Category Archive: Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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Eminent domain clarified
By staff and wire reports
Pittsburgh Tribune Review
Friday, May 5, 2006Gov. Ed Rendell signed into law a measure that generally protects property owners against the loss of their land for private development, unless it is declared a danger to public health and safety. The law allows Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Norristown, Delaware County and some other areas to seize land that already is designated as blighted until 2012 for development projects. Since a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Kelo vs. City of New London case, saying local governments have the right to seize property for private development, 18 states, including Pennsylvania, have enacted eminent domain reform laws.
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Second day of gambling hearings more sedate
By Andrew Conte
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, April 19, 2006Fewer celebrities and surprises greeted state gambling regulators as their second day of public hearings on Pittsburgh’s casino proposals opened this morning.
There was no campaign-style rally outside the Omni William Penn Hotel. Casino applicants prepared to listen rather than dazzle with slick presentations.Only former Steelers Hall-of-Fame running back Franco Harris — not Motown legend Smokey Robinson nor the parents of former Steelers soon-to-be-enshrined-in-the-Hall-of-Fame running back Jerome Bettis — turned out.
But one thing remained the same: Talk of a new arena colored hearings on the city’s slots proposals. Eleven of the 19 people who spoke on behalf of community groups this morning supported using gambling money for an arena.
“It’s now clear the team’s fate is directly tied to the issuance of a slots license,” said Michael Mooney, creator of a Web site called SlotsforMario.com, claiming that 36,000 had signed a petition to support using gambling money for an arena.
Four out of five young people who participated in a casino survey by the Pittsburgh Urban Magnet Project favored the Isle of Capri Casinos, the only bidder that would pay the full cost of an arena, said Belinda Yeager, the group’s representative.
“It is now time to replace the Mellon Arena,” said Barbara McNees, president of Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce. “A modern arena would be a significant economic benefit to this region.”
Not everyone spoke in favor of the arena, however.
Arthur Ziegler Jr., president of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, praised the backers of Harrah’s Station Square Casino, which would give his group a $25 million endowment.
“It’s easy to say our organization benefits,” he said, “but our benefit goes to all of the parties involved in revitalizing our city through our historic assets.”
Mark Fatla, executive director of the Northside Leadership Conference, said his group negotiated a letter of agreement with Majestic Star Casino, which would locate on the North Shore. The letter addresses the community’s concerns about potential negative effects, he said.
“We found them to be desirous of a true partnership with the community,” Fatla said.
Restaurants need protection from casinos, said Kevin Joyce, owner of Downtown’s Carlton Restaurant. He asked the board to ensure casino restaurants do not give away food or drinks or sell them below cost.
“You need to ensure they don’t unfairly compete,” Joyce said.
Harrah’s and Isle of Capri have agreed to allow union workers in their casinos, said Edward Nassan, a union leader with UNITE HERE Local 57, representing service industry workers. Dozens of the group’s members sat throughout the hotel ballroom Tuesday but not today.
“The creation of good quality service jobs is the most important economic benefit of gaming,” Nassan said. “There’s no other way for Pittsburgh to ensure good service jobs unless these jobs are unionized.”
The public is taking its turn today with 77 people — speaking for themselves or more than two dozen community groups — giving testimony to the state Gaming Control Board. Each of the three casino applicants will get time at the end of today’s hearings to make its case one last time.
Fewer than 100 people sat in the audience as today’s hearing started, less than half the number when the sessions opened Tuesday.
Isle of Capri Casinos has agreed to pay $290 million for a new arena, while Majestic Star Casino met Gov. Ed Rendell’s challenge to ante up $7.5 million a year for the arena if it wins the license.
Only Harrah’s Station Square Casino has not said what, if anything, it would contribute toward an arena. Its backers said Tuesday they support Rendell’s proposal but want a commitment from the Penguins to stay in Pittsburgh.
The Gaming Control Board wraps up testimony on the proposed Pittsburgh casino today. It expects to award the license for a slots parlor to one of the three applicants by mid-December.
Andrew Conte can be reached at aconte@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7835.
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Thunderbolt rips library
By Thomas Olson and Tony LaRussa
TRIBUNE REVIEW
Sunday, April 9, 2006A ferocious lightning bolt that struck the clock tower of the historic Allegheny Regional branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Friday evening hurled massive chunks of granite through sections of the building’s roof.
The structure, at 5 Allegheny Square, North Side, was the first of 19 public libraries built by steel magnate Andrew Carnegie.
A pyramid-shaped portion of the tower’s peak weighing several hundred pounds ripped through the roof of the second-floor lecture hall, imbedding itself — point first — in the floor where speakers typically stand for presentations.
“What’s most amazing is that none of our collection was damaged,” said Barbara Mistik, the Carnegie’s executive director, who was at the library Saturday surveying the damage. “I’d say we were pretty lucky.”
The library has about 60,000 pieces in its active collection and another 100,000 pieces in its archives, she said.
The impact caused steel roof joists to punch through the lecture hall ceiling — one resting inches from a Steinway & Sons baby grand piano, which appeared to escape damage.
Twisted metal lath and sections of galvanized steel air-conditioning duct work hung from the lecture hall ceiling, and plaster dust settled throughout the room.
Right below the lecture hall in the first-floor children’s section, a roughly 3-foot by 5-foot portion of the plaster ceiling crashed to the carpeted floor, scattering debris and dust. Chunks of stone also damaged the wire-reinforced glass skylight above the library’s main room on the first floor.
Nobody was in the building when the lightning struck at about 8 p.m.
By Saturday afternoon, workers had sopped up water from broken pipes and rain that had streamed down a 3-story metal spiral staircase.
The carved granite cornices that adorned the top edges of the clock tower — each weighing a hundred pounds or more — and shards of razor-edged stonework were littered around the outside of the building, some imbedded several inches in the sodden grass.
“We’re bringing in a crane (Sunday) to get above the roof to assess the damage and begin pulling the pieces of granite and other debris out,” said Suzanne Thinnes, a spokeswoman for the library. “We really won’t know how long the library will be closed or how much repairs will cost until we determine the extent of the damage.”
Thinnes said library officials will be meeting with representatives of its insurance company to determine if any of the repairs will be covered.
Customers can return books to the library’s book drop outside the library’s main entrance or to other branches. The closest branch is at 612 Smithfield St., Downtown.
The Romanesque-style building was designated a historic landmark by the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation in 1970. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
The library was dedicated in 1890 by President Benjamin Harrison.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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School fire does little damage at Arsenal Middle School
By Bobby Kerlik
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, March 21, 2006The roof of a historic Lawrenceville school caught fire Monday, but children are not expected to miss any classes, Pittsburgh Public Schools officials said.
There were no students in Arsenal Middle School at the time because an after-school program had just ended. The remaining staff were evacuated, and no one was injured, Principal Debra Rucki said.
Firefighters had the one-alarm fire — which started about 4:40 p.m. — extinguished within minutes of arrival. Arson investigators ruled the fire accidental.
A Strip District company, Ralph J. Meyer Co., has been doing work on the school’s roof.
Workers had been using torches earlier in the day, and parts of the roof that were smoldering progressed to flames, arson investigators said.
The fire was contained to the roof. It appeared to cause no damage inside the building, except for water seeping into the top floor, Rucki said.
Materials and equipment, including rubber insulation and propane tanks, sent thick plumes of black smoke into the sky, said Pittsburgh fire Battalion Chief Keith Drudy.
“It looked a lot worse than it was,” Drudy said of the fire. “I knew right away when I pulled up and saw the (trash bin). We always have (fire) problems with roofers in general.”
Ralph J. Meyer Co. officials could not be reached for comment.
Worried parents watched firefighters extinguish the flames.
“I’ll be debating to send my kids to school (today),” said April Rocco. “I want to make sure it’s OK.”
District spokeswoman Lynne Turnquist said there will be school today.
Under the right-sizing plan adopted by the school board on Feb. 28, Arsenal, located at Butler and 40th streets, will be converted to an elementary school this fall.
The school is named for the old Allegheny Arsenal, which made armaments during the Civil War. The school, built in 1931, occupies part of the site where the munitions factory once stood. An addition was built in 1939.
The school was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. It was designated a historic landmark by the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation on Nov. 30, 1999, and on Dec. 17 of that year, it was designated a historic structure by the city of Pittsburgh.
Bobby Kerlik can be reached at bkerlik@tribweb.com.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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Man with a plan
By Jerry Vondas
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, March 19, 2006Wilmerding has its own version of a medieval Scottish castle, a majestic five-story edifice that overlooks the Westinghouse Valley community that George Westinghouse established for his Air Brake Corp.
The Castle, as it is known, was designed in 1886 by Frederick Osterling to house the executive offices of the Westinghouse Air Brake Corp.
The Castle, with 55,000 square feet of office and dining areas and 57 rooms, is constructed of Indiana limestone. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, along with the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks designation of historic Allegheny County Buildings.
For over a century, the Castle served as the headquarters of a corporation that fabricated railroad and industrial pneumatic devices, including the air brakes that were invented and patented by Westinghouse.
The interior has the original marble floors and corridors, brass fixtures and oak woodwork throughout. Several of the conference rooms are paneled and have marble and carved-stone walk-in fireplaces. The textured ceiling of the executive dining room is painted with symbolic works of art.
The hand-carved oak doors of the executive dining room, which stand 12 feet high, are done in a linen-fold design, carved to resemble the convolutions of a folded napkin. And the four-face clock tower — which was added to the main building when the Castle was rebuilt in 1897 following a disastrous fire — chimes on the half-hour.
But to the residents of Wilmerding, a small borough nestled in the Westinghouse Valley in the eastern environs of Allegheny County, the Castle is more than a historic landmark. It is a reminder of WABCO, a company that Westinghouse relocated in Wilmerding in 1989, and that, along with its successor, Wabtec, has been the borough’s primary employer.
Westinghouse, a man known for his benevolent management style, plotted and then established Wilmerding as one of the nation’s first planned communities. He built substantial homes for his workers, who at first emigrated primarily from Wales and Ireland, and then from southern and eastern Europe. He also built a school to educate their youngsters, provided for their health care and established a pension plan.
In his company, unlike others, female engineers were accorded the same benefits and respect as their male counterparts.
Samuel Gompers, considered by many as one of the great labor leaders in American history, noted that if all employers treated their employees like Westinghouse did, there would be no need for labor unions.
Wabtec, the spin-off of WABCO, still provides employment for more than 1,000 residents of the borough.
It is this impetus of having a viable industrial entity still operating in an area where many of the steel mills and factories have been shuttered that motivated a group of six individuals — John Cagetta, John Nalevanko, Joseph L. Castagnola, Barbara R. Hiquet, James H. McConomy and Geraldine Homitz — working closely with borough officials to form a nonprofit group called Wilmerding Renewed Inc., to revitalize what they understand is an industrial area with a promising future.
“We have been told,” said Castagnola, a businessman, “that Wabtec has enough orders to take them into the next decade. And that they intend to add additional employees in the coming months in order to produce the components for new subway cars being built for the Port Authority that services New York and New Jersey.”
WRI is using the Castle, which continues to have such a positive impact in the community, as the cornerstone of its revitalization project — a project that will include, in addition to the continuation of the George Westinghouse Museum and its collection of prized memorabilia detailing the career of Westinghouse and his WABCO, the addition of ample office and meeting areas that can be used as a gathering place for community educational and social purposes.
The nonprofit APICS E&R Foundation, which owns the Castle, is selling the Castle when its 20-year lease is up this year.
Currently the WRI, as part of its 10-year revitalization plan, has signed an agreement to purchase the castle for $750,000. It will be refurbished and used as a first-class office building.
“It would be unthinkable to go ahead with plans to revitalize the borough and have an empty Castle,” Castagnola said. “We hope to raise the money from public and private sources and grants.”
Although James “Bert” McConomy, an attorney with offices in Downtown Pittsburgh, left Wilmerding when he was 14, he continues to think of the borough as his home.
“As kids, my brother and I sold newspapers at the gate of the WABCO plant,” McConomy said. “We sold newspapers for 4 cents. Everyone gave us a nickel, and we got to keep a penny. And as kids we used to watch the limousines as they made it up the driveway to the Castle. It was awesome.”
McConomy envisions as part of the revitalization plan — which includes the upgrading of the borough’s historical district along with replica lampposts identical to those in Lennox, Mass., where Westinghouse had a home — the acquisition of the former George Westinghouse Memorial High School building for use as an entertainment and repertory theater complex.
“The school auditorium seats 600,” McConomy said. “And in addition, we’ve been told that we can upgrade the gymnasium, classrooms, meeting rooms and library facilities at a minimal cost.”
During his lifetime, Westinghouse established 60 companies, including the Westinghouse Electric Corp., which he lost during the business panic of 1907. He also acquired nearly 400 patents.
Geraldine Homitz, a former mayor of Wilmerding, recalled t
“It was a sense of pride to work for Mr. Westinghouse’s company,” she said. “The women employees who worked in the general and executive offices wore white gloves and hats and the men suits and ties. It was an elegant sight to see them leaving the Castle at the end of the work day.
“Mr. Westinghouse also provided a pension for the widows, gave his employees a half day off on Saturday and every family received a ham for the holidays.”
Shortly before his death in 1914, Westinghouse — who, as Union Navy veteran of the Civil War is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va., along with his wife, Marguerite — told a friend:
“If someday, they say of me that in my work I have contributed something to the welfare and happiness of my fellow men, I shall be satisfied.”
Jerry Vondas can be reached at jvondas@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7823.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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Mellon’s Downtown plans leave subtenants in limbo
By Ron DaParma
TRIBUNE-REVIEW REAL ESTATE WRITER
Thursday, March 9, 2006Come May 31, one of Pittsburgh’s most dramatic buildings, the ornately designed Two Mellon Bank Center, will be nearly empty.
That’s not surprising, since the major tenant, Mellon Financial Corp., announced last year it planned to vacate the 11-story Downtown building — also known as the Union Trust Building — sometime before the end of May.
However, the question that has many people still guessing is: “What’s next?” for the landmark building constructed by industrialist Henry Clay Frick and opened in 1917.
“Limbo is a good word,” said Rick Conley, owner of Oliver Flowers, describing the plight of the more than 20 tenants who still populate the first-level retail arcade area, and remaining office tenants on the floors above.
“We really haven’t heard anything,” said Conley, who just about every day talks to someone else with a question about what’s going on there.
“We’re waiting for the other shoe to drop,” said Rachelle Scanga, owner of the Remedies pharmacy, a 20-year-plus tenant.
Scanga, like a number of other tenants, said she’d like to stay, and is anxious to hear word on her fate from DeBartolo Property Group LLC, the building’s owner.
Most of the tenants are subleasing from Mellon, which has decided not to renew its master lease for the nearly 600,000-square-foot structure designed in Flemish Gothic style by noted Pittsburgh architect F.J. Osterling.
Their continued tenancy is in question because their subleases expire concurrently with Mellon’s master lease at the end of May.
Last year, Joseph Lufkin, senior vice president of Tampa, Fla.-based DeBartolo, successor to the Edward J. DeBartolo Corp., of Youngstown, Ohio, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that it was the company’s intention to try and re-lease the building.
However, the building is losing occupancy at a time when the city’s commercial office market vacancy rate remains just under 20 percent and large tenants looking for space are scarce.
In the meantime, there has been little word from DeBartolo, tenants say. Lufkin could not be reached for comment.
One of those not moving is Larrimor’s, the upscale clothing store that has been in the building for 66 years. The store has a separate, longer-term lease with DeBartolo, said its owner, Tom Michael.
Business at the store is good, he said.
“We like our space, we believe in Downtown, and we think our location is fairly good, although I wish the building wasn’t empty,” Michael said.
Also not moving “at this time” is a Citizens Bank safety deposit box and foreign exchange center in the building’s first sub-basement level, said Mike Jones, a Citizens spokesman.
But others are, including a 3,000-square-foot U.S. Steel Corp. training center that is shifting to the U.S. Steel Tower, and the Disciplinary Board of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which is moving to the Frick Building on Grant Street.
“We’re moving at the end of March,” said Sky Foerster, president of the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh, whose office is on the 11th floor at Union Trust. The council is moving to One Mellon Center across Grant Street.
“The Union Trust Building is one of the most significant buildings, architecturally, in the city, after the Allegheny County Courthouse,” said Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., president of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
“It’s a very dramatic, highly visible piece of Gothic architecture, remarkable inside and out, and we were delighted with the restoration that was completed several years ago,” Ziegler said. “It is one of the most lively and agreeable buildings in which to step out of your office and into the hallways and see that great rotunda space and the beautiful terra cotta Gothic ceiling.”
Mellon is relocating its employees to one of three other Downtown buildings — One Mellon Center, 325 William Penn Place and the Mellon Client Services Center.
“The pending expiration of this lease at Two Mellon Center has provided us with the opportunity to restack our headquarters facilities, which is part of a larger ongoing initiative to reduce occupancy expenses corporate-wide,” said spokesman Ron Gruendl.
Mellon, which has a total of 6,300 employees Downtown, hasn’t said how many of those workers are based at the Union Trust building. Real estate officials have estimated it occupies about 70 percent of the nearly 600,000 square feet of office space there.
Ron DaParma can be reached at rdaparma@tribweb.com or 412-320-7907.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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The city behind the city
By Craig Smith
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, March 5, 2006Pittsburgh police Sgt. Michael DelCimmuto recalls learning early on about the city’s alleys.
“When I was a rookie 17 years ago, an old-timer came up to me and said, ‘Kid, if you want to stay sane, stay out of the alleys,’ ” said DelCimmuto, 39, who works in the Hill District.
“All the crap happens in the alleys,” he said.
But that’s no longer necessarily so.
Once the domain of garbage trucks and hooligans, the lowly alley is undergoing a transformation. Alleys in cities from Manhattan to San Francisco — Pittsburgh included — are being revitalized.
A number of cities are designating alleys for walkers, and some restaurants now set up outdoor cafes in them, said Maria Riley, 34, a landscape designer with the Downtown firm of Klavon Design Associates.
“I love alleys,” she said. “It’s sort of a subgrid in the city that allows people to move around in a different way.”
Pittsburgh has more than 500 alleys that, if laid end to end, would almost reach Edinboro University of Pennsylvania in Erie County.
In them, DelCimmuto has seen the good and the bad over the years. “I’ve seen alleys where you thought you’d catch some disease just being in it, and others where you say, ‘Whoa, this is here?’ ”
Bill Siess likes the old-fashioned feel that alleys give his neighborhood and says they can reduce speeding in a low-tech way.
“They’re full of potholes, so you can’t go too fast,” said Siess, 48, an engineer who lives in Lincoln Place.
The intricate system of alleys around his Stock Street home is more than just a web of pedestrian walkways. The alleys are places where neighbors congregate, kids play and new moms push babies in strollers.
These “intermediate spaces between two worlds … function as the equivalent of the backyard fence,” said Northwestern University sociologist Albert Hunter.
Hunter, himself a fan of alleys, said they provide “a voyeuristic backside view” of everyday life.
“It’s in the alley that you see the workers taking their cigarette breaks. It’s the backstage,” he said.
Social spaces
The Institute of Traffic Engineers and the Federal Highway Administration later this month will unveil new design standards for urban thoroughfares — from alleys to interstates. Pittsburgh will review the suggested standards to see how to incorporate them into its development planning, said Patrick Hassett, the city’s assistant director of planning.
“Alleys are a crucial, very important part of any urban environment,” said Hassett, 51.
Frank Yenca and his wife, Marita, prefer walking the alleys over the main streets near their Wilkinsburg home. The alleys have more character, he said.
“You see things that aren’t the public face,” said Yenca, 41. “It’s a little more real.”
Until recently, these “social spaces” full of ambiance and energy had been forgotten, said Riley, the landscape designer.
“Real life traditionally occurred in alleys, and we’ve lost that,” she said.
Alleys are appealing because they are small, intimate, out of the way spaces compared to the skyscrapers around them, said Jonathan Cox, 48, director of operations at the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, which launched a revitalization project for Strawberry Way, a four-block alley used by more pedestrians than any other in Downtown, according to the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership.
Riley is one of the designers working on the Strawberry Way project. The alley, which stretches from Liberty Avenue to Cherry Way, links the city’s cultural, retail and government districts.
Strawberry Way someday will be lit by lights embedded in the pavement and have art, information displays and limited vehicular traffic, said Riley. The project carries a $2 million price tag.
Art destination
People have been coming to Sampsonia Way, the small alley in front of exiled Chinese poet Huang Xiang’s home in the North Side, for almost 10 years to see the poetry he has written on his house or to hear his readings.
His “installation art” attracts visitors from all over, said his wife, Jhang Ling, who serves as his interpreter. The couple fled China in 1997 and came to Pittsburgh in 2003. He opened the “House Poem” in November 2004.
Meredith Knight, spokeswoman for the nearby Mattress Factory Art Museum, said Xiang’s work and that by artists Diane Samuels and Ruth Stanford are transforming the alley from a mere roadway into a destination.
“A sense of community is being fostered there,” she said.
The work of Samuels, who lives on Sampsonia Way, has chronicled each crack of the 828-foot-long street. Stanford has restored a home on the alley to provide a glimpse into the lives of generations of former residents.
These types of projects “show alleys being used in a new way,” said Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., president of the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation.
The city at one time had an unusually large number of houses on alleys, which became part of “a shared backyard,” he said. Many of these homes remain in neighborhoods such as Lawrenceville, the South Side, Bloomfield and Lincoln Place.
Alley renaissance
Not everyone is a fan of these often-brick or cobblestone roadways.
“They’re not well-lit,” said Jim Sholtes, who routinely searches for treasures in the trash of others.
“There’s days you find things worth a lot of money. Other days you don’t,” he said during a recent search in Edgewood, where he found wire snippers and socket wrenches.
Sholtes, 38, of Oakmont, devotes about three hours a week to his hobby of sifting through what others throw away.
“A lot of people worry ’cause there’s thieves. You don’t have to steal. There’s so much junk,” he said.
Alleys remain a low priority for those who maintain them.
“When we plow, they’re the last routes we get to,” said Pittsburgh Public Works Director Guy Costa. Alleys also are low on the waiting list for paving.
Alleys first appeared about 2,500 years ago in Greece and became a fixture in the United States as it expanded westward. Planners said there were practical reasons for alleys. They allowed streets to function more for display and lessened the amount of manure on a city’s streets.
Alleys were essentially eliminated from American residential planning in the 1930s, but some designers have attempted to restore a measure of the alley’s social connectivity by creating some type of backyard-accessible commons.
“New urbanism” planners are bringing back alleys to make streets more pedestrian.
David Ginns, a transportation specialist with Sustainable Pittsburgh, said the alley is an idea whose time has come — again.
“In terms of smart growth, they do make sense,” he said. “The idea of getting away from cul-de-sacs.”
These new alleys likely would be a far cry from the one in lower Lawrenceville that a young Michael DelCimmuto walked to get to Freddy’s Market, the neighborhood store down the street from his childhood home.
“My mom would give me $2 to get a pound of jumbo, a pound of American cheese, bread and pop,” he said. “The pop cooler door was broken. It was held shut with a 10-penny nail.”
Craig Smith can be reached at csmith@tribweb.com or (412) 380-5646.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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Grant Street’s bricks anything but grand
By Jim Ritchie
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, February 26, 2006The stately bricks covering Grant Street since the city’s Renaissance II era in the 1980s soon might be replaced with black asphalt.
The bricks are not staying in place, forcing continual repairs, ugly patches and a dilemma about whether to spend tens of millions of dollars fixing the underlying problem, or replace the bricks with asphalt, a more economical solution. The actual cost of repairs is undetermined.
“That’s going to be a catastrophe someday, because they’re letting it go,” said John Gipko, of Mt. Lebanon, who drives the street regularly. “I would take my daughter to work that way, and every day we would go by and see the bricks getting looser and looser.”
The problem lies with a layer of asphalt between the bricks and the street’s concrete base, city Public Works Director Guy Costa said. The asphalt softens when it warms, allowing the bricks to move, and the problem worsens with heavy traffic. About 20,000 vehicles use Grant Street daily, including buses.
“I know they wanted a grand boulevard, but unfortunately the bricks aren’t holding up,” Costa said.
State Sen. Jim Ferlo, D-Highland Park, long has complained about the street’s failing condition and thinks the city should install a concrete road. The city has spent more than $22 million on the brick street, according to Ferlo, a former city councilman.
“Please, someone pull the plug on this costly and wasteful mess,” Ferlo said. “Dig the street back up in quadrants and replace it with solid concrete slabs.”
Grant Street is steeped in history. Named for British Maj. James Grant, who was defeated in a 1758 battle with the French at the site, the street ran along the base of Grant’s Hill, an 80-foot hill that once filled the Downtown area. The street was mostly residential until 1884, when the Allegheny County Courthouse was built, starting a transformation into the hub of Pittsburgh’s Downtown government district.
Once paved with sturdy Belgian blocks of stone, Grant Street underwent a change in the 1980s after local leaders formed the Grant Street Block Club.
“The idea was to come up with a way to make Grant Street look like a street on which our most monumental buildings are placed,” said Arthur Ziegler Jr., president of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. “It was a street of monumental buildings.”
The long-lasting stone blocks were replaced with less-dependable asphalt and topped with bricks.
“They came in my administration, or at the end of (Mayor Richard) Caliguiri’s,” said former Mayor Sophie Masloff, who held office from 1988 to 1994. “I think it stands to reason that it’s been at least 14 to 15 years, and with the elements, traffic and the beating it takes, anything would deteriorate.”
Complicating the problem at the intersection of Grant Street and Fifth Avenue is a water-line break that may have caused the road to sink. Costa, who wants to evaluate the street block by block, plans to look at that intersection in the spring. He said the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority would pay for water-related damage.
But he is faced with finding an affordable solution for the rest of the street. The city has little money to repair roads and bridges.
The city has started replacing the bricks with a 4-inch layer of asphalt, Costa said. That work is scheduled to resume in spring on a section of Grant Street between Liberty and 11th Street.
Costa wants to continue replacing the bricks to Seventh Avenue — which would cover roughly one-fifth of the street with asphalt.
Jim Ritchie can be reached at jritchie@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7933.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review