Category Archive: Preservation News
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Downtown overhaul poses many challenges
By Dave Copeland
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, March 9, 2002Even though one national authority on urban redevelopment hasn’t seen the latest proposal to remake Downtown, she knows it’s better than the last one.
“It has to be a 100 percent improvement, because the mayor’s original plan was such a disaster,” said Roberta Brandes Gratz, a New York author who has written two books on revitalizing downtowns.Still, it’s too early to tell what chance the latest blueprint for redeveloping Downtown has to succeed — politically and economically.
The Plan C Task Force presented its long-awaited report to Mayor Tom Murphy on Thursday. Among the promises included in the 450-page document are up to $7.7 million in new property tax revenues, 3,057 construction jobs, 880 new full-time jobs and a Downtown brimming with residents and visitors.
But it also comes with the promise of new challenges. The Plan C Task Force may have completed its work, but now city and private development officials will begin wrestling with a number of questions left unanswered by the report.
Among the issues to be settled:Financing. While the plan notes that the $365 million redevelopment strategy will need $51.5 million in public subsidies, there is no mention of how that money will be raised and what percentage would come from local, county, state and federal funds. The rest of the money comes from corporate and philanthropic donations and private investment.
Regulatory approval. If Murphy accepts the task force’s recommendation, the plan would need to be approved by the Urban Redevelopment Authority, the Historic Review Commission and City Council. Two years ago, Murphy’s first plan for redeveloping the Fifth-Forbes corridor left council divided.
Site control. The task force was unable to reach consensus on how to get the property for the development and issued a majority opinion favoring the use of eminent domain and a minority opinion opposing it.
Despite the potential hurdles, City Planning Director and task force spokeswoman Susan Golomb said the plan was the result of a massive effort to determine what Pittsburgh wanted and needed for its retail corridor.“It’s simply a reflection of what we’ve been hearing that people want,” Golomb said. “We feel we’ve created a very exciting strategy.”
Unlike Murphy’s Market Place at Fifth & Forbes, which failed when Nordstrom Inc. opted not to build a Downtown store, the Plan C strategy seeks to build off of the existing foot traffic. The plan also calls for the addition of housing and a 600-room hotel; Murphy’s plan had no hotel component and housing was added only after critics attacked his plan.
Market Place called for the demolition of up to 62 Downtown buildings. The cleared land would have been sold to a private developer that would have built an upscale retail and entertainment district.
The plan was criticized on a variety of fronts: historic preservationists said Murphy was planning to demolish architectural gems; local merchants said they were being forced out to make way for national retailers, while others said the city couldn’t afford a $100 million subsidy for the $522 million project.
The task force was formed in November 2000, just days after Murphy scrapped the Market Place plan. Plan C stood for compromise, and Murphy charged the group with building consensus and developing a viable, Downtown redevelopment plan.
Gratz applauded the Plan C Task Force’s decision to preserve more buildings than Murphy’s original plan, but stressed that the plan would not be successful unless local businesses were preserved as well.
“The bottom line is that this plan has to have local character inside the buildings as well as on the outside,” Gratz said. “The big chain stores like Kmart are coming and going, but it’s the local businesses that stay generation after generation.”
The Plan C Task Force report hopes to have local and national retailers. Examples include chains such as Banana Republic and other stores that could enhance a shopping district that already boasts four large department stores. But the plans for the inclusion of local retailers didn’t satisfy George Harris, whose family has operated a florist at the corner of Liberty Avenue and Market Street for more than 100 years.
Harris said Friday he planned to fight any efforts made by the city to take his property. On the current plan, Harris’ shop is slated to be acquired and demolished.
“This site represents the comings and the goings, the place where my family has tread, in one form or another, for more than 100 years,” Harris said. “I have no compelling reason to dispose of my business, or to dispose of my property at this particular time. This is where I get my zest for life.”
Harris spoke at a news conference with Scott G. Bullock, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice. The Washington, D.C., group has offered to defend any Downtown property owners who want to fight eminent domain. It’s the same pledge the group made two years ago, when Murphy’s original plan called for taking property by eminent domain.
“The task force says eminent domain is necessary. That is nonsense. Development goes on everyday in this country without eminent domain,” Bullock said. “The property owners here support redevelopment. They just want to be a part of it.”
Bonnie Klein, who owns the Camera Repair Shop a block away from Harris Brothers Florist, sat on the task force. She said she supported the plan, but was one of three task force members who supported a minority opinion against using eminent domain.
“I think it’s a great plan, but I can’t support eminent domain,” Klein said. “I’m so disappointed that the task force decided to include it — I was hoping for a plan that would have included all business owners.”
Klein’s building is also slated to be acquired and demolished. She said she was unsure if she would fight eminent domain proceedings.
Margaret Philbin, spokeswoman for County Executive Jim Roddey, said that although Roddey had not yet seen the full plan, he was encouraged by the details he had heard about.
“He especially likes the marketplace, the hotel and, in particular, he likes the plan to increase the number of Downtown residents,” Philbin said. “He his, however, concerned about the threat to use eminent domain and hopes that that measure of taking would only be done as an absolute last resort, if at all.”
City Council members reached yesterday voiced no opposition to the plan as a whole, but expressed reservations about some of the issues at stake — including eminent domain.
“That’s not necessary if you have a good plan and it includes everybody,” City Councilman Bob O’Connor said.
Councilman Alan Hertzberg said there is some question about why private investors would want to pump $264 million into an ailing business district such as Fifth-Forbes, as the plan calls for.
“But usually when you do have public sector investment, it does tend to bring with it private sector investment. It kind of serves as seed money, or however you want to look at it,” Hertzberg said.
With the exception of O’Connor, council members said they hadn’t been shown the plan.
Planning director Golomb said the task force sent one copy to Councilman Sala Udin’s office, and another to be circulated among council members. Golomb said she assumed Udin — whose district includes the plan area, and whose assistant has attended the panel’s hearings — would bring his fellow council members up to speed on the plan.
“It’s Sala’s district, so we would take our lead from Sala,” said Golomb, adding that she would brief council on the plan next week. Udin declined to comment on the plan.
Dave Copeland can be reached at dcopeland@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7922.
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Fifth-Forbes New Plan
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation has served as a member of the Plan C Task Force appointed by the Mayor to develop a new plan for the downtown central retail area, the plan was released on March 10th. We issue the following statements in support of the plan prepared by Hunter Associates, the consultant:
1. We feel the Hunter plan largely substantiates the Eckstut plan that we submitted two years ago and adds some useful new ingredients with the proposed hotel/condominium and the move of the public market to Murphy’s.
2. The Hunter plan also calls for purchase of properties, or in lieu of cash participation by building owners in the plan on an equity basis, something we advocated with the Eckstut plan.
3. We have learned that if URA is to be involved, eminent domain must be on the table legally. There is no way around it.
4. We believe the improvement of downtown retail offerings must be accompanied by significant housing, new and loft, specialty office space, hotel, public market and parking. The Hunter recommendations include those.
5. Negotiations that entail cash acquisitions will be carried out with eminent domain in the legal background because we understand that it will alleviate capital gain taxes for the property owners and enable them to obtain more money than fair market value for their buildings at perhaps 120%. That is the fairest route for the property owners; otherwise if the plan does not go forward the value of their buildings will probably go down.
Eminent domain is part of the required legal system affecting redevelopment authorities under Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Law, but it is not to be used as a threatening tool here, but rather as a financial tool to the benefit of the property owners.
6. Therefore we support the plan and Hunter’s recommendations on the basis that all property owners whose properties are needed for the execution of the plan will be offered cash sale or various ways to participate in the plan rather than accept cash acquisition if they wish it and may benefit financially if URA is the agent of acquisition.
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Task force backs eminent domain
By Dave Copeland
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, March 8, 2002A blueprint to redevelop much of Downtown, unveiled Thursday, calls on Mayor Tom Murphy to abandon his pledge not to use eminent domain.
The Plan C Task Force development strategy proposes a $360 million overhaul of Fifth-Forbes, including a hotel tucked between Market Square and Liberty Avenue, and retail, housing, office and entertainment space. Financing for the plan would include $51.5 million in public money, $39.5 million from corporate and philanthropic investment and $264 million in private investment.Highlights of the plan:
A 600-room hotel with 100 luxury condominiums on top of the hotel tower.
Up to 580 market-rate apartments.
A “shopping experience” in an open-space market to be built in the G.C. Murphy building, similar to Faneuil Hall in Boston.
Formed to build consensus on redevelopment proposals for the Fifth-Forbes corridor, the task force could not reach a consensus on eminent domain — a major sticking point in Murphy’s original plan. Some task force members continue to oppose its use. The report did not say which members favored using eminent domain, or how much of a majority of the 13-member body endorsed it.In a written statement, Murphy said he would take the committee’s report under review. He did not mention eminent domain.
The task force was formed in November 2000 after Murphy’s redevelopment plan fell apart. The plan called for the demolition of up to 62 buildings, one reason historic preservationists criticized it.
Cathy McCollom, a spokeswoman for the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation and a member of the task force, said the Plan C proposal was similar to a plan the foundation put together in 1999 as an alternative to Murphy’s plan.
Like the foundation plan, the Plan C proposal calls for more preservation of historic buildings and facades and has a strong housing component.
“The mayor’s plan was a demolition plan, but in this plan, a lot more buildings are retained,” McCollom said. “We’re pleased that preservation has remained a significant issue.”
Unlike Murphy’s original plan, the Plan C proposal includes residential and hotel components designed to bring more people who would support more businesses Downtown. The report notes that the strategy looks to combine local and national retailers.
Meanwhile, the Institute for Justice, a Washington, D.C., watchdog group that fights eminent domain, announced it would hold a news conference in Pittsburgh this morning. Scott Bullock, a senior attorney with the institute, said the group would make the same pledge it made during the debate over Murphy’s first plan: to defend Downtown property owners against eminent domain abuse.
“We are, of course, extremely disappointed that the task force has made the recommendation to use eminent domain,” Bullock said.
Bernie Lynch, a task force member who does not want to use eminent domain, originally called the institute to Pittsburgh. Lynch declined comment yesterday.
An e-mail sent by Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership Executive Director Mariann Geyer to partnership board members said that she had been told it could be several days or weeks before the mayor comments on the plan.
Geyer said in the memo that the partnership would work to implement the plan but would not take a stand on eminent domain because it “is not a decision for the PDP to make.”
If Murphy accepts the redevelopment strategy, the next step would be to issue a request for proposals to interested developers.
Any plan would need to be approved by several city bodies, including the planning commission, the Historic Review Commission, the Urban Redevelopment Authority and, finally, City Council.
Much of the report is based on the work of Don Hunter, an urban economist the task force hired last year. Yesterday’s release included a Feb. 26 memo from Hunter where he outlined 12 alternatives to eminent domain, while acknowledging he preferred using eminent domain as a course of last resort.
Hunter’s alternatives included negotiated sales, land swaps, leasing arrangements and partnerships.
Dave Copeland can be reached at dcopeland@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7922.
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A timely reminder
Wednesday, March 6, 2002
Fast on the heels of word that eminent domain is back on the table in Pittsburgh’s Downtown redevelopment efforts comes a new report on the abuse of eminent domain.
The Castle Coalition’s “Government Theft: The Top Ten Abuses of Eminent Domain, 1982-2002″ should be mandatory reading for the Plan C Task Force that this week is expected to adopt its Golden Triangle redevelopment blueprint. Among the examples:
Officials in Merriam, Kan., condemned one car dealership so a higher-profit BMW dealership could expand.
Riviera Beach, Fla., officials are uprooting 5,000 residents in favor of a privately owned commercial-industrial development.
Dana Berliner and Scott Bullock of the Institute for Justice are veterans of the eminent domain-heavy and now-scuttled Market Place battle in Pittsburgh. It’s the IOJ that’s behind the Castle Coalition, named so “because everyone’s home, and everyone’s property, is his castle.” Reminded Ms. Berliner and Mr. Bullock in a timely Monday commentary in The Washington Times:“Under our Constitution, our property rights are not conditioned on the whim of those with financial and political influence. Nor should they be sacrificed just so municipalities can put more money in their coffers.”
The sad thing is that no government should need to be reminded of this basic tenet of our republicanism. The sadder thing is that Pittsburgh’s central planners apparently never learned their lesson the first time around
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Mayor says eminent domain possible
By Dave Copeland
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, March 2, 2002Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy said Friday eminent domain would have to be used for Downtown redevelopment plans if property owners refuse to sell their property at reasonable prices.
“We obviously would like to move forward working cooperatively with the existing owners in the Fifth-Forbes corridor,” Murphy said. “I did take (eminent domain) off the table and my preference is to not use it.“But we also have to face the reality about the expectations that some people have of what their buildings are worth.”
Murphy could receive a proposal for redeveloping the Fifth-Forbes corridor from the Plan C Task Force as early as Thursday. The plan is expected to include eminent domain, breaking a pledge Murphy made to take the controversial redevelopment tool off the table when the task force was formed in November 2000.
The task force was formed to build consensus on redeveloping the Downtown when Murphy’s own plan fell apart. Known as Market Place at Fifth & Forbes, Murphy’s plan was criticized for its use of eminent domain, the relocation of local merchants to make way for national retailers and the leveling of up to 62 Downtown buildings.
City Council would have final approval over any plan presented for redeveloping Downtown. The plan also would go before the Urban Redevelopment Authority, the planning commission and the historic review commission.“I wouldn’t support it, because I don’t believe in taking private property. There are incentive programs that can help that area,” Councilman Alan Hertzberg said. “You give people incentives to do things — you don’t force people to turn over their property.”
Hertzberg, Councilmen Jim Ferlo and Bob O’Connor were the only consistent opponents on council to Murphy’s original redevelopment plan. O’Connor, who brokered a relocation deal with Vento’s Pizza Shop in East Liberty so the city could avoid using eminent domain to build a Home Depot, said the city should work on relocating private business owners along the Fifth-Forbes corridor.
“I don’t see the necessity,” O’Connor said. “You have to give everybody a fair deal, and if you’re doing things right with the plan, every business owner should want to be a part of it.”
Council President Gene Ricciardi said eminent domain should be used with caution.
“It needs to be a tool of last resort,” he said. “I really believe if you work in an honest fashion with all of the property owners, and if all of the property owners would benefit from the plan, I don’t see a need for eminent domain because people would naturally buy into it.”
Councilman William Peduto, who wasn’t on council in 2000 when Murphy’s plan divided the body, said he doesn’t support using eminent domain to transfer property from one private owner to another.
“But I do not rule out using eminent domain when it’s one person who is trying to stop the entire project or trying to get rich,” Peduto said. “You have to use common sense in the process.”
Councilwoman Barbara Burns said she doesn’t necessarily oppose eminent domain, but acknowledged it can be a hardship for business and property owners who are forced to relocate.
“I’m not surprised that eminent domain has re-emerged in the discussion. And I’m not inherently opposed to it. I just believe it should be done with a lot of thought,” Burns said. “I believe Fifth and Forbes is blighted, so I’m pleased there is a Plan C working to get something done.”
Dave Copeland can be reached at dcopeland@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7922.
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Eminent domain may be back in Downtown plans
By Dave Copeland
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, March 1, 2002Plans to redevelop Downtown could include the use of eminent domain, despite repeated promises by Mayor Tom Murphy that the controversial tool had been “taken off the table.”
The Plan C Task Force hopes to present a final draft of a sweeping redevelopment strategy for Downtown Pittsburgh to Murphy on Thursday. Task force members have been working under a mandate not to discuss the plan publicly. Details have been kept under wraps, with task force members saying only that it will include retail, housing and office space, and will try to leverage development off of the existing Downtown department stores.Eminent domain is expected to be part of the final plan, according to three people who have seen it. The controversial government power would be used if private property owners declined to sell their buildings and land to the city in negotiated sales.
The task force was formed in November 2000 after Murphy’s own Downtown redevelopment plan fell apart. Known as Market Place at Fifth & Forbes, Murphy’s plan was criticized for its use of eminent domain, the relocation of local merchants to make way for national retailers and the leveling of as many as 62 Downtown buildings.
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A landmark himself, Kidney remains devoted to city’s architecture
By Patricia Lowry,
Post-Gazette architecture critic
Wednesday, February 27, 2002You have to envy Walter Kidney’s commute.
Monday through Friday, he leaves his seventh-floor Grandview Avenue apartment, walks across the street to the Monongahela Incline and, when he gets to the bottom, crosses the street to his Station Square office. That’s living — city living, and Kidney, architectural historian at Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, wouldn’t have it any other way.
“You sort of miss things like trees and so on because you’re above them,” he said in his down-to-earth office at One Station Square, stacked with plat books dating to 1889 showing how Pittsburgh evolved from farmland to dense neighborhoods. “But it’s a very nice outlook and a real surprise up there. You realize how the relationship of things to one another spatially is so different. You find that things are a few degrees off from where you think they ought to be.”
Kidney, who moved to his perch on Grandview last fall, has lived on Mount Washington since 1978, when he took up permanent residence here after moving in and out of the city most of his life.
Late last month, when he celebrated his 70th birthday over lunch with a group of friends and colleagues at the Grand Concourse, Kidney officially became a Pittsburgh historic landmark — so proclaimed the citation presented to him by PHLF’s executive director, Louise Sturgess.
Over more than 20 years, Kidney has written five books about Pittsburgh buildings, rivers and bridges, but the road to honorary landmark status was anything but direct.
Born in Johnstown, he moved with his family to Philadelphia in 1942, where his father had taken a job teaching Latin and English. For many years, he spent summers at his grandmother’s rooming house in Oakland, a big, circa-1900, red brick place at the corner of Fifth and Lothrop where “there was always space for her children and their wives.”
He was about 8 years old, he remembers, when he noticed an Ionic capital on someone’s porch.
“I thought there must be such a thing as architecture,” he said. Later, “I went to the [Oakland] Carnegie Library and looked at the doorway facing the Magee memorial. At that point I knew that there was such a thing as architecture, and I really liked it.”
Although he considered studying art history at Haverford College, he chose philosophy, and after graduation he took a job in New York writing definitions for the Random House dictionary, for terms related to architecture, art history, Oriental religions, engineering, technology and philosophy.
Then, through a college classmate, he found a job as a writer on the staff of Progressive Architecture magazine. Pennsylvania was part of his beat, and through it, in the late 1960s, he met PHLF co-founders Arthur Ziegler and James D. Van Trump, when he wrote a story on Pittsburgh’s architecture and nascent preservation movement.
But after two years, he and the magazine parted company: “You know I was too old-fashioned for them, really.”
It was, after all, the eclectic architecture of the Oakland civic center and the Colonial, Greek Revival and Victorian buildings of Philadelphia that had shaped the man.
But the experience led to what Kidney calls “a crisis in conscience.”
“I wanted to write something that might settle my own mind about eclecticism” — buildings inspired by historical or contemporary styles from other countries and eras. “I was feeling rather guilty and shallow about liking these things because they’re a masquerade. I decided I wanted to be a modernist, but did I really want to reject all this eclectic stuff?”
In 1974, New York publisher George Braziller brought out Kidney’s “The Architecture of Choice: Eclecticism in America 1880-1930.” In it, he explores why the eclectics built the way they did — partly as a reaction to the overwrought Victorian styles — and how they were trumped by the modernists.
In the end, “The more I thought about it, the more I thought modern architecture was sort of a Barmecide feast,” Kidney said.
Hmmm, spoken like a lexicographer. What kind of feast?
“It’s a byword for plenty of nothing. I’ve never understood why people get thrilled by Louis Kahn, for instance,” although he does admire the work of Frank Lloyd Wright.
After a brief sojourn back to Pittsburgh, writing a how-to book on historic preservation for Ziegler, Kidney moved to Connecticut in 1976 to edit dictionaries for publisher Laurence Urdang. Then it was back to Pittsburgh two years later for a writing and editing job with the now-defunct Pittsburgher magazine. When a new editor decided stories should be written in the New Journalism style, he once again moved on — this time to a stable position with PHLF. He free-lanced for about a decade before joining the staff in the late 1980s.
His long-awaited current project — “Hornbostel in Pittsburgh” — is expected to be published in October, documenting 70 projects Henry Hornbostel designed between 1904 and 1939, from the Carnegie Tech campus to a house in Monroeville. Kidney has been at it for more than a decade.
“It’s been a long, long time. I started working on that in 1990. It was held back [from publication]. We had other things to do, and you have to raise money for these things.
“Hornbostel’s works have a touch of brilliance that you don’t find in other people’s. It’s not so much the grandiose beaux-arts stuff that you find in other architects but a certain verve and wit and grandeur. For instance, you have this big corridor in the City-County Building, and the glass ends, where people look like they’re walking by in thin air.”
Next, he hopes to write a book about eclecticism in Pittsburgh.
“I’d like to write about some of the brilliant stuff we have here, because it’s regarded as superficial,” he said. “I’m thinking of calling it ‘Dressed for the Occasion.’ ”
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Task force attempts to solve Downtown’s retail riddle
By Andrew Conte
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, February 24, 2002Given the option of recommending just one new Pittsburgh location for his high-end retail clients such as Smith & Hawken or Sur La Table, Richard Hodos favors Shadyside’s tony Walnut Avenue over the city’s busy Downtown.
As president of New York City-based HGCD Retail Services, Hodos scouts markets across the country to find ideal places for stand-alone retailers such as those, which sell garden items and cooking tools, respectively.While Shadyside has a lively mix of residents, retailers and shoppers who come from across the region, Downtown has lacked a clear vision for retail development. It would be hard for anyone now to recommend a national chain locate there among vacant storefronts and neon “store closing” signs.
“At this point I would put them in Shadyside, not Downtown,” said Hodos, a Johnston-native who returns to southwestern Pennsylvania often. “If there was a viable mass of retail Downtown, or if I knew one was coming, I might advise them differently.”
The Plan C task force – a broad coalition of urban planners, city officials and Downtown retailers – hopes to give him that option in the near future. They are developing a plan to direct retail development in the central business district, while maintaining the architecturally significant buildings there.
Even vacancies left behind in recent months by G.C. Murphy, National Record Mart and Dollar Zone – all within one block of Forbes Avenue – could be potential assets, said Patty Maloney, who owns three card shops Downtown and has been deeply involved in Plan C.
“There are all sorts of opportunities out there,” she said. “We could be looking at a big hole in the middle of the city, on the one hand. Or is this a real opportunity to do something really reflective of this region?”
Despite Plan C’s work at “cooperation” over the past year, debate still smolders over whether Downtown needs widespread reconstruction or detailed preservation.
More than a year ago, Mayor Tom Murphy officially dropped his $522 million plan for Market Place at Fifth & Forbes, a wholesale demolition to attract national retail chains. Talking about that proposal, he now says that he has “learned a lot from our mistakes in the past.”
Others are not so sure the city didn’t miss an opportunity – one that fades a little more every time other retail centers such as The Waterfront in Homestead gain another major store or entertainment venue. Station Square will open a new Hard Rock Cafe this year, while the former South Side Works will have a 10-screen movie theater and high-end restaurants.
“Homestead has all the stores,” said Mulugetta Birru, director of the Urban Redevelopment Authority. “Can Pittsburgh support additional entertainment districts? That really frightens me. Has Downtown missed an opportunity for entertainment development?”
Hodos, who scouts the Pittsburgh market regularly, remains optimistic about retail opportunities Downtown. The city now has a chance to fill in vacant spaces with high-end retailers that are unique to the region.
But, he said, developers need a clear vision, have to remain flexible and must move quickly once they get started.
“It’s sad retailers are closing Downtown but there needs to be a grand plan, and it needs to be put into effect not over a long time but over a relatively short time,” Hodos said.
Andrew Conte can be reached at aconte@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7835.