Category Archive: Preservation News
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Hill Innovation Center Gets State Funds
Thursday, July 08, 2010By Joe Smydo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Surrounded by members of the Urban Redevelopment Committe and the Pittsburgh Gateways Corporation, Gov. Ed Rendell signs the economic development portion of the 2010-11 state budget to help create jobs.
Gov. Ed Rendell on Wednesday announced up to $8 million in state funding for a green innovation center in the Lower Hill District that may begin operations by fall.
Pittsburgh Green Innovators — to be housed in the former Connelley vocational-technical school — will be a home for new companies and training programs with an environmental theme.
In a sign of the project’s importance, Mr. Rendell traveled to the location to announce the funding for that project and sign the legislation creating the $600 million development fund, called the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program.
“Pittsburgh has probably transformed itself more than any other American city, and that transformation is ongoing. It doesn’t stop. Green energy is the way of the future,” he said.
In all, about $300 million of the money already has been earmarked for projects statewide.
That includes the $8 million for Pittsburgh Green Innovators and up to $30 million to lure a federal vaccine production center to Allegheny County. The center, proposed by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, would produce vaccines needed to defend against biological attacks.
Recipients of the state money must match it dollar-for-dollar with funds from other sources.
Pittsburgh Gateways, a Lawrenceville economic-development group that’s spearheading the green innovation center, is negotiating with Pittsburgh Public Schools to acquire the 300,0000-square-foot former Connelley building. Robert Meeder, president of Pittsburgh Gateways, said he hopes to close on the deal as early as September.
He said the first phase of renovations — focusing on 80,000 square feet but including the installation of environmentally friendly energy systems throughout the building — could begin in the first half of 2011. He said that work will cost about $26 million, while a later phase of renovations, covering the rest of the building, would cost an estimated $19 million more.
Officials have said public school classes, apprenticeship programs and college classes all would be offered at the center, allowing students to train for careers with an environmental focus.
In a sense, the building — employing solar, geothermal and other alternative energies — will be a giant classroom, Dr. Meeder said.
The first classes may begin in the fall, he said.
The building also will serve as an incubator for start-up businesses. Dr. Meeder said as many as 14 fledging companies may have space there by the end of 2011.
State Sen. Jim Ferlo, D-Highland Park, an early proponent of the project, said the center already received $4 million from a previous pot of Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program dollars. The project also has received about $2 million in federal aid, and Dr. Meeder hopes to lure $7 million from corporate and foundation sponsors.
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County Bridges All Gaps But One in Pittsburgh-to-D.C. Trail: Onorato Wants it Completed by 2011
Thursday, July 08, 2010By Jon Schmitz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The 62-ton bridge across railroad tracks is lifted into place in Whitaker on Wednesday. Darrell Sapp/Post-Gazette
Construction cranes on Wednesday eliminated two of the biggest obstacles to completing a 335-mile biking and hiking trail from Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C., a project that has been in the works for 35 years.Crews hoisted prefabricated bridges over active freight rail lines in Whitaker and Duquesne along the Monongahela River. Construction of a 21/2-mile trail segment linking the bridges to the existing trail will begin by fall, with completion expected by January, said Jack Paulik, project manager for Regional Trail Corp.
“This is a major milestone,” Mr. Paulik said.
All that will remain incomplete on the Great Allegheny Passage after that is a one-mile stretch through Sandcastle Waterpark. Negotiations with the park owners have not produced an agreement that will allow the trail to go through.
“There’s no solution just yet,” Allegheny County spokesman Kevin Evanto said. “We’re kind of at the same place we were a couple months ago.”
County Executive Dan Onorato has established a goal of completing the trail by “11-11-11” — Nov. 11, 2011. Mr. Evanto said the goal is reachable.
A 170-foot-long, 62-ton bridge erected in Whitaker crosses six sets of tracks operated by Norfolk Southern Railway and Union Railroad Co. A 110-foot-long, 37-ton bridge in the RIDC industrial park in Duquesne crosses three sets of Norfolk Southern tracks.
The 62-ton bridge across railroad tracks is lifted into place in Whitaker on Wednesday. Darrell Sapp/Post-Gazette
The bridges will provide “a spectacular view of the river, the working river,” Mr. Paulik said.
Pushing the trail through the former industrial sites and over the rail lines ranks near the top of the development feats on the trail project, he said, along with renovation of the 3,291-foot Big Savage Tunnel in Somerset County that was completed in 2006.
The two bridges erected on Wednesday are about 2 miles apart and will be connected with a trail along U.S. Steel’s former coke gas pipeline, which the company donated in 2007. The segment will hug the hillside between Route 837 and the river, connecting to McKeesport to the south and The Waterfront complex to the north.
A $500,000 state grant helped to fund the bridges, with private money paying the rest of the $950,000 cost, Mr. Paulik said. Developing the piers and substructure cost $2.5 million, nearly all of which was private donations, he said.
The bridges will enable trail users to avoid Route 837, which is dangerous for bicycling.
Development of the 150-mile Great Allegheny Passage, which connects at Cumberland, Md., with the C&O Towpath to Washington, began in 1975 with the abandonment of 87 miles of railroad line from Cumberland to Connellsville.
Nine years later, the first 9.5 miles of trail opened in Ohiopyle State Park.
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A Newsmaker You Should Know: Historical Society Chief Links Past to Present
Thursday, July 08, 2010Marilyn Albitz barely passed high school history — a close call she attributes to a teacher who she said wanted her students only to memorize dates.
“I was an A student, but [historical] dates always turned me off. Rather, I’ve always liked to hear stories about the people, what they did, where they came from,” Ms. Albitz recalled.
MARILYN ALBITZAGE: “I’m a senior citizen, that’s all I’ll admit.”
OCCUPATION: Community volunteer
EDUCATION: Dormont High School
FAMILY: Husband, Robert; three children; seven grandchildren
WHAT’S IMPORTANT TO YOU? “My family and my borough’s history.”
PEOPLE WOULD BE SURPRISED TO KNOW: “I was once very shy. Now all I do is talk.”
FIRST JOB: Office supervisor at Prudential Insurance
HOBBIES: Reading and traveling
READING MATERIAL ON YOUR NIGHTSTAND: Romance novels and trivia books
WHAT’S PLAYING ON YOUR TV: “The Mentalist,” “The Good Wife,” “NCIS: Los Angeles,” “Jeopardy!”
GUILTY PLEASURE: Chocolate candy
FAVORITE SPOT IN THE WORLD: Green Tree. “There’s no place like here.”
MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT: “I’m sure there have been plenty, but I can’t think of any to share now.”
PROUDEST MOMENT SO FAR: “I’m proud of my family. And I was very proud being invited to Harrisburg.”
Now, as Green Tree Historical Society president, she is learning history the way she likes it: stories of the people who have lived in her community and the surrounding area.
“People influence other people. Our history is like a puzzle, and with each story, you get another piece,” she said.
Ms. Albitz credits former Green Tree librarian Roberta Antin as her greatest influence.
“She took me under her wing,” Ms. Albitz said. “She was our historian before we had the historical society. She collected stories, photos, newspapers, everything she could.”
Ms. Albitz started Green Tree’s historical society 25 years ago and has since helped other local communities start theirs, including Brentwood, Carnegie, Crafton, Dormont, Ingram, Mt. Lebanon and Reserve.
“I’d just take a folder of information and go talk to people about what we do and how we did it,” she said.
She wanted to help other communities start their historical societies for the same reason she wanted to start Green Tree’s.
“It’s important for you to know what your community is and was and where it’s going,” she said. “It’s important to collect more than Green Tree’s history because all these communities were once connected.”
State Rep. Matt Smith, D-Mt. Lebanon, hosted Ms. Albitz in Harrisburg last month to recognize her efforts in organizing Green Tree’s 125th anniversary celebration.
“[Ms. Albitz] herself is a community treasure. She is truly the kind of person that makes Green Tree and surrounding communities so special,” he said.
Mr. Smith was a history major at Rollins College and said there was “a huge advantage to preserving each community’s heritage. [Ms. Albitz] does a great job preserving that history.”
But talking to groups interested in forming their own historical society wasn’t easy for Ms. Albitz decades ago.
“I was so shy,” she said. “I took a public speaking class at the community college to help me get past that.”
During the class, she learned a lesson that she still relies on today.
“Just be yourself. You know more about what you’re talking about than the people you’re telling it to,” she said.
A lot of people have benefited from the information Ms. Albitz has shared and she’s been “very valuable to the community,” according to Dave Montz, Green Tree manager.
“People have been able to trace their roots, and she’s worked with children, too. They’ve learned where they live wasn’t always a traffic-congested, busy town. It was actually once farmland,” he said.
Ms. Albitz said she was a natural organizer growing up in Dormont with three brothers and one sister.
Later, she worked as an office supervisor for 13 years at Prudential Financial Inc. in Kennedy before starting a family. She has three children — David, Linda and Jeffrey — and seven grandchildren, ranging in age from 2 to 22.
As a mother, she served as a leader in the school’s Parent Faculty Organization.
In addition to her leadership in Green Tree’s historical society, she is president of the borough’s seniors’ club and belongs to its women’s club.
“People tell me I do too much and that I should learn to say ‘no.’ But you can’t say ‘no’ to stuff that interests you,” she said.
Reading is another of Ms. Albitz’s interests.
“I love romance novels. So many of them take place in different countries, and I love those settings. I skim over most of the romance. At my age, who cares?” she asked with a laugh.
Ms. Albitz does not disclose her age but did offer that she was married in 1953 to her husband, Robert, at St. Bernard Church in Mt. Lebanon.
“Compromise is the key,” she said of her nearly 60-year marriage. She also joked that it might help that she’s rarely home because of her work with social groups and traveling with the seniors’ club.
“I’m not home much, but I love to bake when I am,” she said.
Her favorite recipe is for her mother’s pumpkin pie, and she also likes to bake cookies.
“Grandma always has a can of cookies in her freezer,” she said.
She would spend more time baking if she had the time, she said, but there’s still too much to be done at the historical society.
“I’ve got to find someone to take this over after I’m gone,” she said. “I thought I’d retire this year, but I can’t. I’m still learning too many new stories.”
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Grants Available to Upgrade McDonald Historic Buildings
Thursday, July 08, 2010By Andrea IglarBev Schons, co-owner of the Pitt Hotel & Restaurant in McDonald, says it’s about time to install new windows in the century-old building, and she hopes the borough’s new facade improvement program will help.
Mrs. Schons plans to seek grant money for the South McDonald Street landmark, which is in the downtown historic district.
“We want to help improve McDonald,” she said.
Five owners of historic commercial properties attended an informational meeting last Thursday to learn about applying for storefront enhancement grants.
A second meeting will be held at 7 p.m. today in the municipal building, 151 School St.
Commercial buildings that front Lincoln Avenue or McDonald Street in the central historic district and are at least 75 years old may be considered for up to $7,500 in matching grants to help refurbish their storefronts and preserve original architectural features, said Tim Thomassy, head of McDonald council’s community development committee.
“Our big, historical buildings downtown are generally in good shape. They just need a little work to perk them up,” Mr. Thomassy said.
“You guys have to make the major contribution,” he told property owners. “But we want to try to help you as much as we can.”
Applications are due in the borough office by 4 p.m. July 15. A review committee will evaluate the entries, and awards will be announced during the Aug. 2 council meeting.
Dale Csonka plans to seek assistance for his circa-1920s West Lincoln Avenue building, the former G.C. Murphy store currently occupied by an arts cooperative.
He was concerned about having only three weeks to prepare and submit his application, but he was positive about the program.
“I’m very encouraged,” Mr. Csonka said. “I’ve been waiting a very long time for this. The town needed it.”
Matt Cochran, an owner of the century-old Cook and Shane buildings on South McDonald Street, said he is planning significant facade improvements and will apply for grant money to help.
“It will enable us to do more than we could financially feasibly do otherwise,” he said.
His buildings occupy the city block between the Pitt Hotel and O’Hara Street. Ground-level tenants include a pizza parlor, a tanning salon and an attorney’s office. Upper levels are designed for apartments.
McDonald’s $45,000 facade program is financed with $30,000 from Washington County’s share of gambling revenues, $13,000 from the borough and $2,000 from the McDonald Area Redevelopment Association, a nonprofit citizens group.
Attending last week’s meeting were representatives of borough council, McDonald Area Redevelopment Association, Redevelopment Authority of Washington County and the state Department of Community and Economic Development.
Mr. Thomassy said the facade work was part of an overall plan to stimulate business activity.
“We want [the work] to be in good taste, we want it to be well done, and we want it to fit into the original design of the building,” he said.
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Ambridge Redevelopment Receives $5 Million
Thursday, July 08, 2010By Brian David, Pittsburgh Post-GazetteDuring his first term, Gov. Ed Rendell visited Ambridge and pledged to support an ambitious redevelopment project in the town’s northern end.
With his second term winding to an end, the governor included $5 million toward the redevelopment in a $600 million list of capital projects he signed Wednesday at Connelley Technical School in Downtown Pittsburgh.
“He’s holding true to his word,” state Rep. Rob Matzie, D-Ambridge, said Wednesday. “This last appropriation in his term should help put the project over the hump.”
The $5 million requires a one-to-one match in local funds, Mr. Matzie said. “It’s not free money,” he said.
The Northern Ambridge Redevelopment Project is a public-private partnership inspired by Australian tycoon Rob Moltoni.
It already has established the New Economy Business Park, is in the process of straightening Merchant Street, has provided a new home for the Beaver County Emergency Services Center and is still clearing old industrial land for additional uses.
The project has received about $4 million in state funding over the years.
Overall, the project is a showpiece for the potential of public-private partnership, he said.
Without public help, it would have been impossible to clear the old industrial buildings from the project’s 22-square-block footprint; with it, the project is providing usable space in the heart of town adjacent to the historic district around Old Economy Village.
“It’s very important for the naysayers, the people who say government shouldn’t be involved,” Mr. Matzie said. “This shows that cleanup can occur, and you can revive your town.”
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Saxonburg’s Main Street Has Money For a Facelift
Thursday, July 01, 2010By Karen Kane, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Lake Fong/Post-Gazette From left, Chuck Matus, JRHSS Design Community; Ray Rush, Main Street Program manager; Dennis Chambers, chairman of Saxonburg Historical and Restoration Commission; and Gary Mullen, member of Saxonburg Historical and Restoration Commission outside the Hotel Saxonburg.
For all its charm and historical significance, Saxonburg’s Main Street is showing its age — and not in a way history aficionados prefer.
Some of the paved sidewalks are lifting; some street curbs are crumbling; and the green strip fronting the string of shops that comprise the bustling business district is looking a little ragged in spots.
It’s all about to be turned around, though.
Raymond Rush, the Main Street program manager, is using a recently awarded state grant of $373,027 from the Department of Community and Economic Development to design a renovation of the four-block Main Street. And he’s expecting the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to follow with a $2.4 million grant for the work.
The grants are the culmination of a partnership between the borough and the John Roebling’s Historic Saxonburg Society, a nonprofit group that sponsors the Main Street program and has deemed as its mission “the historic restoration and economic development of Saxonburg.”
The society is named for the town’s founder, who left his mark on the world with his innovations in wire cable and bridge design. The organization began as the “main street committee” of a citizens group that worked on the borough’s comprehensive plan. Members began meeting around 2000, with Mr. Rush joining about 2002. The group incorporated as an official nonprofit in 2004. Mr. Rush is an artist and historian who lives on a 100-acre farm in Clinton and who founded the annual Penn’s Colony celebration 26 years ago.
Both he and his group have been busy working on a plan to bring a spark to the heart of Saxonburg.
Before the state grant was awarded in May, the society won a $50,000 matching grant for facades in 2006 that’s been used to leverage about $750,000 in private investment, Mr. Rush estimated. The program awarded $5,000 grants to local business owners to improve building facades, and the money had to be matched. Saxonburg also received an $85,000 infusion of money over the past two years from the state Community Development Block Grant program for storm water management.
“It’s been a very vital program,” Mr. Rush said.
Saxonburg’s Main Street captured designations as a historic district on the national level in 2004 and on the state level in 2008. Some 52 historic structures are located on the four-block Main Street between Butler Street on the west end of town and Rebecca Street on the east end.
Among the historic structures is the home of Mr. Roebling, a German immigrant who founded Saxonburg in 1831. The house serves now as the offices for the Memorial Church. He innovated wire cable to take the place of hemp ropes that pulled barges for the Allegheny Canal near Johnstown, and he designed suspension bridges. He died from an injury sustained while working on the Brooklyn Bridge.
As envisioned by the society, the borough and the Main Street businesses, the best way to bring a spark to the district is to revitalize it at its core by replacing the curbs in the four-block area, renewing the planter strip beside the curb and constructing new sidewalks. The project would be topped off with installation of street lights that replicate the style of old German pedestrian lights.
“The idea is to keep with the historic elements of mid-19th Century,” Mr. Rush said.
The total project cost is estimated at $2.4 million, and it will be done in two phases, he said. He expects construction to begin in 2011 and be finished within two years. The primary firms involved are Klavon Design Associates, located in Pittsburgh’s cultural district, and GAI Engineering Consultants of Homestead.
Mr. Rush credits the borough, local businesses and the dozen or so members of the historical society for about six years of work in bringing Saxonburg to the brink of such a major revitalization.
“It’s been steady, hard work by everyone,” he said.
Linda Kovacik, borough secretary/treasurer, put it simply: “It’s just what we’ve been hoping for.”
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Gettysburg Casino Plan Raises Hackles of Historians
Thursday, July 01, 2010By Dante Anthony Fuoco, Pittsburgh Post-GazetteHistorical musings about the bloodiest Civil War battle and concerns over a continuing gambling debate intersected yesterday in a poetically timed proclamation.
On the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg’s 147th anniversary, a group of prominent American historians sent a letter to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board stressing that a proposed casino near Gettysburg battleground will “unavoidably conflict” with the area’s historical significance.
Urging board chairman Gregory Fajt to deny the proposed casino’s application, the letter kindles a modern-day battle between preservationists and casino supporters that opened in 2005, when another application for a casino in the area from the same developer was put forth.
Building a casino close to the battleground “would be an insult to the men who died there,” said James McPherson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era” and professor emeritus of United States history at Princeton University.
Some 160,000 Union and Confederate troops fought and 50,000 died at the Battle of Gettysburg, the bloodiest and largest of the Civil War. It started on today’s date in 1863 and ended on July 3.
“The idea of a gambling casino on or even near [the battleground] is totally incompatible with the nature of that historic site, which is special and unique,” Dr. McPherson said.
“A casino can be put anywhere, but there’s only one Gettysburg,” he added, a message echoed in the letter that he and 271 other historians signed.
Many historians claim the battle was a pivotal part of the Civil War, not just because it was the largest and bloodiest but also since President Abraham Lincoln four months later uttered his famous “Gettysburg Address” there at the dedication of a national cemetery.
If granted a state license, Mason-Dixon Resorts & Casino will be at the existing Eisenhower Hotel & Conference Center in Cumberland Township.
The casino would be a half-mile from the 6,000-acre Gettysburg National Military Park, five miles from the borough of Gettysburg’s center and three miles north of the Mason-Dixon line. The application — asking for a gambling parlor with up to 600 slots — is currently being reviewed by the state’s gaming control board.
Though the casino would not be placed within Gettysburg National Military Park, the letter contends that putting a casino “so close to the Battlefield at Gettysburg is simply incomprehensible.” The casino’s proposed site would be next to where Union cavalry advanced toward the South Cavalry Field, which saw substantial fighting on July 3, according to the Civil War Preservation Trust. Claiming “that history stops where the park ends is a modern idea, and it just isn’t true,” said Mary Koik, spokesperson for the battlefield preservation organization.
The letter alludes to a similar debate in 2005, when David LeVan, a Gettysburg businessman and a developer of the proposed casino, applied for a 5,000-slot casino a few miles northeast of Gettysburg’s town center. The state did not grant that casino a license at the end of 2006, largely because of widespread public opposition, said Richard McGarvey, Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board spokesperson. Historians, including Dr. McPherson, expressed similar opposition over the last application in a debate that lasted 20 months.
Other historians signing yesterday’s letter include Garry Willis, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America”; Carol Reardon, who directs Penn State’s graduate studies in history; and Edwin C. Bearss, chief historian emeritus of the National Park Service.
The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board hopes to reach a decision by the end of the year, but it first needs to have public meetings — where people can voice concerns and approval — for the proposed casino’s application and the three others that have filed for the same license, Mr. McGarvey said. No more than one license will be granted, and it’s possible that none will be, he added.
So far, though, this proposed casino has gotten support in the region, said David La Torre, spokesperson for the proposed casino. The Gettysburg-Adams Chamber of Commerce last week expressed support for the casino, and the Cumberland Township Board of Supervisors did the same in April, Mr. La Torre said.
Pro-Casino Adams County has backed the proposed casino, claiming that the area has suffered job losses and could benefit from the gambling parlor’s 900 jobs. And 62 percent of those in Adams County support the proposal, according to a study conducted by Franklin & Marshall College that polled 600 county residents.
But others claim that the casino would have a negative impact on the area, namely in pushing away heritage tourists, who are different from typical tourists because “they travel for meaning,” said No Casino Gettysburg spokeswoman Susan Star Paddock.
“Those tourists have told us in droves that they are offended [by] the casino,” she said. “I don’t believe that anyone in this country outside of these investors and their cheerleaders would be OK with a casino at Ground Zero or at Arlington Cemetery or the sight of Pearl Harbor.”
Mr. La Torre said that there wasn’t the same kind of outcry when a Comfort Inn was recently built in a spot close to a cemetery and where Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address, or when a 120-acre parcel of land in the national park was purchased recently by a high-density housing development.
Ms. Paddock said, however, that these points are insignificant in light of bigger issues.
“All the major Civil War historians have come out in opposition. That’s the real story,” she said in response. “The rest is just distraction.”
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Run-Down to Rental, a House At a Time – Sheraden Woman Believes in Saving Her Own Streets
Wednesday, June 30, 2010By Diana Nelson Jones, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Kelly Carter and Ben Smith work in the kitchen of their latest home remodeling project on Francisco Street in Sheraden. The couple have renovated five homes in eight years in their neighborhood and now rent the properties.
Kelly Carter had no idea what she was getting into. She just knew that the apartment building beside her childhood home was in disrepair and that a slumlord had his eye on it.When it came up for sale in 2001, she grabbed it. She was 29.
“I paid $30,000 and put $30,000 into it,” she said. “The person I bought it from told me I would never get quality renters.”
Today, she and her partner, Ben Smith, are renovating the fifth house Ms. Carter has bought on Canopolis and Francisco, two parallel streets in Sheraden. She has filled four with tenants she said she has either recruited or found online.
Sheraden has taken its lumps in recent years. Besides the nine arson fires that bedeviled Merwyn Avenue last summer, the neighborhood has watched itself lose more and more control of properties that fall into the hands of individuals who rent carelessly or speculating corporations that buy properties and sit on them.
“What we want is for houses that look haunted to be houses you’d be proud to live beside,” Ms. Carter said. “You have to recruit good tenants.”
Ms. Carter’s philosophy is that, block by block, street by street, neighbors can hold onto or enhance the livability of the entire neighborhood.
“If 50 people each did one [house per neighborhood], it would have a huge impact,” she said.
Buying and renovating houses has become her full-time job. She was the owner of Milk Records, a business she opened in 1999 and operated first Downtown and then in the Strip. She now runs the business online and spends most of her days refinishing floors, cleaning walls and talking to electrical contractors.
“Some people have given her a hard time, like, ‘why bother, etc. etc,’ ” said her neighbor, Janine Berard. “But she’s a wonderful person with such a great cause, especially for someone in her age bracket to have an interest in preserving a neighborhood.”
“There are naysayers,” said neighbor John Roell, “but there are naysayers everywhere. Kelly is an asset to the neighborhood.”
Ms. Carter said that Sheraden doesn’t have the commercial or entertainment draws like some of the other city neighborhoods, so they have to promote the community on its housing stock.
“And it’s great housing stock,” she added.
“Neighborhoods like ours are diamonds in rough,” said Ms. Berard. “They just need a little elbow grease and TLC. Who wouldn’t want to have that over houses that are boarded up? On our block, there is one vacant house and it has been vandalized twice. The only vacant house on our block has turned into exactly what we feared it would.”
Ms. Berard said that one family got six letters from companies looking to buy their property after the occupant died.
“Many properties in our neighborhood are owned by holding companies that owe back taxes two, three, four years.”
Neighbor Shirley Johnson has lived for 16 years in the house beside Ms. Carter’s childhood home and has teamed up with her on several projects, including writing a successful proposal to get a Sprout Fund mural in Sheraden.
“Somebody had approached me concerned about property values going down,” said Ms. Johnson, “and one day Kelly and I had a conversation in my driveway. I said, ‘That’s me and you and this third person, so maybe we can get more people involved.’ We started a group that didn’t really have a name.
“At a meeting when we were generating ideas, she said, ‘Maybe I can help people do what I’m doing.’
“She’s finding people who are able to pay the rent and do their part in our little community,” said Ms. Johnson. “There’s no trouble on the street.”
Ms. Carter said that is her intention, to begin “training people who want to do this on their block.”
With her first homes, she said, “I was saving and scrimping along as I could. This fifth one is the first one that’s backed by a bank.”
The house she grew up in she rented to an attorney who she said has decided he wants to buy it. The house next door that was in disrepair — and had a big hole in the roof — has two tenants, including Ms. Carter’s mother.
“The one I am doing now I got it for $15,000, but I joke that what I paid for was the stained glass windows and the garage,” said Ms. Carter. “It needed a new roof and new everything.
“This will be a rental. It’s been easier to find good renters than owners at this point, but I can sell properties as the neighborhood improves.”