie Traynor (Pittsburgh Pirates third baseman)
Rosey Rowswell (Pirates announcer)
Ron DaParma can be reached at rdaparma@tribweb.com or 412-320-7907.
-
A crown jewel where a duke and count played
By Tony LaRussa
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, April 8, 2004Historic preservationists have taken the first steps toward protecting the famed New Granada Theater, on Centre Avenue in the Hill District, from demolition or major alterations.
Built in 1927, the building is the principal surviving work of Louis Arnett Stuart Bellinger, an important African-American architect. Only a few of Bellinger’s buildings survive today.“Even though the New Granada has been closed for decades, people still talk about it,” said Esther L. Bush, chief executive of the Urban League of Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh’s seven-member Historic Review Commission voted unanimously Wednesday to proceed with the process of designating the New Granada Theater as a City of Pittsburgh Historic Structure — a measure proposed by the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
A series of public hearings by the Historic Review Commission, the city Planning Commission and City Council must be conducted before council can vote on granting the designation.
“The New Granada is not only a part of Pittsburgh’s cultural heritage, it has the potential of being part of this city’s future,” Bush said. “If it’s developed, it can become another cultural attraction.”The theater was built as the Pythian Temple, a lodge for a group of African-American construction workers known as the Knights of Pythias. In the 1930s, the building was sold to the owner of the Granada Theatre, located several blocks up on Centre Avenue. When the movie house was moved to the current location, the word “new” was tacked onto the marquee.
In its heyday, the 11,341-square-foot New Granada Theatre was a major draw for live entertainment and movies. Jazz greats Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington performed there.
“The building is in very bad shape,” said Mulugetta Birru, executive director of the Urban Redevelopment Authority. “It’s going to take a lot of money to rehab it.”
Representatives of Hill Community Development Corp., which owns the theater, could not be reached for comment.
Councilman Sala Udin, whose district includes the Hill, said the designation could be a draw for proposed redevelopment along several blocks of Centre Avenue.
“Obviously it will take a developer with some vision to turn that theater into something that is commercially successful,” Udin said.
Udin said he believes a mix of new housing, storefronts and restored buildings could help revive the neighborhood.
“I would like to see the storefronts built so we can consolidate the businesses in the area and create some momentum outward,” he said.
Efforts to develop the area stalled last year after a Las Vegas developer selected by the city failed to deliver on a master plan for the proposed project.
Tony LaRussa can be reached at tlarussa@tribweb.com.
-
School closings can be historic treasure trove
By Ruth Ann Dailey
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Monday, March 29, 2004Buy low, sell high. That’s the rule of thumb if you want to make a profit. But when the commodity you’re selling belongs to the taxpayers — who may not want you to sell in the first place — you’re undertaking a dicey enterprise.
That’s the situation the Pittsburgh school district finds itself in. District leaders have proposed — again — to close some of the half-empty schools draining the public till.
The financial logic of their choice is irrefutable. The district pays to operate space that isn’t used — and won’t be, unless patterns of the last four decades suddenly reverse themselves and suburbanites pour into the city. With nearly a third more classroom space than is needed, which buildings should the district close?
Parents are pleading to preserve schools in their own neighborhoods, and officials have promised to move judiciously. But there are other factors besides public outcry to consider in deciding which buildings to ax — real estate values, history and architectural significance, to name a few.
But officials know that; they’ve done this thing before.
Among the huge list of school district real estate sales — available at the Recorder of Deeds office — is the listing for the North Side’s old Latimer School. The district sold this building to a development group in 1983 for $231,000. Now known as The School House, the imposing 40-unit apartment building has been resold twice since then — most recently in 1999 for a little less than its assessed value of $3.5 million.
From $231,000 to $3.5 million is a heck of a climb — even when you factor in renovation costs. In 1986, just a few years after it was sold, the Latimer School was added to the National Register of Historic Places — part of a formidable undertaking by local preservationists. By late 1987, according to the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, 48 other district schools had been placed on the register — including Schiller Classical Academy (just north of the former Heinz plant) and Beltzhoover Elementary School (southeast of the Liberty Tubes).
Though Schiller was slated for closing in the district’s circa 2000 effort, protests bought it a reprieve. Last fall it was the only North Side middle school to out-perform the state’s “needs improvement” list. Now it turns away eager transfer students. Because of (despite?) its attractive Art Deco auditorium and prime location near both the Penn Brewery and North Catholic High School, Schiller’s not on this year’s closing list.
Beautiful Beltzhoover is. With its commanding presence high above the city, a private-sector transformation is easy to imagine. But the same attributes that appeal to loft dwellers make the building ideal for young children. Its rooms — much more spacious than those in the nearby schools to which many of Beltzhoover’s students have been reassigned — are large enough to hold things like special story corners.
Its halls held the last school carnival when rainy skies pushed it indoors, says Patricia Grandy, librarian since 1973. “We’d hate to see it close.”
Whether the school district targets Beltzhoover for education or for real estate development, there’s gold in them thar halls — and taxpayers who own it.
(Ruth Ann Dailey is a Post-Gazette staff writer and can be reached at rdailey@post-gazette.com.)