Category Archive: Preservation News
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Historic status for Mellon Arena rejected
By George Aspiotes
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, February 27, 2003Pittsburgh City Council on Wednesday unanimously voted against a measure to grant landmark status to the 42-year-old Mellon Arena, the home of the Penguins hockey organization in the Lower Hill.
In a preliminary vote, council voted 5-0 against granting the status, which was sought by Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation President Arthur Ziegler; Sandra Brown, president of Preservation Pittsburgh; and architect Rob Pfaffman, a member of Preservation Pittsburgh.
Council will take a final vote Tuesday. Council members Gene Ricciardi and Twanda Carlisle were absent from the preliminary vote.
“I will be sad the day it gets torn down,” Councilman William Peduto said. “It was part of an urban renewal and it has failed.”
Peduto said the arena, formerly called Civic Arena, never became a link between the Hill District and Downtown, as planners originally hoped. Mellon Arena is the oldest arena in the National Hockey League.
The city’s Historic Review and Planning commissions already voted against designating the arena as a historic site. The Historic Review Commission voted 4-3 against historic status, while the Planning Commission rejected the measure 7-1.Last June, Pfaffman told Planning Commission members he would like to see the building used as a hotel or for apartments. The groups nominated Mellon Arena for landmark status last May.
Neither Pfaffman, Ziegler nor Brown returned telephone messages seeking comment yesterday.
Councilwoman Barbara Burns said Mellon Arena did not meet the city’s criteria for a historic landmark. Just because a structure is old, it is not necessarily a historic landmark, she said.
Burns and Councilman Sala Udin said they felt the arena was nominated more as a sign of opposition to building a new arena, rather than as an attempt to preserve the building.
“I think that in some ways the nomination was a ruse by people who were opposed to the building of a new arena,” Udin said.
The Penguins are trying to secure money to build a new $270 million arena, which the club has said is crucial to its future. Under a lease, the Penguins will play at Mellon Arena through 2007.
Ken Sawyer, president of the Lemieux Group, said council’s vote really was not a concern for the Penguins. He said the vote would not have changed the club’s goal of building a new arena. The Penguins have proposed Mellon Arena be razed to make way for development of a hotel and retail shops near a new arena.
The Sports & Exhibition Authority, the city-county agency that owns the arena, opposes giving the arena historic designation status. Authority officials have said they could not afford to operate both Mellon Arena and a new facility, if one is built.
George Aspiotes can be reached at gaspiotes@tribweb.com or 412-320-7982.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. © Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
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City council approves historic designation law
By Andrew Conte
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, February 26, 2003Only the owners of religious buildings will be able to nominate the structures for historic status in Pittsburgh under legislation approved by City Council on Tuesday.
Councilwoman Barbara Burns, who had opposed the measure in a preliminary vote, supported it in the end. She was joined by Bob O’Connor, the primary sponsor; President Gene Ricciardi, Jim Motznik, Twanda Carlisle and Alan Hertzberg. William Peduto and Sala Udin remained opposed.
Mayor Tom Murphy has not said whether he will veto the measure, which council might not be able to override with O’Connor’s departure. He left council yesterday to run Gov. Ed Rendell’s Southwestern Pennsylvania office.
“We believe in preservation rather than designation,” said the Rev. Ronald Lengwin, spokesman for the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, which supported the bill. He said the diocese has no immediate plans to close any parishes.
Udin said the bill takes too much authority away from council. “It removes the mayor, City Council and congregations from the process of historic designation for churches,” he said. “O’Connor’s bill is written in such a way that the only ones who can save a historic church are the ones who want to destroy it.”
In other business, council also unanimously approved spending $100,000 to light new Ultimate Frisbee fields in Highland Park and $50,000 to install Jersey barriers along McArdle Roadway.
Finally, Motznik introduced legislation directing the mayor’s office to investigate nightclubs and other venues where people gather for concerts. He wants the administration to also create an emergency training program for operators of those venues in the event of fires and other hazardous incidents.
His bill follows an incident in Rhode Island Thursday in which 97 people died in a nightclub fire. Four days before that, 21 people died in a stampede at a Chicago nightclub. Motznik’s legislation comes up for discussion and a preliminary vote March 5.
Andrew Conte can be reached at aconte@tribweb.com or (412) 765-2312.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. © Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
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City Council shelters religious buildings from historic preservation rules – Only owners allowed to seek historic status
By Tom Barnes,
Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 26, 2003City Council gave approval yesterday to exempting religious buildings from a key provision of the city’s historic preservation law, but the controversy may not be over yet.
Many preservationists expect council to be sued because of its action, which critics claim violates the state Constitution and requirements to treat all groups equally under the law.
“I think there is a 110 percent chance that this will be challenged in court,” said John DeSantis, chairman of the city’s Historic Review Commission and an opponent of council’s action.
Council voted 6-2 in favor of the measure, which was sponsored by outgoing Councilman Bob O’Connor. It says that only the owner of record of a religious building — a church, synagogue, mosque, temple, rectory or convent — can nominate it for historic status.
Under the city’s current preservation law, enacted in 1979, almost any city official or any resident who has lived in Pittsburgh for a year could nominate a religious building for historic status. If the historic status was approved by council, a church or other religious building couldn’t be demolished or have exterior renovations without the approval of the Historic Review Commission.
Many leaders of different religious faiths supported O’Connor’s measure, saying the threat of having a building nominated for historic status was an expensive burden that could force them to spend dollars on buildings instead of people.
Mayor Tom Murphy hasn’t said if he’ll sign the bill. If he vetoes it, six council votes would be needed to overturn the veto.
An opinion issued yesterday by Deputy City Solicitor George Specter said the law was “evolving” in the area of historic preservation and wasn’t completely clear on exemptions for religious structures.
Specter said no other town in Pennsylvania has enacted such a religious exception.
“The courts could discern a middle ground pursuant to which the [O’Connor] bill would be held valid,” he said.
The state Constitution does say that “no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious establishments or modes of worship,” he said, adding, “It is possible that [O’Connor’s bill] could be deemed to be in direct conflict” with that provision.
Council members O’Connor, Alan Hertzberg, Jim Motznik, Gene Ricciardi, Twanda Carlisle and Barbara Burns voted for the measure, with William Peduto and Sala Udin opposed. Burns, who had voted against the measure in a preliminary vote last week, said she also expects a court challenge.
“This is something that needs to be litigated,” she said.
Udin said church members had been bombarding his office with e-mail and phone calls in support of O’Connor’s bill.
“I used to think that organized labor could put on a lobbying campaign, but the campaign for this bill makes organized labor look like the Cub Scouts,” he said.
Udin questioned whether church members understood the full significance of the bill. It takes away the power of ordinary members of a congregation to nominate their buildings as historic, he said, vesting it only in church leaders.
Also yesterday, council approved $50,000 to install concrete barriers along McArdle Roadway to prevent cars from going over the edge. A woman died last month when her car veered off McArdle, went through an iron railing and plummeted some 300 feet.
But Hertzberg said he would work with the Riverlife Task Force and others to develop a more attractive type of barrier, one that doesn’t block views of the city skyline.
Tom Barnes can be reached at tbarnes@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1548.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Historic haste / Shelve an unfair break for religious buildings
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Editorial Page
Monday, February 24, 2003City Council is expected to vote tomorrow on final approval of legislation that would give churches and other religious structures special treatment when it comes to historic designations. The vote should be no, and council should go back to the drawing board.
The ordinance sponsored by Councilman Bob O’Connor, soon to quit council to take a position in the Rendell administration, is a response to some legitimate frustrations with the historic-designation process on the part of local religious bodies, especially the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh.
The diocese is upset that churches it has decided to close or demolish, most recently St. Nicholas Church on East Ohio Street, were the subject of historic-designation nominations at the “eleventh hour.” The diocese’s lawyer also has complained about what its lawyer called a “highly discretionary” process that “leaves ample room for misuse” and can force churches to divert resources needed for its ministries to the upkeep of unwanted buildings.
These are serious objections, and in the case of St. Nicholas the Post-Gazette editorialized against historic status for the church. But Councilman O’Connor’s remedy, which received preliminary approval last week by a 5-3 vote, is the wrong approach.
Instead of overhauling the historic-designation process as it applies to all buildings, the O’Connor ordinance gives a free pass to religious structures. If the ordinance becomes law, churches, synagogues and other religious buildings could be nominated for historic status only by their owners.
Under current law, any citizen can nominate a structure for historic designation, which ultimately is granted by a vote of City Council. If a site is designated as historic, it cannot be demolished or externally renovated without the approval of the Historic Review Commission. If the ordinance were adopted, this would still be the case for nonreligious buildings — a preference for religion that could raise First Amendment problems.
The lawyer for the Catholic Diocese suggests that special exemption for religious buildings is grounded in legal precedents protecting “the interest of religious institutions in managing their affairs free from government intrusion.
But churches aren’t the only buildings where constitutional rights are exercised. Under the diocese’s logic, a newspaper building, no matter how distinguished architecturally, could not be nominated by outsiders for historic designation because the designation might force the publisher to shift funds from reporting the news, an activity protected by the First Amendment, to maintaining a “historic” building.
Mr. O’Connor’s intentions are good, but this ordinance is poorly conceived and constitutionally problematic. Moreover, there are other approaches deserving of council’s study.
Before approving the O’Connor bill, council brushed aside an alternative proposal by Councilman Sala Udin that would have avoided the issue of special treatment for churches by preventing residents from nominating any structures for historic designation. (Such nominations could still be made by the mayor, council and the city planning and historic review commissions.) We’re not convinced that the Udin approach is preferable to current law, but at least it doesn’t raise concerns about special breaks for churches.
Bob O’Connor may deserve a going-away present form his councilmanic colleagues, but this isn’t it. The ordinance should not receive final approval.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Church landmark exemption OK’d – City Council gives proposal slim preliminary approval
By Timothy McNulty,
Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Thursday, February 20, 2003A slim majority of Pittsburgh City Council members tentatively approved exempting religious structures from the full weight of the city’s historic designation law, after beating back a proposed compromise plan.
In a 5-3 vote, council approved a change that will allow only the owners of churches and other religious structures to nominate their buildings for historic designation.
Once designated, any exterior renovation or demolition of a building requires approval by the city’s Historic Review Commission. Currently any city resident can nominate structures, along with the mayor, council or members of the Historic Review or city planning commissions.
Religious leaders, led by the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, lobbied for the change, saying nominations by non-owners infringed on religious business and increased their building maintenance costs.
Preservationists countered that the religious structures are vital parts of Pittsburgh history, there is little proof of cost burdens, and it would be illegal, under city law, to give religious groups special treatment.
The council members who preliminarily voted in favor of the change were Twanda Carlisle, Alan Hertzberg, Jim Motznik, Bob O’Connor and Gene Ricciardi. Barbara Burns, William Peduto and Sala Udin cast negative votes. A final vote is set for Tuesday.
Carlisle, of Homewood, was the swing vote.
In behind-the-scenes deal-making Tuesday, she blocked a bid to fast-track the legislation and hold the final vote today. Then yesterday she considered voting for an amendment by Udin that would have held off the bill even longer.
Diocesan officials have long complained that city residents have used historic nominations to block decisions to sell or demolish churches. So Udin introduced an amendment yesterday that would prevent residents from nominating any structures, including churches and other buildings, but still allowing the mayor, council and the review and planning commissions to nominate them.
The amendment would have required the city to hold more public hearings and studies over several weeks — effectively blocking the church legislation, since O’Connor, the measure’s main sponsor, would have to resign by then to join the Rendell administration — but Carlisle refused to wait. She voted against holding the bill and it was approved.
The councilwoman liked Udin’s idea but said she sided with ministers in her District 9 community who did not want city oversight of their buildings.
“The government needs to step back from that situation and let churches handle church business,” she explained later.
Should council finally approve the bill Tuesday, it would go to Mayor Tom Murphy for his signature. O’Connor said Murphy’s executive secretary, Tom Cox, has assured him the mayor will approve the legislation, but officially the administration is saying it has to give it more review.
The mayor has 10 days after he receives bills to sign or veto them, or let them become law without his signature. It takes six council votes –one more than the legislation currently has — to override a veto.
That means the fate of the legislation and O’Connor’s remaining days on council are still unclear, though with Carlisle’s vote they are looking closer to being finished.
Right after the noontime vote yesterday, O’Connor left the council table to confer with diocesan officials attending the meeting. Carlisle followed, grasping O’Connor’s arm.
“You owe me big time,” she said.
Tim McNulty can be reached at tmcnulty@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1542.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Urban Retail to Kravco: ‘Good luck’ on Downtown project
CEO of Chicago firm shot down as Fifth-Forbes developer says counterpart will find it tough going
By Dan Fitzpatrick,
Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 19, 2003Ross Glickman has two words of advice for Kravco Co., the firm selected last week to study and perhaps fix Downtown’s semivacant retailing district.
“Good luck.”
Glickman, chief executive officer of Chicago-based Urban Retail Properties Co., is more than familiar with Kravco’s tricky task. His company, after all, was Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy’s first choice in the late 1990s to redo the same ragged shopping area along Fifth and Forbes avenues.
Urban Retail’s $522 million plan, which collapsed amid concerns from preservationists and lukewarm interest from an anchor tenant, called for the demolition of more than 60 buildings and the addition of 40 new shops and restaurants, along with an 18-screen movie theater and a Nordstrom department store.
Perhaps Urban Retail’s biggest critics were the Downtown property owners afraid the city would take their real estate forcibly, using the power of eminent domain. “I thought we did what had to be done to make this thing viable,” Glickman said. “Unfortunately, there was a contingent of people who didn’t want to go through the eminent domain process. We understood that.”
Two years after leaving Pittsburgh, Glickman also understands why the mayor pulled the plug in December 2000, months before another mayoral election. “It was the right decision for him,” he said.
But Glickman, who once was director of real estate for Pittsburgh-based General Nutrition Centers, also believes the city may have lost its “window” to sign many of the national retailers that expressed an interest in Downtown in the late 1990s. Some of Glickman’s prospective tenants have since gone elsewhere, notably The Waterfront in the Mon Valley and Station Square on the South Side. “The window closed a while ago,” he said.
Glickman still believes that Urban Retail’s controversial development approach — gaining control of a large area of real estate and making changes at once instead of piece by piece — is the right way to fix Downtown. But Glickman is not sure if the city and the Urban Redevelopment Authority, which in recent years spent more than $7 million acquiring 13 area properties, have enough real estate under their control to make that process any easier for Kravco.
Nor is he certain that eminent domain, which the mayor said last week was “not on the table,” will remain off for long.
“Those issues would bubble up immediately,” he said. “I don’t think they have gone away.” Perhaps, with more vacancies along Fifth and Forbes now than a few years ago, property owners might be more open to something “drastic” being done. But, “You are not going to know that until you get into it.”
Starting next month, Kravco will begin work on a four-month study of the area along Fifth and Forbes, with the end result being an “investment plan.” Offices, residential space and new hotel rooms all will be given consideration; and if the city likes what Kravco produces, the two sides would then negotiate a redevelopment agreement.
At a news conference last week, Kravco Chairman Wayne Snyder made it clear that he hopes to avoid the problems that hampered Urban Retail’s last effort, saying he would respect the leases of existing Downtown businesses and weave new businesses into the “urban fabric” of Downtown.
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation President Arthur Ziegler, a former critic of Urban Retail’s plans, likes what he has heard thus far.
“Kravco has adopted an incremental development approach,” he said, “respecting the historic buildings and adding appropriately designed infill construction, as well as starting with a marketing base of the people who are already shopping in the area. We believe such an approach has the best chance of success. The developer respects the uniqueness and strengths that Pittsburgh has and builds on them.”
But again, Glickman is not sure that will work.
“I don’t think you can do it piecemeal,” he said. “The thing has to be done collectively. National retailers today need to see a collective vision — a design. If you did it piecemeal and that one piece didn’t work, the whole won’t work.”
Glickman, though, insists the city is in “good hands” with Kravco, and that his company is no longer in a position to spend millions on downtown development projects. Since Urban Retail left Pittsburgh, the Chicago company has changed hands — twice.
First, it was sold to Dutch real estate company Rodamco North America NV. Then, last year, it was purchased by a trio of development firms — The Rouse Co., Simon Property Group and Westfield America. It is no longer a development company; it is concerned with only consultant work and property management, overseeing 40 million square feet of real estate for other owners.
But Glickman still likes to keep tabs on Pittsburgh — and the long, tortured effort to redevelop Downtown. “I really believe in Pittsburgh,” he said.
His last visit was two months ago, when he took a walk along Fifth and Forbes. He noticed that more storefronts were empty than there were a few years ago. The area, he said, is “sad” and “pretty bleak.”
“Is the street better off now than it was four years ago?” he said. “I doubt it.”
Dan Fitzpatrick can be reached at dfitzpatrick@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1752.
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Historic building revision debated – Church leaders favor proposed exception
By Tom Barnes,
Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 18, 2003After battling historic preservationists for four months, city Councilman Bob O’Connor and a wide spectrum of local religious leaders are on the verge of enacting a major change in Pittsburgh’s preservation law.
O’Connor, with strong support from Roman Catholic, Protestant and Jewish leaders, wants to ease the “burden” they say the historic preservation law creates for churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, rectories, convents and other religious buildings.
O’Connor’s bill — which could get both a preliminary and final vote tomorrow — says that only the “owner of record” of a religious building can nominate it for city historic status. That status, church leaders claim, can take away their control over their own property and escalate the cost of repairs or structural improvements.
Currently, a variety of city officials, as well as any Pittsburgh resident who has lived in Pittsburgh for at least a year, can nominate a religious building for historic status. Church leaders say such “outsiders” shouldn’t be able to affect the future of a religious building.
If a building’s historic nomination is approved by City Council, the structure cannot have exterior changes made and cannot be demolished without approval from the city’s Historic Review Commission.
Both the HRC and the city planning commissioners are on record opposing O’Connor’s amendment.
The two panels dispute church leaders’ claims that historic status makes it more expensive for a congregation to repair or remodel its buildings.
Church leaders and preservationists have been fighting over O’Connor’s bill since he first proposed it in November.
After clashing before the historic review panel and city planners in the past few weeks, the two sides were still at odds during a council hearing yesterday.
After the hearing, O’Connor said he is sure he still has the necessary five votes to approve the change in the preservation law.
O’Connor and colleagues Jim Motznik, Gene Ricciardi, Alan Hertzberg and Twanda Carlisle are co-sponsors of the amendment to the 24-year-old preservation law and O’Connor expects them to vote for it tomorrow.
If the bill passes, O’Connor said he expects to resign soon from council to become Gov. Ed Rendell’s chief representative for Western Pennsylvania.
“I am waiting to see this bill go through” before leaving council, O’Connor said.
If O’Connor can count votes correctly — and Motznik and Hertzberg said he can — the only remaining question about the change in the historic preservation law would be whether Mayor Tom Murphy will sign it.
Murphy has said in the past he is “sympathetic” to religious leaders’ concerns about the current historic law and the fiscal pressure it puts on them, but he hasn’t said if he will sign or veto O’Connor’s change. If he vetoes it, O’Connor would need a sixth vote to override the veto.
Religious leaders — such as the Rev. David Gleason, pastor of the First Lutheran Church on Grant Street, Downtown; the Rev. Ronald Lengwin of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh; pastors of several Catholic churches in the city; and Rabbi Alvin Berkun of Tree of Life Synagogue of Squirrel Hill — were united yesterday in favor of O’Connor’s bill.
Legal provisions for building ownership differ from faith to faith, they said, but all agreed that a nonmember of a congregation shouldn’t be able to nominate a religious structure as historic and increase a congregation’s cost for renovations. They said limited church funds should go for missions such as worshiping God and helping the poor.
Opponents of O’Connor’s bill, such as Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation President Arthur Ziegler, Preservation Pittsburgh President Sandra Brown, South Side community leader Carey Harris and Mary McDonough of Oakland, denied claims that the current law imposes unfair burdens on churches or synagogues.
They said O’Connor’s bill is creating a “special class” for religious institutions under the law. As a result, they said, the city could be sued for violating the fairness and equality provisions of state and federal constitutions.
“Why not create special exceptions for schools and banks?” Brown said. “Why not exceptions to zoning or pollution laws?”
Some critics called O’Connor’s measure “undemocratic,” saying it would take the power to nominate a building out of the hands of ordinary church members and vest it in only one, or just a handful, of church leaders, such as a bishop or board of trustees.
Critics also said that a religious building is often an important part of the architecture, history and culture of a community, and more people than just a handful of church leaders should have a voice in whether the building is preserved or demolished.
Tom Barnes can be reached at tbarnes@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1548
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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City gets advice on developing waterfronts
By Patricia Lowry,
Post-Gazette Architecture Critic
Wednesday, February 12, 2003What makes a great waterfront?
Ann Breen should know. As co-founder and director of the nonprofit Waterfront Center in Washington, D.C., the city and regional planner has been visiting, studying and consulting on urban waterfronts for more than 25 years.
“Every waterfront should be unique and not remind you of someplace else,” Breen told a group of 160 people at a luncheon talk yesterday at the Renaissance Pittsburgh hotel. It is Pittsburgh’s challenge, she said, “to capture the asset and character that is unique to this place.”
As Pittsburgh inches toward implementation of its Three Rivers Park waterfront plan and makeover of Point State Park, the event provided food for thought for planners, architects, funders and interested others. The luncheon was part of Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation’s “Making Cities Work” series.
“You have this marvelous industrial heritage,” something to work with and embrace, Breen said, rather than erase.
“You have a lot of water here in Pittsburgh. We’ve gone to cities where they have barely a trickle and try to make something of it.”
During a slide tour of more than two dozen cities, from Prague, Czech Republic, to Portland, Ore., Breen stressed that the best waterfronts are those that incorporate a variety of uses and capture the spirit of a city.
“What I like about Prague is there are all these nooks and crannies where you can eat,” Breen said. “A floating barge with umbrellas and tables is instant fun.”
In Budapest, Hungary, where trolley tracks run along the river, barges can make the riverfront come alive, as in other cities with waterfront road and rail barriers.
Barges can hold not only restaurants, Breen showed, but also swimming pools and outdoor cinemas.
She praised parks built to withstand and accommodate the inevitable flooding, like Cincinnati’s riverfront park, with its walkway embossed with a geological timeline.
And she praised variety: “A riverfront is not uniform; it should have many, many different places, some green, some hard.” Still, “many cities want nothing but green on their waterfront. That’s for each city to decide.”
Good riverfronts also have “a lot of programming and a lot of public art,” and don’t skimp on the way-finding signs.
As for architecture, she said, “you can have great buildings, but do they address the waterfront?”
Breen lauded the Sydney Opera House, with its balconies and welcoming walkways, but criticized Frank Gehry’s Bilbao Guggenheim for its lack of integration with and views of the Nervion River.
In a smaller session after the luncheon, Breen said Pittsburgh “doesn’t need another big bell and whistle” with high visibility and impact.
She diagnosed the problem with Pittsburgh’s riverfronts in a single, simple sentence: “Your edges don’t sing.”
Patricia Lowry can be reached at plowry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1590.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette