Category Archive: Preservation News
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Prestigious award may park in Mellon Square
By Allison M. Heinrichs
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, January 20, 2007An unassuming, peaceful piece of green in the heart of Downtown has support from a national historic landscape expert to be honored as a landmark, the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy has announced.
Mellon Square — a block of green dotted with fountains and sculptures near the Mellon Bank Building — should be given National Historic Landmark status as the oldest-surviving park above a parking garage, said Charles Birnbaum, founder of the Cultural Landscape Foundation in Washington.
“Think about the green roof movement in America. This came before that,” Birnbaum said. “Think about the American fascination with the automobile in post-war America. This fed off that.
“Think about the civic-minded vision that the Mellons had: This is part of the city’s civic philanthropy.”
On Feb. 1, Birnbaum will be at The Pittsburgh Golf Club in Squirrel Hill to discuss Mellon Square’s eligibility for the national designation. His visit is sponsored by the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, which is considering to sponsor Mellon Square for National Historic Landmark status.
“We feel the space is very elegant,” said Meg Cheever, president of the conservancy. “Sometimes we take for granted what is in our own backyard.”
Mellon Square was designed by landscape architect John Ormsbee Simonds, of Kilbuck, who died in 2005. He also designed Equitable Plaza and Crawford Square — all in Western Pennsylvania — and the Chicago Botanical Gardens.
Work on the park started in 1948 and was finished in 1951.
Birnbaum said he is optimistic about Mellon Square’s chances of getting National Historic Landmark status because very little has been changed there.
Simonds directed the park’s restoration in the early 1990s — staying true to his original vision for the park, which he described as “a platform, a structure, an island, a space, a focal center, a civic monument, a gathering place and an oasis,” according to Birnbaum.
John Scholl, a senior principal at Environmental Planning & Design — a Downtown firm that Simonds founded — said Simonds would have appreciated Mellon Square getting landmark status.
“I think it’s very much appropriate, and I’m sure John would be delighted,” Scholl said.
Officials with the National Park Service would evaluate Mellon Square, based on its significance to national history and how much of its original design still exists, said national parks historian Caridad de la Vega. Usually landmarks must be at least 50 years old to get the designation.
“It’s an involved process; there are a lot of steps. You can’t just say: ‘I want to be a landmark,’ and become one,” de la Vega said.
The process usually takes about two years. If Mellon Square gets the designation, it would be among a select few.
“National historic landmarks number about 2,600 or so in America, and it is the highest honor in the U.S.,” Birnbaum said. “Of that, only 50 or so have significance in landscape architecture — so you’re talking about a very elite group.”
Allison M. Heinrichs can be reached at aheinrichs@tribweb.com or (412) 380-5607.
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Disrespecting a park & Pittsburgh’s history
By Richard M. Voelker
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Pittsburgh Tribune ReviewBurying the remnants of old Fort Pitt is pretty much a done deal. Unfortunately, we never seem to learn. Well, there you have it. Despite commonwealth promises to “walk the site again,” it’s now too late to save the Fort Pitt wall remnants at Point State Park.
The “stay out” fencing is all in place, the “no trespassing” signs have all been hung, the half-century-old trees have been felled and the threatening piles of concrete rubble are poised at graveside, awaiting the final death knell to begin filling.
So just in a few months shy of the fort’s 250th anniversary, its remains will be buried under a newly leveled carnival site.
But did this site have to sit so flagrantly astride what little is left of our city’s rapidly shrinking, international heritage — our unique historic location that “transformed the world”? Talk about irreverence.
Shame on those who aided and abetted this process. And most particularly, shame on the following:
Gov. Ed Rendell (“Ed,” our friend in Harrisburg): He could have stopped this senseless process with just one phone call. But he didn’t.
Michael DiBerardinis, secretary of the state Department of Conservation & Natural Resources: It’s always easier to say “yes” than “no” to a longtime political buddy like the governor, particularly when he’s your boss. Therefore, for his sake in future situations, I suggest he try to remember that the hard choice is frequently the right one. So try to commit this phrase to memory: “Speak truth to power.”
Barbara Franco, director of the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission: When Point State Park was turned over to the commission for safekeeping, its adopted master plan stipulated that it be managed for passive use and historic interpretation. But at the behest of the Riverlife Task Force, Ms. Franco knowingly ignored these policy guidelines, a decision that was not only arrogant, but potentially illegal, given recent court findings involving similar disrespectful impacts of the Gettysburg Tower on the adjacent Gettysburg National Military Park.
Christine Davis, archaeological consultant to the Riverlife Task Force: It was a career-enhancing “no-brainer” to write a report that condoned the Department of National Resources’ plan to “cover over” the exposed fort wall sections to create a more level day-use recreation site. However, since the region’s sole claim to fame is currently linked to these same, now-visible artifacts, isn’t it counterproductive to bury them just to provide a safer noshing environment for chubby festival-goers?
Marion Pressley, the Boston-area landscape design consultant: It takes more than a modicum of chutzpah for an out-of-town design consultant to come to Pittsburgh and ignore an existing historical park’s 50-year-old management policies. Particularly since they were developed by Ralph Griswold, a Pittsburgh landscape architect, who’s also world-renowned for his site restoration work at Williamsburg, Va. After this audacious beginning, Ms. Pressley then wrote a report sanctioning DNR’s plan to rebury the previously excavated fort remains.
And that’s about it. Despite numerous stories in local papers and on television, local preservation organizations (like the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, the History & Landmarks Foundation and The Heinz History Center) were conspicuously absent from public discussion. Their combined silence was indeed deafening, almost as loud as that coming from the young mayor’s office. So, it’s pretty much a done deal. Unfortunately, we never seem to learn. But if we’re real, real lucky, maybe after another 30 years or so of Point State Park’s jarring fireworks, screaming jet skis and disruptive rock “concerts,” some fed-up Pittsburgher might finally exclaim, “Hey, enough with the noise! I can’t think! Let’s go back to something quieter.
“How about digging up some history?”
Richard M. Voelker, a semi-retired open space planner and advocate, lives on the North Side.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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Parents worried about historic school buildings
By Karamagi Rujumba,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, January 11, 2007After celebrating a quarter century of growth in Woodland Hills schools, district officials are worried about the next 25 years.
That’s what lead Superintendent Roslynne Wilson to propose a building consolidation plan that she had hoped would save the district nearly $2.5 million a year.
The school board last night, though, voted down that proposal as well as a last-minute plan pitched by board member Colleen Filiak that targeted the same three schools — Shaffer Primary, Rankin Intermediate and East Junior High schools.
Their votes were in reaction to district taxpayers’ concerns with the closings.
In Turtle Creek, school board members and about 40 people from the community met last Thursday night at Palmieri Restaurant to discuss what the school district’s plan would mean to the community.
Some parents said the superintendent’s plan, in particular, would have lead to the closing and eventual abandonment of historic school buildings in some communities.
The key question for many district parents and others at the meeting was what the school district would do with buildings such as East Junior High School when it is closed. East Junior formerly was historic Turtle Creek High School, and a group has been working for about two years to prevent it from being razed or having its facade renovated.
“That building is very important to many of us,” said Robert Mock, of Turtle Creek, who has been trying to save the school.
“We believe that, if the building is closed, it should be repurposed. What we don’t want to happen is to have the building abandoned,” Mr. Mock said.
Dr. Wilson told the group that the next quarter century would see a much smaller school district, noting that a number of factors such as Act 72 and Act 1 restrictions, declining enrollment and potential teacher retirements would force the district to trim its size, especially the number of buildings it can maintain in tight budgetary times.
“This makes an opportune time to consolidate our buildings,” Dr. Wilson said .
That is why the school district has proposed a three-year building consolidation plan, which would see the closing of three schools in three years: Shaffer, Rankin Intermediate and East Junior High School .
Dr. Wilson said the district’s plan ultimately would save the district about $2.5 million from a reduction in property, personnel and benefits expenses. Without the implementation of the plan or some other cost-saving steps, the district will be faced with some very hard decisions, including possible teacher layoffs, the superintendent said.
School board President Cynthia Lowery said she supported the building consolidation plan because, if it is not implemented, the district would have to consider making cuts somewhere else in its $80 million budget.
“We have to stop deficit spending,” Ms. Lowery said. “We have tried to listen to the community about what they want to see, but there will never be a consensus on this issue.”
(Karamagi Rujumba can be reached at: krujumba@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1719. )
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Rescued cabin may reveal details of early Harmony history
By Len Barcousky,
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteSeveral mysteries swirl around an 18th-century log cabin in Jackson.
Who was “Js. Molinari” and when and why was his name carved into one of the foundation stones?
When exactly was the cabin built?
Why were the ends of its logs hand- trimmed into what carpenters call a “half dovetail” pattern when Harmonist and Mennonite craftsmen, working in the same period in Butler County, more commonly relied on a “steeple” notch joint? What was the purpose of the line of round holes cut into the original side wall of the nearly 200-year-old structure?
Members of Historic Harmony hope to have answers to those and other questions by the time the cabin is reconstructed this year.
Brothers and sisters in the Carothers family recently donated the building to the nonprofit historical society in honor of their parents, Phillip W. and Florence G. Carothers.
Last month, family members helped disassemble the structure on Textor School Road, and it is being stored at Historic Harmony’s Mercer Road property.
“We are very glad to have it,” said John Ruch, president of Historic Harmony, which maintains nine sites in and around Harmony that include 18th-century log houses. “But we are still talking about what we might do with it.”
The small size of the one-story structure limits its use as a display building, he said.
“Our first objective was to save it,” he said. “The next objective is to find out more about the building’s history and then use that knowledge to make a decision on where to put it.”
When Mr. and Mrs. Carothers bought a house on 52 acres above Breakneck Creek in 1951, the original cabin had disappeared behind several 19th-century and 20th-century additions to the home.
Winnifred Carothers Sharrar was born in the house in 1952. She has fond memories of growing up in rural Jackson with her six brothers and sisters.
“Our dad never owned a car,” she recalled. “He worked in a sawmill in Evans City, and he walked to work every day.” The one-way distance is about three miles.
The children were expected to do their share of chores, she said. “We had a big garden, and we had to help with it.”
Growing up in the country had its compensations, as well. The children had horses to ride — and to care for.
Over the years, her parents sold or gave away almost all of the original tract, often to family members. When the cabin was taken down Dec. 17, it was on a one-acre lot in the 100 block of Textor School Road.
For the past 23 years, Mrs. Sharrar and her husband, Frank, have lived in a modern log house they built about 200 yards from the spot where she was born. Several relatives still live within shouting distance.
Her brother, Philip W. II, lives nearby in Jackson. Other siblings, John and Ann, live in Harmony; Albert lives in Evans City; and James lives in Greenville, Mercer County. The oldest sibling, David, died in 2000. The immediate family also includes 17 grandchildren, with many still in the area.
In recent years, Mr. Sharrar had been using part of the house as a workshop. “We couldn’t afford to keep it heated and maintain it,” his wife said. “The roof was leaking and it needed to be torn down.”
Family members and friends, including Paul Guber, the fiance of Mrs. Sharrar’s daughter, Nicole, already had demolished the later additions. That left the outer walls of the cabin exposed for the first time in decades.
The job of taking the cabin apart went quickly, with work starting at 7:30 a.m. and finishing by 1 p.m. The Carothers homestead was part of the original 7,000 acres that Father George Rapp, founder of the communalist Harmony Society, acquired in Lancaster and Jackson, starting in 1805. Seeking to move west to Indiana, the Harmonists sold all of their Pennsylvania holdings, including the village of Harmony, in 1814 to a Mennonite businessman named Abraham Ziegler.
Mrs. Sharrar and her sister, Ann Carothers, have done some research on the family property. The earliest written reference to a house on the tract dates to the 1830s, Mrs. Sharrar said, but it is likely to have been built earlier.
Its location was about one-half mile from where the Harmonists had built a mill and some small houses, Mr. Ruch said. While it resembles Harmonist-era buildings, the Carothers home contains unusual features, like the half dovetail corner joints.
The Carothers family is pleased to know that the home where they grew up will be preserved.
“The only thing we want is Mom’s and Dad’s names on a plaque somewhere,” Mrs. Sharrar said.
(Len Barcousky can be reached at lbarcousky@post-gazette.com or 724-772-0184. )
Copyright © PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved.This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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What is a Preservation Easement?
A preservation easement is a voluntary legal agreement made between you and Landmarks to protect your historic building from alteration or destruction. The easement is recorded with the deed and must run in perpetuity. If you sell or transfer your historic property after protecting it with the easement, the purchaser will be subject to the restrictions contained in the easement. Landmarks assumes responsibility for monitoring your historic building to assure compliance with your wishes as expressed by the easement agreement.
Types of Easements
Landmarks’ preservation easement program is designed to preserve the distinctive historic or architectural features of the historic buildings of Allegheny County, including the associated grounds and views. The exact terms of a preservation easement, as well as the extent to which those terms limit alteration of an historic building or protected land will vary depending on your wishes.
Facade Easement: Allows you to control future alterations to the exterior of your historic building.
Development Rights Easement : Limits or to prohibits altogether the construction of additional stories on your historic building.
Open Space Easement: to limit or to prevent the construction of new buildings on your protected land.
Benefits of Donating A Preservation Easement
While granting a preservation easement to an historic property limits what you may do with that property, granting the easement provides you with several benefits including:
-You will have protected your historic property into perpeturity from destruction, alteration, or development.
-You may be entitled to claim a Federal income tax charitable contribution deduction equal to the value of the preservationeasement if the historic property is “to be protected in perpetuity, exclusively for conservation purposes. This test is generally met when you grant a facade easement with respect to a historic building or farm listed on the National Register of Historic PLaces and may be met for other easements if the terms of the easement meets certain criteria defined in the Internal Revenue Service Code 170(h)(1).
Determining the monetary value of a preservation easement requires an appraisal of the porperty, paid for by you, that places a dollar value on the rights being assigned to Landmarks in the easement. You should consult with your personal legal and tax advistors regarding this matter because Landmarks does not provide legal or tax advise.
Click Here for complete information on our Historic Preservation Easement program.
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New casino had no ‘not in my back yard’ problem in Chateau; there are no back yards
A place with an identity crisisBy Diana Nelson Jones,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, December 28, 2006Contrary to previous reports, the North Shore is not getting Don Barden’s Majestic Star Casino. The lucky neighborhood is actually Chateau.
But it’s easy to understand how the North Shore is the default setting for so many people. Chateau is a neighborhood with an identity problem.
In an exhaustive search of the neighborhood, using the map on the city’s Web site, the Post-Gazette could scare up just five residences — four year-round homes on the river, all associated with boat clubs, and one in what its resident used to call “the ward.”
It was named for Chateau Street, which actually is in the adjoining neighborhood of Manchester. Chateau was once part of Manchester, but city planners designated it as a separate neighborhood after Route 65 was built and split them apart.
Chateau became further isolated from residential tradition as neighborhood support businesses gave way to light industry, warehouses and huge parking lots. The 2000 census counted 39 people as residents, but where they are or might have been is a mystery.
A paucity of habitation bodes well for a controversial development. Nary a peep was heard pro or con in Chateau while the Hill District exercised its voice in opposition to a casino. Considering what a not-in-my-back-yard issue the casino was, this may be a good time to mention that in Chateau, there are no back yards.
Its border with the North Shore is Allegheny Avenue. Heinz Field is on the North Shore side, the Carnegie Science Center is on the Chateau side.
Just beyond where the casino is slated to go, Chateau becomes its spooky-emptiest, a wasteland of lots surrounded by chain-link fences, mangled trees and overgrowth at the shoreline strewn with garbage, chunks of industrial waste covered in black soot that looks like coat dust over dirty lint, and rusted parts of old boats.
The Pittsburgh Annealing Box Co.’s warehouse of corrugated metal stretches like a stranded ghost train along the river, scrawled with the message, “Join the race to the bottom.”
Dean Bartins has lived all 46 of his years in a grand, 120-year-old house in a part of Chateau on the other side of the highway. Once his house was surrounded by houses. His immediate neighbors now are Wendy’s, McDonalds and the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society.
“Some people would say, ‘Hey, you’re surrounded by parking lots,’ ” he said. “But from the inside looking out, it’s as far as the eye can see” — views of the entire skyline and the hillside across the river.
“We always called this ‘the ward,'” said Mr. Bartins. “But I know [now] it’s Chateau.” He said he became aware of the designation “maybe 20 years ago.”
“I have always considered this Manchester,” said Peggy Baust, the owner of Peggy’s Harbor, one of three boat docks in Chateau. She and her husband, Eddie, live at the boat dock they own and operate. They moved there from Shaler in 1972 to live in a houseboat and started their dock business in the early 1980s.
Their mobile home, its side deck adorned with a red Christmas bow and pine garlands, sits several yards from the lapping Ohio River and along the trail that brings a stream of bicyclists, joggers and walkers in good weather.
Her neighbors are a refrigeration company, a company that makes metal grills and welding rods, and parking lots.
Neither she nor Mr. Bartins expressed concern about the casino.
“Absolutely not,” said Ms. Baust. “I don’t know what will happen to the part of the trail that runs beside it, but it can’t hurt me.” (Casino owner Don Barden plans improvements to the trail.)
She counts the other boat club owners who live in homes along the river as her neighbors, “good neighbors,” she said, admitting that, “when 5 o’clock rolls around,” the neighborhood is pretty empty.
Arthur Ziegler, executive director of Pittsburgh History and Landmarks and one of the preservationists who helped save much of Manchester from the wrecking ball in the 1960s, said Chateau is news to him: “I’ve never heard anyone use that name. It was all Manchester.”
He said he and other activists in the late 1960s “went to meetings because we didn’t want the highway.”
Route 65 plunged Chateau into habitation crisis. Starting in 1960, the population declined severely: From 5,251 — when it was still part of Manchester — to 681 to 322 to 12 to 39, making it the least populated neighborhood in the city.
The highway that Mr. Ziegler called “typical of planning that uprooted people and severed a neighborhood so people could get to the suburbs more quickly,” is now an asset for bringing people back, according to the state gaming board chairman. The Post-Gazette reported last week that Gov. Ed Rendell said the chairman cited access as one of the factors in Mr. Barden’s selection.
Mr. Barden has predicted that the Majestic Star Casino, a two-story, glass and steel construction, will be built in a world-beating 15 months. And Chateau has some bragging rights, for what it’s worth.
(Diana Nelson Jones can be reached at djones@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1626. )
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Property sales hailed as Downtown’s rebirth Developers say they are ready to begin long-awaited revitalization
By Rich Lord,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Friday, December 15, 2006With agreements to sell two swaths of Downtown to developers yesterday, the city started the ball rolling on stores, 50 moderately priced apartments and a series of groundbreakings and ribbon cuttings in the center of the downtrodden shopping district.
The sales are the first to result from the latest effort, begun by the late Mayor Bob O’Connor, to revamp the dowdy corridor.
“There have been so many plans through the years about what could happen here, what should happen here,” noted Urban Redevelopment Authority board Chairman Yarone Zober, who is chief of staff to Mayor Luke Ravenstahl. Now, thanks to several developers, he said, “Downtown is really on the move.”
An affiliate of Washington County-based Millcraft Industries will buy the former G.C. Murphy building and adjacent structures for $2.5 million. The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation will buy three side-by-side buildings on Market Street and Fifth Avenue for $257,000.
Illustrating the challenges of building Downtown, Millcraft gave up its exclusive right to develop three properties at 430 to 438 Wood Street, and announced it was looking around for new partners to help it build a 200-apartment building next to Market Square and south of Forbes Avenue.
Millcraft Chief Financial Officer Brian Walker said the firm has a full plate, and would welcome any URA effort to find another developer who could move quickly on the Wood Street properties, which would have been a small part of the company’s overall plans.
He said getting redevelopment of all of Downtown’s under-utilized properties under way at the same time would benefit everybody.
“Like any development project, and any revitalization effort, it’s going to take time, and it’s going to take a lot of unique ideas and thoughts,” said Mr. Ravenstahl.
On Monday, Millcraft will start constructing the store and office spaces in its Piatt Place, in the former Lazarus store on Sixth Avenue. Millcraft has lined up tenants for the 50,000 square feet of stores, and the first to open will be Capital Grill in July. The sale of condominiums in the building is going well, Mr. Walker said.
Millcraft wants the Trisanti European Market grocery store to open by the end of next year, but it has not decided whether it will be in Piatt Place or the former Murphy’s building.
The Murphy’s building “has been targeted for well over a decade now to be revitalized,” the mayor noted.
Now dubbed Market Square Place and the Market Square Lofts, the groundbreaking, such as it is, may come as soon as April. No ground will actually break, because Millcraft plans to keep the exteriors and the floors of the seven contiguous buildings intact, even while working in 65,000 square feet of stores, 42 apartments and 42 basement parking spaces.
Construction will take a year, and it won’t be easy, because the floors of the buildings don’t line up. The firm is arranging the apartments so renters will not have to climb stairs to get around their units. But the uneven floors contribute to the anticipated $32 million cost, and the need for around $6 million in state redevelopment funding, plus a yet-undetermined value of tax credits.
The state financing should help Millcraft keep the rents relatively low, by Downtown standards. The apartments, ranging in size from 700 to 2,000 square feet, will have rents ranging from $750 to $1,400, said Lucas Piatt, Millcraft vice president of real estate.
To cut costs, the firm had to abandon its intention to add environmentally friendly aspects to the design, he said. It wants to use “green building” standards on planned new construction Downtown.
That would include its South of Forbes apartment building, which the firm hopes to start building in late 2008.
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks plans to start cleaning out its new Market Street properties in January, take 12 months to renovate them, and get tenants into eight apartments in mid-2008. It will spend around $2.5 million, said Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., the foundation’s president.
“We are striving to make it a green building, a restored building,” he said.
As for the Wood Street property Millcraft can’t handle now, and the few other unclaimed Downtown spaces, they should go quickly, Mr. Piatt said.
“It’s really a snowball, and it’s going to keep going.”
(Rich Lord can be reached at rlord@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1542. )
Copyright © PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved. -
Property sales hailed as Downtown’s rebirth – Developers say they are ready to begin long-awaited revitalization
By Rich Lord,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Friday, December 15, 2006With agreements to sell two swaths of Downtown to developers yesterday, the city started the ball rolling on stores, 50 moderately priced apartments and a series of groundbreakings and ribbon cuttings in the center of the downtrodden shopping district.
The sales are the first to result from the latest effort, begun by the late Mayor Bob O’Connor, to revamp the dowdy corridor.
“There have been so many plans through the years about what could happen here, what should happen here,” noted Urban Redevelopment Authority board Chairman Yarone Zober, who is chief of staff to Mayor Luke Ravenstahl. Now, thanks to several developers, he said, “Downtown is really on the move.”
An affiliate of Washington County-based Millcraft Industries will buy the former G.C. Murphy building and adjacent structures for $2.5 million. The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation will buy three side-by-side buildings on Market Street and Fifth Avenue for $257,000.
Illustrating the challenges of building Downtown, Millcraft gave up its exclusive right to develop three properties at 430 to 438 Wood Street, and announced it was looking around for new partners to help it build a 200-apartment building next to Market Square and south of Forbes Avenue.
Millcraft Chief Financial Officer Brian Walker said the firm has a full plate, and would welcome any URA effort to find another developer who could move quickly on the Wood Street properties, which would have been a small part of the company’s overall plans.
He said getting redevelopment of all of Downtown’s under-utilized properties under way at the same time would benefit everybody.
“Like any development project, and any revitalization effort, it’s going to take time, and it’s going to take a lot of unique ideas and thoughts,” said Mr. Ravenstahl.
On Monday, Millcraft will start constructing the store and office spaces in its Piatt Place, in the former Lazarus store on Sixth Avenue. Millcraft has lined up tenants for the 50,000 square feet of stores, and the first to open will be Capital Grill in July. The sale of condominiums in the building is going well, Mr. Walker said.
Millcraft wants the Trisanti European Market grocery store to open by the end of next year, but it has not decided whether it will be in Piatt Place or the former Murphy’s building.
The Murphy’s building “has been targeted for well over a decade now to be revitalized,” the mayor noted.
Now dubbed Market Square Place and the Market Square Lofts, the groundbreaking, such as it is, may come as soon as April. No ground will actually break, because Millcraft plans to keep the exteriors and the floors of the seven contiguous buildings intact, even while working in 65,000 square feet of stores, 42 apartments and 42 basement parking spaces.
Construction will take a year, and it won’t be easy, because the floors of the buildings don’t line up. The firm is arranging the apartments so renters will not have to climb stairs to get around their units. But the uneven floors contribute to the anticipated $32 million cost, and the need for around $6 million in state redevelopment funding, plus a yet-undetermined value of tax credits.
The state financing should help Millcraft keep the rents relatively low, by Downtown standards. The apartments, ranging in size from 700 to 2,000 square feet, will have rents ranging from $750 to $1,400, said Lucas Piatt, Millcraft vice president of real estate.
To cut costs, the firm had to abandon its intention to add environmentally friendly aspects to the design, he said. It wants to use “green building” standards on planned new construction Downtown.
That would include its South of Forbes apartment building, which the firm hopes to start building in late 2008.
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks plans to start cleaning out its new Market Street properties in January, take 12 months to renovate them, and get tenants into eight apartments in mid-2008. It will spend around $2.5 million, said Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., the foundation’s president.
“We are striving to make it a green building, a restored building,” he said.
As for the Wood Street property Millcraft can’t handle now, and the few other unclaimed Downtown spaces, they should go quickly, Mr. Piatt said.
“It’s really a snowball, and it’s going to keep going.”
(Rich Lord can be reached at rlord@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1542. )