Category Archive: Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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Leechburg Hotel Project Comes Together a Piece at a Time
By Brian C. Rittmeyer, VALLEY NEWS DISPATCH
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Linda Alworth of Gilpin points out a portion of a common area in the second floor of the future Lingrow Inn on Market Street in Leechburg. Jason Bridge | Valley News Dispatch
With its cracked walls, broken windows and dust-covered floors, any attempt to bring back a once-grand hotel on Leechburg’s Market Street would seem like an overwhelming task.
And then there are the ghosts.
It is a daunting task. The only way Linda Alworth can even approach it is one piece at a time.
“All this means nothing to me,” Alworth said recently as she looked around the dark area of the gutted building that will soon become a pub. “I can see it finished. I take one small area of it at a time.”
Alworth’s $2.2 million project to turn the 110-year-old building at 127 Market St. into the Lingrow Inn is moving into high gear. She expects a first-floor restaurant and bar to be open for business early next year.
During its life, the building has carried many names. In the 1920s, it was the National Hotel, and home to a pharmacy.
“We want to try to bring it back to the way it was, with a new fling,” Alworth said.
Borough council President Tony Defilippi’s grandfather, Joseph Defilippi, owned the hotel. He has a photograph of the hotel lobby with his grandfather, who died in 1925, behind the registration desk.
“It will be very nice to see the hotel being used again. I hope to see the entire building be renovated soon,” Defilippi said. “It adds a lot to the downtown area.”
Leechburg's National Hotel on Market Street was a lively place in the 1920s. Submitted
David Farkas, director of the Main Street program for the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, called the project important not just for Leechburg, but for the entire region.
“When the project is complete, there will be an expanded dining offering in Leechburg (and) a place for people to stay who are visiting the area to take advantage of all the outdoor activities that are possible here in the Kiski Valley,” he said. “It will allow people who are visiting or here for special events or weddings to stay close by in Leechburg. We expect that to have an impact on the surrounding businesses in Leechburg and the whole area.”
In Defilippi’s old photo, a grand staircase leads up to the second floor. The hotel section of the building has been closed off for nearly 40 years, although the first floor has been home to various bars and restaurants in subsequent years. The roof had a bad leak, and there has been significant damage to the upper floors of the four-story building.
Closed off behind a wall and tiny doorway, the stairs are part of the charm Alworth plans to bring back.
“It will be grand. I can see the bride walking down the staircase,” Alworth said.
Hard work and tackling big projects come naturally to Alworth, a 56-year-old Gilpin resident who turned an 1850s barn in Gilpin into Lingrow Farm, one of the region’s top wedding venues. It was rated by local brides as a “best of weddings” pick for Southwestern Pennsylvania by the wedding magazine The Knot.
A granddaughter of immigrants from Poland and Germany, Alworth was one of five children who grew up on her family’s farm in Washington Township. Her father didn’t believe in sending girls to college.
“You have to believe in yourself. If you don’t believe in yourself, you’re never going to do anything,” she said. “How do you get things done? You do it. You don’t talk about it.”
Alworth started a landscaping business, Lingrow Landscaping, 17 years ago. She bought the farm at an auction six years ago and the event center is now in its fourth year of hosting weddings.
The inn will serve the farm with food and a place for guests to stay, once its 27 planned rooms are completed. But Alworth sees the building as serving the borough as well.
“I love this town. I love the people in the town. I believe in the businesses here. I believe they can do so much more,” she said. “I really want more business to come into Leechburg. This will be an anchor building.”
Alworth had a feasibility study done.
“We need places for people to stay and not just for the farm. We found out there is a real need,” she said. “We have the river. We have the kayaking now. We have great stores. We’ve been left in the dust long enough.”
Alworth paid $100,000 for the building in May 2009.
The economy has not been her friend. Getting the financing to do the work was not easy, and there were times Alworth thought it would never come and she’d be best to unload the building. But the financing finally came together.
Loans and her own money are paying for the work.
She didn’t get any government handouts. There are no grants out there for a for-profit business, unless she did a full and even more costly historical restoration. She will benefit from a program that phases in the property taxes on the value of the improvements to the building over 10 years.
Alworth’s landscaping employees are now gutting the building.
The guys talk of hearing people walking around upstairs. They’ve heard someone playing a piano that remains on the second floor. Sometimes the “ghost” is Alworth playing pranks, but other times…
They’ve removed the facade, exposing brick columns, and torn away plaster walls inside, exposing more warm brick.
They found an elegant arched doorway inside that had been covered up — and a significant crack near the front of the building. But Alworth says a structural engineer found the building to be in good condition, worthy of rehabilitation.
The restaurant and bar are coming first, to start a revenue stream. An architect is finishing plans, after which she’ll apply for building permits.
The bar, Olde Henry’s Pub, will be named for a brother, Henry Bazella, who lives in Georgia. Alworth says it will be like a New York bistro.
Most of the antiques of value in the building are long gone, but Alworth found a pile of solid old pub chairs – marked made in Poland – that she plans to have refurbished and use in the bar.
There’s an old cooler in the basement, where Alworth envisions a wine cellar.
The 90-seat restaurant will be named for her mother, Olive Bazella. The menu is a work in progress, but Alworth says the restaurant will serve healthy, good, affordable food.
“She was a wonderful cook, a wonderful mother,” Alworth said. “She’s probably looking down right now thinking, girl, you’re crazy.
“You have to be a little bit crazy,” she said.
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Six Allegheny River Towns Picked to Receive Funding, Help
By Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Monday, October 25, 2010
Last updated: 5:41 amSix local communities were chosen for a pilot project of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council to revitalize river towns with free professional services, work plans and tips on finding money to pay for the urban makeovers.
Millvale, Etna, Sharpsburg, Aspinwall, O’Hara and Blawnox are the first communities chosen for the countywide project.
The Pennsylvania Environmental Council is rolling out the Allegheny County River Towns Project to help communities visualize, analyze and identify redevelopment projects and to re-establish ties to the rivers.
The project is paid for by grants from two anonymous Pittsburgh foundations, said Jim Segedy, director of community planning at the nonprofit’s Pittsburgh office.
The Environmental Council has signed a memorandum of understanding with Allegheny County to help carry out its master plan, which includes redevelopment of the region’s riverfronts.
The six communities were picked for the project because they have begun redevelopment projects close to the Allegheny River, Segedy said.
“Millvale has its trail and waterfront park, Aspinwall has the marina, then there is the housing development in O’Hara,” said Segedy. All of these communities are part of the 17 river towns slated for a proposed trail along the Allegheny from Millvale to Freeport.
“This is not another study,” Segedy said. “We are looking for short-term action projects, prioritized projects to help improve the quality of life in these towns and help with storm water management, water quality flood protection and economic development.”
What that means is that the Environmental Council will provide — free of charge to the communities — architects, engineers, landscape architects, planners and other professionals to assess the towns and come up with ideas.
“It’s a great way for the communities to look at their assets and do it in a unified, collaborative way,” said John Stephen, executive director of the Allegheny River Towns Enterprise Zone. “And that will improve the chances to bring in grants and resources,” he added.
Community input is critical, Segedy said.
“This is their communities and we want to do what they think we need and we want. We’re not from the government, we want to help,” he said.
After walk-throughs in all six communities next month, the council will hold public meeting in December for residents to talk about what their ideas are for improvement in the towns.
Then the council will provide a list of prioritized projects, directing the local governments to grants and other resources to jump start redevelopment projects, Segedy said.
“Shovels should hit the ground in the spring for some of these projects,” he said.
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Projects Pump $10 Million into Wilkinsburg Homes
By Chris Ramirez
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Last updated: 8:02 am
Jay Willis plays the saxophone during a dedication of a mural Tuesday evening in Wilkinsburg. The Wilkinsburg Community Development Corp. dedicated the mural as part of the organization's public art program to preserve, restore and enhance the borough's appearance through artistic expression. Justin Merriman | Tribune-Review
With gaping holes from its broken windows, the fenced-in brick building at Rebecca and Kelly avenues in Wilkinsburg is an eyesore, one that’s too big to ignore.
People moved out of the three-story fixer-upper a long time ago, before Vanessa McCarthy-Johnson or anyone else can seem to remember. Pigeons and blackbirds live there now.
“When a kid walks by these buildings and sees that … no one cares about it, it tells them adults don’t care,” said McCarthy-Johnson, a borough council member. “Youths need to see things moving on and improving. They need to see things turn around.”
They soon will.
A public-private partnership on Tuesday detailed plans to invest $10 million in house-restoration projects in Wilkinsburg.
A total of $8.8 million will pay for renovating two early 20th century apartment houses — the Crescent Building at Rebecca and Kelly, and the Wilson Building on Jeanette Street.
Borough officials and investment groups say restoring housing would be key to turning around the neighborhood, which has been blighted by crime and struggling for a defined economic blueprint since the demise of the steel industry in the 1970s and ’80s.
About 19,000 people live in Wilkinsburg, where unemployment is about 9 percent. Nail salons, barber shops and mom-and-pop businesses line most of its main thoroughfare, Penn Avenue, offering little variety or chance for jobs.
“This is a huge investment that we hope will eventually attract more new families to move here,” Mayor John Thompson said.
The two buildings will house 27 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments. Each apartment building will have a community room, laundry area and computer lab. Hosanna House, a community center and social services agency in Wilkinsburg, will provide support services to tenants.
The project, which includes acquiring and demolishing three neighboring structures, is being paid for with loans and grants from Allegheny County, Historic Tax Credit Equity, Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh and federal stimulus money that Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation is administering.
Work on the apartment buildings is expected to wrap up next year.
A second project — paid for by Allegheny County and the Scaife Foundations — will restore three vacant homes at Jeanette and Holland Avenue for $1 million. Once they are renovated, they will be sold to buyers.
“Affordable housing shouldn’t ever be difficult,” said Brian Hudson, executive director for the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency. “This partnership will make homeownership possible for a lot of people.”
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation President Arthur Ziegler is seeing to it that new life is breathed into the Crescent Building at Rebecca and Kelly avenues in Wilkinsburg. The early 20th century apartment house is one of two such buildings in the community that will be renovated. Philip G. Pavely | Tribune-Review
Last year, TriState Capital Bank pledged $1.8 million over six years to help Wilkinsburg continue its housing renovation and development projects.
“Positive change is happening in Wilkinsburg,” TriState President A. William “Bill” Schenck III said. “And it’s happening because people have said they want it to happen and are behind what’s going on here.”
The inside of the newly renovated Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation's housing resource center in Wilkinsburg, formerly a Packard dealership, will house a sculptor. The center will provide workshops and programs dealing with home improvements. A neighborhood open house is scheduled for 11 a.m. Saturday, with a workshop on restoring vacant lots as gardens and green spaces. Philip G. Pavely | Tribune-Review
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation yesterday opened its housing resource center, located in a former Packard dealership in Wilkinsburg. It will provide workshops and programs dealing with home improvements. A neighborhood open house is scheduled for 11 a.m. Saturday, with a workshop on restoring vacant lots as gardens and green spaces.
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Wilkinsburg Housing Restorations to Total $10 Million
By Chris Ramirez
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Last updated: 2:37 pmA public-private partnership today detailed plans for $10 million in house-restoration projects in Wilkinsburg.
A total of $8.6 million will be used to renovate two early 20th century apartment houses — the Crescent Building at Rebecca and Kelly avenues and the Wilson Building on Jeanette Street.
“This is a huge investment that we hope will eventually attract more new families to move here,” Mayor David Thompson said. He spoke at a news conference to spotlight the new projects and mark the grand opening of the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation’s housing resource center in Wilkinsburg.
The two buildings will house 27 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments. Each building will have a community room, laundry area and computer lab. Hosanna House, a community center and social services agency in Wilkinsburg, will provide support services to tenants. Work on the buildings is expected to wrap up next year.
The second project aims to restore three vacant homes at Jeanette and Holland Avenue for $1 million. When they are renovated, they will be sold to buyers who earn 120 percent or less than the area’s median income.
Money for restoration of the three homes is being funded by Allegheny County and the Scaife Foundations.
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$16M Separates Options for City’s Public Schools
By Jodi Weigand
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
The city school district’s proposed 2011 capital budget includes projects at eight schools.
Pittsburgh Public Schools board members were presented two options Tuesday: the full capital program totaling $64 million and a $48.4 million downscaled version that includes only vital improvements at Arlington, Brashear, King, Knoxville, Northview, Oliver, Perry and Westinghouse.
The full-scale option includes consolidating Arlington PreK-2 and Arlington 3-8 at a cost of $29.5 million. It calls for the demolition of the 3-8 building and constructing a building on the site to house K-8 students.
A scaled-down $14.2 million version would cover maintenance at the 3-8 building and incorporating a PreK program there.
The board was offered a less-costly version of its proposed career and technical education program at Oliver High School at a reduced cost of $13.4 million. A version nearly double the cost would renovate existing labs into state-of-the-art facilities.
To fund the projects, the district will seek debt service through two federal programs that would allow it to borrow at a 20 percent cheaper rate per year than it has now.
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Historic Downtown Site Sold
By Thomas Olson, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, September 30, 2010
The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation was given the easement to the historic Burke Building, Downtown, by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy so the foundation can assure no future owners tear it down or alter its exterior. Jasmine Goldband | Tribune-Review
The Western Pennsylvania Conservancy has sold the oldest architect-designed building in Pittsburgh — and granted an easement to the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation to make sure it’s never torn down.
Built in 1836, the Burke Building at 209 Fourth Avenue, Downtown, was sold Monday to Burke Building Enterprises L.P., said conservancy spokeswoman Stephanie Kraynick.
She declined to provide further information about the purchaser but described the partnership as people “who appreciate the historical quality of the building and plan to preserve” it.
The three-story, stone structure — a striking contrast to the modern PPG Place that sits next to it — is one of the few remaining structures to survive the city’s great fire of 1845. The building is unoccupied.
“It is a really important building,” said Arthur Ziegler, president of History & Landmarks. “Anyone who owns the building now and forevermore is subject to the condition that they can’t demolish it or change the exterior without our consent.”
“The conservancy has easements on lots and lots of land. They gave us this (easement) because we protect buildings,” he said.
The conservancy’s headquarters was located in the Burke Building until September 2007, when the organization relocated to Washington’s Landing.
The architect was John Chislett, an British native who relocated to New York in 1832. He moved to Pittsburgh a year later and remained here.
“The Burke Building is extremely handsome and the oldest building we’ve got,” said Al Tanner, the foundation’s historical collections director. “Over the years, it housed a bank, a restaurant, and a variety of other (tenants).”
Three other buildings in Pittsburgh that Chislett designed are still standing. The Gateway and Lodge of Allegheny Cemetery, which are two adjoining structures in Lawrenceville; and the Widows and Orphans Society of Allegheny City building on the North Side.
Tanner said that in Chislett’s day, he was probably best known in Pittsburgh for designing the original Allegheny County Court House in 1841. It burned down in 1882 and was replaced two years later with a design by the world-famous H.H. Richardson, who designed other buildings in this region.
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Uses for South Park Fairgrounds Offered
By Matthew Santoni
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, September 30, 2010Allegheny County residents Wednesday night offered their ideas for revitalizing the rundown fairgrounds in South Park as part of the county’s push to reuse or redevelop it.
More than 100 people attended the meeting in the Museum Building to discuss how they’d like to see the 80-acre site made more attractive and useful, with ideas ranging from converting buildings into indoor sports arenas to tunneling under a hill so pedestrians can reach Port Authority’s nearby light-rail line.
The county has retained Homestead-based GAI Consultants Inc. to hold public hearings, focus groups and online surveys to gather ideas with the hope that the county can do more with its limited money and manpower, said sustainability manager Jeaneen Zappa.
The fairgrounds still hosts community days and other events but hasn’t been the site of a county fair since the late 1970s.
During World War II, German and Italian prisoners of war were temporarily housed in some of the buildings, said Robert Bastianini, a member of the South Park Township Historical Society.
“I would like to see some kind of fair come back,” he said. “These buildings have stood empty almost all year round.”
Bastianini also asked that one of the buildings be donated to the historical society for use as an office and museum.
Representatives of the Allegheny County Martial Arts Center, a nonprofit which has rented, renovated and maintained one of the former exhibit buildings since 1986, would like to see other organizations given a chance to lease sections of the buildings as studios, practice spaces or storefronts, said senior martial arts instructor Rick Sbuscio.
“These clubs are resources,” said Jeff Danchik, director of the Mon Valley Express Drum and Bugle Corps, another long-term tenant of one of the buildings. “We fix up the building, and that’s our rent … but there isn’t any mechanism in place for these groups to go from an idea to getting money and building something.”
Another public hearing will be held in November, and a final report is expected by mid-December. County residents can fill out an online survey at alleghenycounty.us/parks/SPFairgrounds.
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Tens of thousands still powerless after storm
By Margaret Harding, Michael Hasch and Bill Vidonic
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, September 23, 2010Thousands of Western Pennsylvanians remain without power today and might not have service restored until Sunday morning.
Wednesday’s brief but powerful thunderstorm has left a lasting impression.
Duquesne Light reported 13,000 customers — many in Allegheny County’s South Hills neighborhoods — do not have electricity. Customers in Baldwin, Castle Shannon, Dormont, Mt. Lebanon and Scott, as well as Banksville, Beechview and Brookline in the city, might not have service until Sunday, said spokesman Joseph Vallarian.
Allegheny Power reported 14,000 Pennsylvania customers were in the dark. Those in Allegheny, Washington and Westmoreland counties might not have service restored until 11:30 p.m. Friday, the company said.
High winds and lightning yesterday afternoon toppled trees, power lines and even an old church steeple, damaging homes, businesses and cars and prompting schools to cancel classes today. About 30 businesses and schools closed or delayed opening, according to WPXI-TV, the Tribune-Review’s news partner.
A generator leaking carbon monoxide forced the evacuation of a Mt. Lebanon apartment building early this morning, a spokeswoman with the township said. No one was injured.
Fourteen people who live in the lower levels of the building on Washington Road took refuge in the nearby municipal building, the spokeswoman said. Their apartments were ventilated, and residents returned about 7 a.m., she said.
Emergency dispatchers fielded calls of sparking electrical wires, downed trees and a transformer fire this morning in Pittsburgh.
Hilltop Road from Breckenridge Drive in Collier to Collier Avenue in Heidelberg was closed because of downed lines and trees, PennDOT said.
Wind gusts estimated at nearly 70 mph sent trees crashing onto cars in Mt. Lebanon and Banksville, according to National Weather Service reports and emergency dispatchers. Small hail was reported across the South Hills, the weather service said.
About 100,000 Duquesne Light and Allegheny Power customers lost power at the height of the storm.
Lightning shattered the steeple at a former South Side church housing the Pittsburgh Action Against Rape offices, sending the wooden, brick and copper structure through the roof and ceilings of the three-story building on South 19th Street.
“There’s a steeple on my chair,” said Leah Vallone, the center’s supervisor of crisis intervention, who escaped injury because she was in a meeting. “I was religious, but I think I will be even more so now.”
Five employees of the Lighting by Erik showroom on West Liberty Avenue in Dormont escaped injury when a window exploded under the force of the wind, shards of glass turning into shrapnel as dozens of chandeliers, lamps and glass accessories inside shattered.
“The windows were just shaking and rattling,” said Lewis Cantor, whose family has owned the business since 1965.
Westmoreland 911 dispatchers had reports of homes with structural damage, and downed trees and wires, said spokesman Dan Stevens. He said Greensburg, Unity, Penn and Murrysville as some of the hardest-hit areas.
“I was sitting there, watching the storm, and then all of a sudden the wind became so terrific, and this tree just cracked, and it fell straight in my yard. It missed my house, but it came close,” said Jack Zellie of Unity in Westmoreland County. “It happened suddenly. A great, big wind came up it seemed like a wind burst of sorts you could see (the tree) just crack. … It was overwhelming, to be honest with you.”
Damage reports continued to come in this morning, Stevens said.
“This was a fast-moving, widespread storm,” he said. “People made it home last night and just didn’t go back out.
“They’re just going out now and finding that there are trees down in their roads.”
Staff writers Cody Francis contributed to this report.