Category Archive: Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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Preservation group moves beyond county lines
By Ron DaParma
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, September 9, 2007The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation is best known for its preservation efforts of historic properties throughout Allegheny County.
However, the South Side-based agency has been extending its reach beyond its home county in recent years, including with its latest project in Beaver County — an effort to bring “residential reinvestment” to areas near business districts in nine communities.
The foundation is the lead consultant on the project focusing on Aliquippa, Ambridge, Beaver, Bridgewater, Freedom, Midland, Monaca, New Brighton and Rochester.
“The idea is to work with the local officials and independent local organizations to identify new projects for each of the communities that in general terms fall into the guidelines of the state’s Elm Street program,” said Eugene Matta, the foundation’s director of real estate and special development programs.
Elm Street is a program established by Gov. Ed Rendell’s administration that this year is making available $7 million statewide to improve residential streets near Main Street business districts.
It provides seed money to be matched by funds raised from other sources to make the improvements a reality.
Though not an official Elm Street program, the foundation describes it as an “Elm Street-like” program.
While it will not necessarily be securing funds under that program, it will be seeking support from state and private sources.
The foundation is working under a consultant contract it signed several weeks ago with the Community Development Program of Beaver County, paid for with $50,000 from the state Department of Community and Economic Development.
Also on board is Town Center Associates, an organization serving as “sub-consultant.”
“TCA is headquartered in Beaver County and knows that county well,” said Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., PH&LF president.
“It’s president, Mark Peluso, already has done quite a bit of work in the community,” said Matta.
Examples of the projects funded under the Elm Street program include improvements to building exteriors, streets, new street lighting and trees, sidewalks or other “pedestrian-oriented features,” Matta said.
Other activities include improvements of mixed-use buildings in residential areas, acquisition of properties, demolition and reclamation projects, code violation repairs, emergency housing repairs, addition of home security items, parks and playgrounds and water and sewer connections.
The consultants have held one meeting with community leaders to discuss how to proceed with the program, and a second meeting is scheduled Tuesday.
“We suggested to community representatives that sometime in October we would like to have at least four projects they feel are worth considering,” Matta said. “Then somewhere between October and November, we should be able to start work on applications for funding.”
Over the past year, the foundation has secured five grants totaling nearly $800,00 under the DCED funding process.
Its efforts include helping to attract $2 million in investments in Wikinsburg to rehabilitate four properties in the historic Hamnett Place neighborhood.
It is working as manager of the Main Street program in Vandergrift, Armstrong County, and it received a $7,500 grant from National City Corp. to help form a Main Street project for Freeport, Leechburg, Apollo.
Preservation of historic farms also has been a focus. The organization is involved in a survey of farm properties in Green and Washington counties, Matta said.
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Private-public partnership resurrects old Bedford getaway
By Jack Markowitz
FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, September 9, 2007They’re using the word “miracle” around Bedford these days.
It’s a nod to the revival — after 22 years of near-death experience — of the Bedford Springs Resort, the venerable vacation spot with gleaming front porches that seem to go forever and a history that stretches back 203 years.Presidents slept there. But a glorious past can carry a hotel only so far if everything else is falling apart. The “Springs’ ” new owners, a half-dozen sophisticated investors from out of state, have bet $120 million that this piece of the past has a future.
They see a very modern aggravation — airport delays and hassles — nudging upscale Easterners to do their vacations and conferences, weddings and weekends, closer to home. Within two or three hours’ easy driving from Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Washington and Philadelphia, in fact.
In that market area of millions, Bedford Springs means to compete with the best. Namely, the Greenbrier in West Virginia, the Homestead in Virginia and other high-prestige — and high priced — watering places for the well-heeled and the politically and corporately influential.
So look for weekday room rates of $249 a night and up ($350 on weekends), golf rounds at $105 for hotel guests, $115 for drive-ins ($70 after 3 p.m.), and sumptuous but pricey breakfast, lunch and dinner menus. Not to mention concierges, valet parking, masseuses and white-gloved bellmen.
None of which would have been possible without the help of taxpayers.
Some $40 million in state and federal help has lifted the grand dame of Keystone State travel destinations to its legs again. “The hotel is probably better than it has ever been,” said Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., president of Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, which helped in the rescue.
“She sat there empty and forlorn for 22 years,” says Bedford historian-architect Bill Defibaugh. “I expected every day to get a call, ‘They’re tearing her down.’ ”
It all goes to show what money can do. Plus vision, patience, taste and, well, tax dollars.
Here’s one item. To give a new generation of guests an unspoiled view — and no noise, fumes or trucks, across elegant lawns and gardens — a half-mile of U.S. Route 220 was relocated behind the hotel. The traffic is now in a deep, $11 million highway cut that never would have happened without friends in Harrisburg and Washington.
Still, someone had to bring money. His own.
Meet Mark Langdale, 53, of Dallas. He’s the U.S. ambassador to Costa Rica, a friend and appointee of President Bush, and a real estate investor. From afar, he spotted a then-dying, dust-gathering hotel a decade ago. And never let up gathering partners, political allies and financial tools.
Pittsburgh History and Landmarks (which saved Station Square in its home city decades ago) threw a big life ring. It acquired the hotel’s outside. Right — just the outside.
That’s the historic facade of tall columns, old glass and white porches — the building’s skin. History and Landmarks legally owns all that by way of an “easement,” a legal contract by which the historic look of a National Historic Landmark should never be lost.
By giving up the easement, Langdale and his group, Bedford Resort Partners, acquired a $23 million federal income-tax credit aimed at historic preservation. Then they sold that as a market investment to Chevron, the California oil giant, to put into the reconstruction. As many as 400 skilled tradespeople have reworked the property for almost two years.
Result: The hotel, some of it dating from 1804, is practically new inside — in a stronger outside. The four-story architectural wedding cake lies four miles south of the Pennsylvania Turnpike’s Bedford interchange, just outside the 3,500-population county seat.
“Basically, we took the hotel back to the structure,” says Keith Evans, managing partner of Bedford Resort Partners, who oversaw the big fix. An associate jokes: “Keith said, ‘Take it upside down and everything that falls is gone. So we have new walls, new floors, ceilings, heating, plumbing and air-conditioning.”
Evans said it’s fair to say the place was “gutted.” To make larger guest rooms, now 216 of them (vs. 721 at the giant Greenbrier and 486 at the Homestead), walls were knocked down and about 60 old rooms sacrificed. Deteriorated timber was replaced by steel beams. Great white outdoor columns were sent to Altoona and Scranton for $75,000 rebuilds. But century-old, wavy window glass was kept; 19th century brides etched initials in it with their wedding diamonds.
“This ceiling was just hanging down,” said Cheryl Funk, marketing director, of the top-floor ballroom (capacity 300) three floors up from a soaring lobby of angled stairs and footbridges. Five restaurants, a huge kitchen (and several satellite kitchens), an antique-rich library, porches with painted rocking chairs — What would a grand old hotel be without them? — and long vistas of furniture and decor keep visitors walking and gawking.
More than a half-dozen presidents have visited the place, including Pennsylvania’s own James Buchanan, who used it as a summer White House before the Civil War. Others on the register included Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan (while California governor).
The first post-revival wedding was in late August with 225 guests. Extra help was sent in by Texas-based Benchmark Hospitality International, contract operator of this resort and more than 30 others. The first new guests in a generation arrived July 12 without any “grand opening.” It seemed more important to get 275 resort employees up to speed for a “world-class destination luxury resort.” That’s the goal, not an easy one.
The Greenbrier, in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., and the Homestead, in Hot Springs, Va., plus Nemacolin Woodlands in Fayette County and the Hotel Hershey near Harrisburg are viewed as the elite competition for individuals, corporate meetings, special events and, hopefully, congressional and other government retreats.
“The luxury segment is one part of our industry that’s continued to grow,” said Todd Gillespie, Bedford Springs’ vice president of marketing and sales. He said four groups already are signed for 2008 — and one as far out as 2011.
No numbers are being released, but “we’re very optimistic about the early results,” Evans says. “Bookings have been very good.”
Word-of-mouth from the hard-to-please can be elusive. An early guest from Rochester, N.Y., told a reporter the new staff isn’t four-star yet. “It’s beautiful around here, but they’ve got to get the kinks out,” she said.
But Helen Ferry, Dorothy Ritchey and Marcia Davis, all from small Bedford area towns, thought the restoration exciting and the food “delicious.” They bused in on a senior citizens weekday tour with buffet lunch (fare: $26.50). “Before they started working on it,” Ferry says, “you’d come up here and think somebody dropped a bomb.”
A new “spa” wing has been built for body-pamperers, with guest rooms topping $300 a night. The outdoor-pool complex overlooks a first-rate view: the restored 18-hole golf course that occupies a valley between hills veined with hiking trails. Bringing the 6,785-yard golf course back to the 1924 Donald Ross design was an $8.5 million labor. Look for serpentine bunkers, tufted hillocks, wetlands, wildflowers and meandering Shober’s Run.
Restoration work in the hotel aims for the high-ceilinged look of the resort’s pre-World War I heyday around 1905. But underpinning the charm are amenities geared to at least a half-decade in the future, Gillespie said: elegantly tiled bathrooms, iPod docking stations and high-definition flat-screen TVs behind the doors of antique-looking chests.
And, of course, year-round occupancy. The old hotel closed in winters.
Historian Defibaugh, whose antique photos decorate the long corridors, said Bedford folks never quite lost hope after the hotel’s depressing 1986 shutdown. “Developers came in with high hopes but very little money,” he said.
Wonderful what a major investment will do, though. Along Pitt Street, downtown Bedford’s main stem, merchants see signs of contagious rebirth. “I know three businesses that say they would not have opened had it not been for the Springs,” says Kim Foreman, owner of the Green Harvest Co., a cafe and bakery.
“I’m planning a third fitting room, the weekends have become so busy,” says Elaine Housel, owner of Elaine’s Wearable Art, a clothing and jewelry retailer. “Women on vacation can only sit around for so long. They’re coming to town to shop.”
There are reports of higher home prices around Bedford, but Todd May, at Johnson Real Estate, cites a “certain amount of speculation on business properties in town,” retirement-home buying by Baltimoreans, who like the lower housing costs across the Pennsylvania border, and some new industries opening.
Sharyn Maust, managing editor of the Bedford Gazette, says of the hotel’s revival: “Obviously it’s great, but I like old buildings.” Some of her readers have written angry letters, disapproving of public funds going to entertain wealthy out-of-towners. “In effect they’re saying ‘I’ll never see any benefit from this,’ ” Maust says.
At this point, the resort is no bonanza for local and school tax collectors. It’s cocooned in its own state-delineated “Keystone Opportunity Zone.”
That’s a sweetener for investors. It was laid out when the idled hotel was desperately seeking a savior in 2001. Thanks to the Opportunity Zone, no real estate or personal property tax has to be paid for 10 years, through 2010. The hit wouldn’t be heavy in any case. Annual real estate tax only would be about $32,000. That’s on a laughably low assessed value of $394,000 and “fair market value” of $2.3 million. Considering all that’s been invested, a future shock seems inevitable.
The resort’s new owners number six partners: Langdale, Evans and John Ferchill, head of the Ferchill Group, of Cleveland, and three of his associates. Ferchill is a veteran developer of historic properties, like 99 percent-occupied Heinz Lofts on Pittsburgh’s North Side.
Here’s how $120 million was put together, according to Timm Judson, chief investment officer of Felcher. Owners’ equity of $10 million; historic tax credit of $23 million, the History and Landmarks easement; $28 million in state grants under the Pennsylvania Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program; another $11 million in PennDOT funds for highway relocation; a $40 million senior mortgage held by Marshall Investment Group, of Minneapolis; and a $9 million second mortgage by Hudson Realty Capital, of New York.
Using public funds to subsidize private enterprises is a perennial issue for debate. State and federal laws favor it for historic property. But well-placed friends help.
Two lawmakers have long backed efforts to keep Bedford Springs alive: U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Everett (and his father, former Rep. Bud Shuster, a kingpin among public works promoters in Congress), and former state Sen. Robert Jubelirer, R-Altoona, who lost a re-election bid after helping to engineer an the since-rescinded legislative pay increase in 2005.
The Ferchill Group’s Judson says there’s no way the resort’s revival could have happened without the state’s $40 million-odd input (in grants and PennDOT funds), a third of the total cost.
Says Evans: “Many people tried for a long time to get it done and they couldn’t. The state had a great treasure that had not been open for 20 years, and it now has a viable new employer bringing in tourist dollars that did not exist before.”
Pittsburgh Landmarks’ Ziegler agrees — when it comes to the architecturally irreplaceable: “It’s so hard to do these buildings on a market basis,” he said. “As for subsidizing, it just couldn’t be done without it. And keep in mind, these owners have their own money in. They have a mortgage. I think it’s little short of a miracle.”
The competition
The Greenbrier, White Sulphur Springs, W. Va.
250 miles south of Pittsburgh and southwest of Washington, D.C.
• Acreage: 6,500.
• Opened: 1778.
• Rooms: 721, including suites, guest houses.
• Rates: Per night : traditional room, $379 to $489. Higher level rooms, suites: $529 to $900.
• Golf courses: Three, per player round: $195, after Oct. 21, $130.
• Fact bites: 26 presidents have visited. A $50 million renovation completed last April. 112,000-square-foot underground bunker can be toured. Built “top secret” for Congress in case of Cold War blowup, it was never used.
• Details: 1-800-624-6070, www.greenbrier.com.
The Homestead, Hot Springs, Va.
250 miles south of Pittsburgh, 210 miles west of Washington, D.C.
• Acreage: 3,000.
• Opened: 1766.
• Rooms: 483, including suites
• Rates: Per night, $225 to $450; with meal packages, $310-535; golf packages, $620 to $1,120.
• Golf courses: Three, rounds per player depending on course, $120 to $245.
• Fact bites: 23 presidents have visited. Golfer Sam Snead had early experience as a pro here. Spa massages at $150, $220 for 50-minute and 80-minute rubs respectively.
• Details: 1-800-838-1766, www.thehomestead.com.
Bedford Springs Resort, Bedford, Pa.
100 miles east of Pittsburgh, 135 miles northwest of Washington, D.C.
• Acreage: 2,200.
• Opened: 1804 (on spring property purchased 1796).
• Rooms: 216.
• Rates: Introductory rates per night: $249 up.
• Golf courses: One, 18-hole round per player, $115, $70 twilight (after 3 p.m.)
• Fact bites: Seven presidents (some say nine) have visited. A 36-star flag behind registration desk flew at Civil War’s end. Indoor pool in a classic 1905 Grecian “temple” is spring-fed, heated.
• Details: 1-866-623-8176, www.bedfordspringsresort.com.
Contractors
A partial list of Pennsylvania “midwives” to the rebirth of Bedford Springs:
Reynolds Construction Inc., Harrisburg, general contractor; Miller Electric Construction Inc., Allison Park, electrical systems; G.N. McCrossin Co., Bellefonte, heating, ventilating, air-conditioning, and foundation of the spa wing; Rob-Bern Associates Inc., West Mifflin, carpentry; W.G. Tomko & Sons Inc., Finleyville, plumbing; L.R. Constanzo Co., Scranton, windows and columns; Hemlock Hills Landscaping Co., Altoona, interior landscaping (flower boxes, potted trees etc.).
Jack Markowitz can be reached at jmarkowitz@tribweb.com.
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Historic Brentwood restaurant to be razed
By Genea Webb
FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, September 6, 2007The borough of Brentwood will be losing a vital piece of its history this fall.
The Point View Restaurant, formerly the Point View Hotel, on Brownsville Road, will be razed to make way for a three-story medical building to be occupied by Brentwood Medical Group.According to former Brentwood Councilman Ed Haney, the building, which originally was an inn built in 1832, served as a stop for former Presidents Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor and James Buchanan. The Point View was a stop on the Underground Railroad for slaves escaping to Canada.
“The floor of the basement was dirt. There was a tunnel that led under Brownsville Road,” said Lions Club Secretary, Mary Cavataio.
Dr. Dushan Majkic, one of the partners of Brentwood Medical Group, said the newly built facility would help the group of doctors serve the community better.
“It’ll be a positive thing for Brentwood. We have lots of positive things to offer to the community and we’re very excited to offer full medical services to the community,” Majkic said.Council Vice President Jay Lieb agreed.
“I think any new construction is good for the community and the location for the medical building is ideal,” Lieb said.
Majkic and his partners plan to sale the existing medical building at 3028 Brownsville Road.
A plaque signifying the importance of the Point View will be erected somewhere on the site of the new medical building. Demolition of the Point View will occur some time this fall. Construction of the medical building is expected to take six to eight months.
The group held its meetings in the Point View until it closed last year.
“We were very happy there and everyone felt comfortable there,” said Cavataio, whose group held its meetings at the Point View until it closed last year. “We used to have our annual Mother’s Day breakfast there.”
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Book recounts 100 years of Westmoreland county courthouse
By Jennifer Reeger
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, September 3, 2007If history had repeated itself, the Westmoreland County Courthouse wouldn’t be ready to celebrate its centennial.
Instead, the majestic domed structure on Main Street in Greensburg would look more like something that came out of the 1970s.The previous three courthouses built on the same site had been deemed too small and were torn down.
But in the 1960s, when the powers that be were discussing whether to tear down the current courthouse or just build an expansion onto it, preservation prevailed. The courthouse annex was dedicated in 1979.
“Thank God we do have this beautiful building,” said Mike Cary, professor of history and political science at Seton Hill University and an editor of a book on the courthouse’s history. “People remember Greensburg — they remember that dome when they see it from a distance, and it’s somehow inspirational for people.”
The courthouse, completed in 1907 and dedicated in 1908, will be celebrated in upcoming events and a book, “This American Courthouse: One Hundred Years of Service to the People of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania,” scheduled to be released Sept. 14.
The centennial celebration entered its planning stages in 2002, when Judge Daniel Ackerman put a committee of academics, government officials and historians together.
“I thought this was an event that should not be missed,” Ackerman said. “… I can’t think of any (courthouses) that overall are more beautiful than this building. I always have said, ‘It’s like going to work in an art museum.'”
At the heart of the celebration is the book, edited by Cary and Tim Kelly, chairman of the history department at St. Vincent College.
During the past four years, they gathered historic photos of the courthouse and asked local people to contribute chapters to the book.
“It’s really been very much a community effort, probably more so than most books are,” Kelly said.
Of course, one chapter delves into the history of the current courthouse and the four others in Westmoreland County’s history.
The first, in Hanna’s Town, served from 1773 until the town burned in an Indian raid in 1782. For a few years, court was held wherever there was space, until a board-and-log-structure was built in what is now Greensburg in 1786.
By 1794, the courthouse was torn down for a larger replacement that wouldn’t be finished until 1801. Court was held in local taverns in the meantime.
The two-story brick building, which cost $5,000, would be replaced in the 1850s by a larger, Greek revival building with a small dome and columns.
That building, too, proved too small, and in 1901 it was torn down in favor of the current courthouse, which was completed in 1907.
The building, designed by architect William Kauffman in the Beaux-Arts style and constructed of light-gray granite from Maine, cost $1.5 million.
The book delves into that history as well as the history of the jail, which used to be attached to the courthouse.
It also discusses the building’s architect and architecture — which was controversial because some considered it too ostentatious, Cary said.
There are broader chapters on the changing role of judges and the history of the Westmoreland Bar Association. One chapter focuses on the social context of what was happening in the area at the time of the construction.
Another looks into the multiple uses of the courthouse.
Kelly said the book not only delves into the specific history of the building but gives “a broader read of social climate and the lives and the activities of people who came to the courthouse.”
He said the book is complemented by historical photos and modern pictures taken by attorney and amateur photographer Mark Sorice.
“It’s the sort of thing you could thumb through and never read a word and be happy,” Kelly said.
The book will be unveiled at a black-tie optional gala event on Sept. 14 at the courthouse.
Susan Mitchell Sommers, professor of history at St. Vincent College who chaired the courthouse centennial committee, said members of the Bar will offer tours of the courthouse, while judges and row officers will talk about their roles.
The tours will include, if the weather cooperates, the first public access to the courthouse dome in about 25 years.
Guests will be able to stroll through the courthouse and view the opening of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Council for the Arts juried exhibition, “History Through Art.”
The show will run through January, which marks 100 years since the courthouse dedication.
The culmination of the centennial celebration will be a free open courthouse event on Jan. 26.
“We’re hoping to get as many people into the courthouse as we can because I talk to neighbors and other people who you would have thought would have been here at one time or another and they haven’t,” Ackerman said. “It’s sort of a shame that so many people haven’t.”
Jennifer Reeger can be reached at jreeger@tribweb.com or 724-836-6155.
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Cathedral of Learning bricks mistakenly cleaned
By Andrew Conte
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, August 30, 2007The Cathedral of Learning’s dirt nearly had its finest moment.
After clinging to the 42-story University of Pittsburgh building for 70 years, the black soot almost received its own plaque to recognize evidence of the city’s industrial past.“Somebody has to honor those people who made the city,” said E. Maxine Bruhns, director of the cathedral’s Nationality Rooms, who came up with the idea. “These grimy stones were a perfect tribute.”
University officials agreed to keep a few blocks dirty near the Fifth Avenue entrance when they spent $4.8 million this summer to wash the Indiana limestone exterior, fix mortar joints and replace rusty fasteners. The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation planned a marker.
“The new generation of students attending Pitt have no idea this city was the workshop to the world,” said Louise Sturgess, the foundation’s executive director. “The dirt visually lets people know what the air was like, and the air was filled with the gritty soot from all of the industry.”
Bruhns hand-picked the blocks for their markings and high-profile location. Workers built a cover so the area wouldn’t be cleaned, and the school newspaper reported in June that a crew member was assigned to protect it.
But after most of the building had been cleaned and the cover removed, another worker noticed the blemish. Without asking, he washed away the grime — so the blocks look as fresh and bright as the rest.
Overall, the cleaning project turned out better than anyone expected, said Park Rankin, the university architect. It was just an oversight that Bruhns’ blocks were washed, he said.
Still, the damage has been done — or undone.
Standing near the spot Wednesday, Paul Sawyer, 24, a junior from Whitehall, said he forgot all about the formerly dirty facade when he returned to campus this month.
“I didn’t even notice,” he said.
Andrew Conte can be reached at aconte@tribweb.com or 412-320-7835.
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Bottle Brigade raises money to restore Braddock library
By Kacie Axsom
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, August 30, 2007John Hempel doesn’t drink soda. But the University of Pittsburgh biologist has helped to collect about 6,500, 20-ounce soda bottles to help the environment and raise money for restoring the Braddock Carnegie Library.
Hempel sends the bottles to New Jersey-based TerraCycle as part of its Bottle Brigade program. TerraCycle makes and distributes lawn and garden fertilizer — essentially worm poop, as company publicist Paul D’Eramo puts it.The company gathers the waste matter and puts it in tanks with hot water and extracts nutrients from it, D’Eramo said. They package it in those reused bottles from about 3,800 groups such as Hempel’s.
TerraCycle sends empty boxes that can hold as many as 70 bottles to Bottle Brigade participants, which includes schools and nonprofits. Groups fill their boxes, and twice each year, TerraCycle sends a check for 5 cents per bottle to the school or charity of their choice, and 6 cents per bottle if they have been washed and de-labeled. That means every filled box is worth $3.50 to $4.20 for a charity.
Hempel’s chosen cause is the Braddock Carnegie Library, because he is the vice president of Braddock’s Field Historical Society, which owns it. He and his colleagues at Pitt have placed barrels around their department and have earned about $370 to go toward restoration projects.
That $370 could buy fewer than two seats in the library’s music hall, Hempel said. It’s also about $30 shy of the $400 needed to replace one of the 39 window sashes.“Relative to the amount of money the music hall restoration needs, it disappears in the decimal dust,” Hempel said. “It’s at least a way of bringing in a trickle of money, and it’s satisfying.”
Hempel maintains a personal compost pile and recycles newspapers, bottles, cans and Styrofoam, he said. He also sprays the TerraCycle product on his orchids.
“In many ways, (recycling is) easier than lugging a bag of smelly stuff down to the curb,” he said.
Laurel Roberts is a lecturer at Pitt and has been collecting bottles with Hempel for about eight months. She estimates she’s collected 300 to 400 in that time.
She told her students about the project and where they can find a collection bin, and when she’s out walking her dogs in her Highland Park neighborhood and sees a bottle, she picks it up.
“It’s easy, and it’s actually fun,” Roberts said. “When you find one, it’s almost like a scavenger hunt.”
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Many twists and turns for East plans in last three years
By Peggy Conrad,
Staff Writer
Woodland Progress
Wednesday, August 22, 2007By the end of this month or early in September, East Junior High School in Turtle Creek could be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
“It’s an excellent designation, an excellent honor,” says Ron Yochum, chief information officer of Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation.
He hired a specialist in the field, Laura Ricketts, to research and document the history of the building and submit the proposal, which is “a very, very complicated process,” according to Yochum.
In March, the commission voted unanimously to nominate the structure to the National Register. The National Park Service requested some additional details, which Ricketts submitted with the nomination on July 16.
“We’re hopeful the National Park Service will agree with us, as well as with the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission,” Yochum says.
A decision could be made in the next couple of weeks, as the approval process takes about 45 days to complete. The designation would provide protection for the structure if any federally funded project were threatening the building.The school board voted to begin the process of closing East earlier this year and is scheduled to make a final decision in October. Generations of area residents have attended the school, and many are anxious to see what will become of it.
The first cornerstone for the building was laid in 1917. The school opened in 1918 and the first class graduated in 1919.
In 1939, an addition to house the gym and additional classrooms was built by the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal agency that provided jobs during the Great Depression. A plaque stating the details of the addition is housed, but not currently mounted, at the school.
Originally Union High, the institution was the first joint high school in Pennsylvania, combining Turtle Creek, Wilmerding and East Pittsburgh high schools, according to Bob Mock, head of Committee to Save Turtle Creek High School.
The building became Turtle Creek High, then East Junior High after the merger that formed Woodland Hills School District.
“To remove such a wonderful landmark in the community would be tragic,” says Yochum. “I think it’s an asset for the community that should be preserved.”
If it achieves historic status and a project threatens the building, the case would go into an automatic review process, he says. If the district were to renovate the building, it would not be a problem, unless the renovation would affect the facade.
“I’m sure the community would not be happy with that.” Yochum, whose agency has been offering assistance to Committee to Save Turtle Creek High School, could not be more correct in that assessment.
About two and a half years ago, the group of Turtle Creek residents came together to protest the district’s plans to demolish the building and construct a new junior high school on the same spot.
“Had they done that, knowing what we know now, what a big mistake they would have made,” says Mock, who rallied his neighbors to join the cause.
A national preservationist who attended a town meeting in Turtle Creek in 2005 in support of preserving the school said the structure was a “slam dunk” for the National Register.
“It sailed right through at the state level,” says Mock, a 1968 alumnus of the high school. “This is a positive for our community and a positive for the school district.”
The past few years have been a roller-coaster ride for anyone invested in the future of East. A brief outline follows:
- August 2004 — HHSDR Architects presented preliminary plans for renovation and for new construction. The architects did three to four variations on plans for a new building in the months that followed.
- January 2005 — Hundreds of residents turned out for a town meeting held by the board to voice their opinions on proposed renovation plans for several district buildings. Options for East included the possibility of relocating the school.
- April 2005 — Survey companies were authorized to begin surveying the property at East in preparation for renovation or reconstruction.
- November 2005 — The school board voted in favor of borrowing approximately $30 million to fund the proposed building of a new East Junior High and renovations of the Wolvarena and high school soccer stadium. The district scheduled groundbreaking for the new school building in the summer of 2006.
- November 2005 — A town meeting organized by Commit-tee to Save Turtle Creek High School overflowed with outraged residents who wanted the building to be preserved.
- December 2005 — The board directed HHSDR to de-velop further renovation plans following objections by residents to the planned demolition and rebuilding of the school. Construction costs increased to estimates of $20,641,170 for renovation and $20,329,874 for new construction.
- Initial plans called for putting an addition on the front of the building, but the committee requested the facade not be altered. The administration said keeping the exact shell of a renovated building would increase the cost.
- February 2006 — The board decided to not vote on whether to rebuild or renovate the school until it received more public input on the issue. The district sought residents from all its communities to serve on an ad hoc committee to study the proposed renovation / construction plans.
- May 2006 — After meeting for two months, the committee recommended the district create detailed and comparable design plans, one each for a renovated and new structure, and that the board commit to the least expensive option. Be-cause of a lack of support among members, the board voted to not follow the recommendation and to no longer pursue constructing a new building, but to have renovation plans developed in more detail.
- June 2006 — HHSDR presented an update on work needed immediately at East and asked for direction. Cost of the urgent “A-list” items was $500,000 to $750,000.
- A “B-list” of needed but not urgent items would have cost about $5 million. Following discussion, it was clear the board would not reach a consensus, so the architects were asked to return at a meeting on June 28.
- There was no discussion regarding renovation at that meeting because the board had not had adequate time to meet with the architects and make a decision.
- October 2006 — The superintendent announced the district would consider closing East and two other schools due to declining enrollment.
- Superintendent Roslynne Wilson recommended, as part of the Next Quarter Century Plan, closing Rankin Intermediate, Shaffer Primary and East, as they had the biggest enrollment declines. The proposal was based, in part, on state Act 1, which limits how much districts can hike taxes. The closing of East would save more than $800,000 a year.
- December 2006 — Parents voiced concerns at a public hearing on the plan to consolidate schools. Several board members were concerned that the proposal would have a negative impact.
- January 2007 — All who spoke at a second public hearing were opposed to the consolidation plan. At its next meeting, the board listened to residents and voted down the superintendent’s plan as well as a counterproposal to close East in 2008.
- March 2007 — The board voted to begin the process of closing East and consolidating all seventh- and eighth-graders at West Junior High in 2008-09.
- The Swissvale school, to be renamed Woodland Hills Mid-dle School, would have to be renovated at a cost about $5 million and would have about 740 students in the first year.
- July 2007 — The board held a public hearing on the possible closing of East. Res-idents were opposed to closing the building without a definite plan in place on its future use.
Several options were discussed, including moving ad-ministration offices to the school, turning the building into a creative and performing arts high school for the district and turning it into a charter high school.
Wilson said the process to close the school will include formation of an ad hoc committee that will be asked to report to the board on Oct. 3. The board expects to vote to close the school on Oct. 10.
“It’s been a long saga with a lot of twists and turns,” says Mock, who believes East deserves historic designation for many reasons. The white brick structure was built in the neo-classical style as part of a “City Beautiful” campaign designed to uplift communities in the early 1900s, he says.
“There’s a lot of history here.”
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$500K to fund feasibility study of commuter rail
By Rich Cholodofsky
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, August 17, 2007Efforts to start commuter rail service from Arnold into Pittsburgh keep chugging along as county transit officials this week received a $500,000 state grant to study whether the project is feasible.
Officials announced Thursday they likely will hire a consultant later this year to determine whether there are enough potential riders to justify rail service as well as peg cost estimates for the project.The Westmoreland County Transit Authority is exploring a two-phase project that would offer commuter rail service between Arnold to the Strip District and Latrobe to downtown Pittsburgh.
“We want to get this study done as quickly as we can, maybe within a year,” said authority Executive Director Larry Morris. “Then a decision to go forward or not will be made.”
The state grant will pay for the feasibility study. Transit officials have been waiting for nearly six months for the money.
In the meantime, plans for the commuter rail project have been tweaked as officials moved to extend the proposed Greensburg-to-Pittsburgh line eastward toward Latrobe.“It made sense to extend it out to Latrobe because Latrobe has a train station that has been remodeled and is being used now by Amtrak,” Morris said. “It only made sense to extend it out a little bit.”
Commuter service from Westmoreland County to Pittsburgh was a top recommendation of a study completed last year by a regional planning agency that explored improving transportation needs in the region.
The proposed rail line from Arnold to Pittsburgh’s Strip District would stop in New Kensington, Oakmont, Verona and Lawrenceville. It would utilize existing train tracks.
Projected costs for the Arnold line are about $140 million.
By initial estimates, the proposed Allegheny Valley rail line would service as many as 6,700 daily riders making the 34-minute commute.
Initial plans suggested the proposed Latrobe-Greensburg line could use existing tracks and train stations. It would include stops in Jeannette, Irwin, Trafford, Wilmerding, East Pittsburgh, Braddock, Swissvale and Wilkinsburg.
Early cost estimates ranged from $190 million for a limited-service system to a more ambitious $300 million line that would operate every 30 minutes during peak commuting times.
Preliminary studies have indicated that the more expensive system could carry about 8,800 passengers every day for the 49-minute trip between Greensburg and downtown Pittsburgh.
Transit officials learned earlier this year that for the first time there is a pool of money available to pay for the rail projects.
As part of the comprehensive state transportation bill approved in July by state lawmakers, $50 million a year was allocated to finance commuter rail projects throughout the state.
Rich Cholodofsky can be reached at rcholodofsky@tribweb.com or 724-837-0240.