Category Archive: Preservation News
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Arts center kicks off remodeling of building
By Kimberly Kweder
For the Tribune-Review
Thursday, September 21, 2006Inside a vast and empty room, the Rev. Regis Ryan walks along the dusty, old, wooden floors with his eyes scanning the white walls, blue ceiling and railings that line a balcony.
Another room adjacent to the right is nothing but a gutted ceiling, a floor full of broken pieces of material.“This building is beautiful,” said Ryan, director of Focus on Renewal Inc. “Everyone agrees this is fantastic.”
It’s beautiful, he said, because a $3.4 million dollar remodeling project at the bare, three-story furniture store will transform it into art studios, offices, classrooms, a 125-seat theatre and space for a wide variety of social gatherings.
The Sto-Rox Cultural Arts Center at 420 Chartiers Avenue in McKees Rocks will bring the visual, performing and literary arts together for all ages.
A partnership between the Community Outreach Partnership Center at Point Park University and Focus on Renewal developed two years ago to work toward revitalizing McKees Rocks. They are spreading the word to neighbors, foundations and state and local officials to promote the need for an arts center.
A kickoff event Sept. 13 at the center gave residents of the Sto-Rox School District, Community Outreach Partnership Center participants and public officials an opportunity to view the design plans. Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato, McKees Rocks Mayor Jack Muhr and representatives from State Sen. Wayne Fontana’s office also supported the cause.
“I think it opens doors and is certainly a cultural value to the whole region. I understand the arts are growing, and I think it’s a good thing for everyone,” said Fontana, D-Brookline, who toured the facility with Ryan months before any work was done on it.
Work started over the summer.
“Everybody’s excited about this … It’s a valuable addition to the town,” Ryan said.
“We hope it brings life and vibrancy to the neighborhood,” said Sister Sarah Crotty, an Aliquippa resident who works with Focus on Renewal as part of her ministry through the Sisters of St. Joseph, based in Baden.
Focus on Renewal Inc. still needs to obtain a large chunk of funding for the project.
The Allegheny County Department of Economic Development approved a $470,659 grant for interior upgrades last May. However, Ryan said, about $3 million more is needed for the entire project.
For the past two years, a handful of Point Park students and adjunct faculty have volunteered with the Community Outreach Partnership Center. They provide afterschool programs for Sto-Rox School Districts students that teach theatre, dance and music from the students. At the end of every session, students registered in the program perform on stage and show off their skills.
About 100 students have registered for the program this semester, said Pat Moran, Community Outreach Partnership Center director.
“It’s been increasing about 10 to 15 percent every semester,” Moran said.
“It has sparked enthusiasm in the community, and adults have been begging for programs for themselves, too. The community is anxious to get the doors open (of the cultural center).”
Ryan said he is optimistic the center will open next fall.
Taris Vrcek, executive director of the McKees Rocks Community Development Corp. and a third-generation resident of the area, said the arts center will act as a catalyst for other projects to start.
“The arts center is a huge start to the revitalization process. It’s symbolic because it involves the people’s heart, mind and soul and creates a place for residents to come together.”
Arlene Lichy, 55, a Sto-Rox resident, said she’s going to use the center when it opens. Lichy has displayed her artwork at a gallery in Lawrenceville and said the center will provide her another venue. Lichy also said her 10-year-old grandson loves art, and she hopes he and other youngsters will be able to take classes at the center.
“This is a poor community, and we’re looking for something positive to look forward to,” Lichy said. “It just takes a lot of persistence, lots of money, though.”
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Hazlett reopens as unique arts venue
By Alice T. Carter
TRIBUNE-REVIEW THEATER CRITIC
Thursday, September 14, 2006A weekend of events will celebrate the return of The Hazlett Theater on the North Side.
Now called The New Hazlett Theater, the city-owned property reopens this weekend following a three-year pause in operations and a $2 million renovation.A three-day weekend of events — some for family audiences and some for adults and ranging in price from free to $25 — will re-acquaint area audiences with the new space and upcoming events.
The revamped, renewed and remodeled facility in Allegheny Square will offer a convertible black-box auditorium designed to provide performance space to the area’s small and mid-size arts groups such as Prime Stage Theatre, Attack Theatre and the Pittsburgh International Children’s Festival. Organizations including The August Wilson Center, The Andy Warhol Museum, the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild & Children’s Museum Jazz and the National Trust for Historic Preservation have scheduled events for the space.
“Our core mission is to give a professional, reliable home to Pittsburgh’s small and mid-size arts groups,” says Sara Radelet, executive director of The New Hazlett Theater. “An added mission is to provide programming for Pittsburgh arts audiences that they wouldn’t normally see.”
Already, Radelet has logged commitments for 100 performance days in the coming year.“We hope to nurture and incubate groups so they feel they can push themselves a bit,” Radelet says. Providing small and mid-size arts groups with a dependable, year-round, well-equipped and affordable performance space will allow artists and administrators to concentrate on creating art rather than searching for places to perform it, Radelet says. “Now, they can concentrate on vision, focus and direction.”
Rental fees are set in a two-tier structure that Radelet says approximates those at similar venues in the area while providing a price break for nonprofit groups. Commercial clients can rent The New Hazlett Theater for $1,700 per day or $6,500 per week. Dependiing on audience configuration, nonprofit groups will pay between $650 and $800 per day or $1,600 to $1,950 per week.
A North Side landmark since its opening in 1890 as the Music Hall attached to The Carnegie Free Library of what was then Allegheny City, The Hazlett Theater served from 1974 to 1999 as the first home of the Pittsburgh Public Theater.
The property will be managed through a collaboration of the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, The Andy Warhol Museum, the Northside Leadership Conference, Prime Stage Theatre, Attack Theatre and the City of Pittsburgh.
In its latest incarnation, the theater has been designed as a convertible performance space that can accommodate audience capacities of 250 to 500 in a variety of configurations.
Many of the facility’s improvements will go unseen by audiences.
Dressing rooms have been expanded, updated and equipped with new showers, sinks, toilets and makeup counters. Dressing facilities also have been designed for use by performers with physical challenges. Washers and dryers will be available near dressing rooms.
Backstage loading docks allow scenery and equipment to move seamlessly from truck to stage. Between $15,000 and $20,000 has been invested in new lighting and sound equipment.
But audiences will see a new lobby area that combines the former Hazlett entrance lobby and inner lobby bar area into one open and inviting space. Patron bathroom facilities have been expanded and improved. A new, highly visible box office area welcomes visitors, as will the lobby’s banquette seating and a new snack bar.
Radelet envisions the lobby as a space that also will encourage audiences to linger after the show. She hopes to offer informal post-show and late-night talks and performances to further that ambition.
She also hopes the more informal and flexible performance space will encourage and inspire artists with visions and ideas that might not fit into more formal, Downtown venues.
“We want a range (of performances) from kids’ theater and music programs to more cutting-edge performances that other organizations wouldn’t risk,” Radelet says.
Alice T. Carter can be reached at acarter@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7808.
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Carnegie Library lands lot for $1
By Tony LaRussa
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, September 15, 2006The Urban Redevelopment Authority on Thursday agreed to give the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh a vacant lot on the North Side to build a replacement for the library branch that was heavily damaged by a lightning strike in early April.
The development agency’s board voted unanimously to transfer a 16,500-square-foot lot at 1210 Federal St. to the library for $1, despite complaints by half a dozen people who believe the old Allegheny Regional branch at 5 Allegheny Square on the North Side should remain a library once repairs to the building are made.“Some decisions have to go past the business sense and must take into consideration historical importance, heritage and the importance to the community,” said Stephen Pietzak, of the South Side.
A lightning bolt that struck the clock tower of the old building, built in 1890, hurled chunks of granite through sections of the building’s roof, causing an estimated $2 million in damage.
Repairs to the historic building, which is owned by the City of Pittsburgh, will be covered by insurance. The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation has agreed to work with the city to find another use for the building.
Library officials believe the building — the first of the public libraries built by steel magnate Andrew Carnegie — no longer fits the vision of what a contemporary library should be, said Barbara Mistick, executive director of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
“In addition to being expensive to operate, it is not very open and inviting, which is especially important for children,” Mistick said. “And it is difficult to add the technology that has become vital to the services we provide.”
The building also is not fully accessible to people with physical disabilities, she said.
Increasingly, Carnegie officials have placed a higher priority on whether a library is conveniently located on public transportation lines and is able to provide the amenities patrons have come to expect, over the historic value of the structure.
Mistick said a time frame and cost of construction for the new library have yet to be determined.
In addition to approving the property transfer, the redevelopment authority board voted to apply to the state for $7.5 million in redevelopment grants on behalf of the Carnegie Library, which is in the midst of a $55 million capital campaign to renovate its branches.
The library has raised about $32.5 million. Six of its 19 branches have either been moved to newer buildings or renovated.
Tony LaRussa can be reached at tlarussa@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7987.
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Bridges for sale — really
By staff and wire reports
Thursday, September 14, 2006Con artists have tried to sell the Brooklyn Bridge for years, but now two bridges in Pennsylvania really are for sale. First, PennDOT wants to sell the West Hickory Bridge on State Route 0127 over the Allegheny River in Hickory, Forest County. The bridge, 695 feet long and 16 feet wide, was built in 1896 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Interested? Call 1-814-678-7008. Also, Nyleve Bridge Corp. wants to sell its 467-foot-long temporary structure that once took the Norfolk Southern Railroad across State Route 309, near the Pennsylvania Turnpike’s Fort Washington Exit, Montgomery County. The steel bridge is being replaced by a permanent bridge. Call 1-610-965-3083 for details.
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Point Breeze: Council delays vote on Walgreens Proposal
By staff and wire reports
Thursday, September 14, 2006Pittsburgh City Council delayed a preliminary vote Wednesday on a controversial plan to build a Walgreens drug store in Point Breeze.
More than a dozen residents who live near the proposed site at the corner of Penn and South Braddock avenues implored council members to vote against changing a sliver of residentially zoned land to commercially zoned land.
The change would allow Walgreens developers to build a drive-through window lane where three Victorian homes currently stand. Developers have agreements to buy the homes, which would be demolished.
The matter will go before City Council again for a vote Sept. 27.
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Interesting items in collection shed light on intellectual appetite of architectural historian
By Patricia Lowry, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
When he died in December at age 73, architectural historian Walter Kidney left everything he owned to his longtime employer, Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
Which comprised what, exactly?
“Not much, generally,” said Jack Miller, Mr. Kidney’s executor and Landmarks’ director of gift planning. “Walter’s estate comprised Walter’s personality more than anything else. Most of his assets were in his books, about 4,000 that he gave us over his life and about 200 still in his apartment” on Mount Washington at the time of his death.
His books will go in a special alcove in Landmarks’ library, along with some of his furniture and artwork. But next Saturday Landmarks is selling at auction 40 lots from Mr. Kidney’s estate, much of which has more sentimental than market value. Many are objects that might be prized by those who knew him or simply admired his work — nine books about Pittsburgh buildings, rivers and bridges, written over more than 20 years.
“You’re not going to find necessarily extraordinary things, but the flavor of a rather interesting collector,” said another colleague, Landmarks historical collections director Al Tannler.
There are small carved boxes from Poland, Islamic brass trays, a South American machete, brass jardinieres from India, porcelain teapots from France, a metal bowl from Korea, a carved oak Ionic column capital and an antique, cast-iron Japanese teapot.
Mr. Tannler said Mr. Kidney used the carved boxes to hold “paper clips and pencils and change and things like that.”
“The machete, we can’t explain,” Mr. Miller said.
Proceeds from the sale will support additions to Landmarks’ library and archives as well as its publication of two posthumous Kidney books — “Life’s Riches: Excerpts on the Pittsburgh Region and Historic Preservation From the Writings of Walter C. Kidney” and a memoir, “Beyond the Surface: Architecture and Being Alive.” Both books will be available Oct. 30.
The Kidney items will be the first 40 lots sold at 10 a.m. next Saturday as part of a 943-lot auction of local estates at the Constantine & Mayer auction house in Cheswick.
The standout piece from the Kidney estate is a cherry Pennsylvania corner cupboard, circa 1840. At least two of its six panes of glass appear to be original. It may have been in Mr. Kidney’s family, Mr. Miller said, as some of the other pieces are thought to have been, including a 17-jewel, silver Waltham pocket watch, circa 1890, and a 14-karat gold, diamond-and-emeralds ring that might have been his mother’s engagement ring. A Chelsea brass ship’s bell clock “tied in with his passion for riverboating,” Mr. Tannler said.
Noteworthy among a small group of two-dimensional artworks is an oil-on-board painting by Pittsburgh artist Harry Scheuch (pronounced shoysh, 1906-78), presumably a Pittsburgh street scene, with some repairable flaking of the paint. There’s also a small woodcut of a bobwhite by Boyd Hanna (1907-1987), a self-taught Pittsburgh wood engraver whose work is in the collection of the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation.
Other furniture includes a Victorian side chair, a small Oriental table, an oak and iron ice cream table and a folding, tabletop book stand. The auction house has not assigned pre-sale estimates on any of the items in this sale.
Constantine & Mayer, founded in 2000 by Jeff Constantine and wife Joyce Mayer, held auctions at the West View Firemen’s Banquet Hall, Oakmont Country Club and other locations before moving in January to its own space — a former A&P grocery store in the Cheswick Shopping Center.
“Since we did the University Club auction, we’ve been representing a lot of good things coming out of Pittsburgh. It seems like the floodgates opened with the University Club,” said Mr. Constantine.
The million-dollar auction of 175 lots of art and antiques in November 2004 included five items that reached record-setting prices.
A Cleveland native who moved west with his parents as a child, Mr. Constantine opened his first antiques shop at age 16 in San Diego. He’s been a picker, dealer or auctioneer ever since, moving back east in 1980. Western Pennsylvania was attractive because “there was a lot of older estates, a lot of material available and you could live inexpensively,” he said. By 1994, he was executive director at East End’s Dargate Auction Galleries.
Items of interest in Saturday’s sale from other estates include five 1930s Leica cameras, two blackware bowls from Santa Clara and San Ildefonso pueblos, and a large, bark-and-feather ornament from the prow of a canoe in New Guinea, with a carved, ghostly mask representing a protective ancestral spirit. It was collected in the 1950s by a Dutch magistrate on the Sepik River and sold in Florida for $350 in 1972.
“The strength of this sale is in the small items,” Mr. Constantine said.
Come Nov. 18 and 19, the auction house will pull out the big stuff for its annual “November to Remember” sale, including a Tiffany-style window depicting a formal garden and fountain and a sizable cache of marble and bronze sculptures, antique furniture and architectural artifacts removed 30 years ago from a North Side house demolished during the construction of I-279 and in storage ever since.
Next Saturday’s auction will not include Mr. Kidney’s diverse music collection. His cache of 78-speed records went to Carnegie Library. At Landmarks’ library, a new Walter Kidney alcove will be filled with his books, furniture and the plat maps and artworks he collected. Two Pittsburgh scenes — a 1930s Esther Phillips watercolor and an undated Louise Boyer drawing — will hang on the walls near the refectory table he used at home as a desk. And hanging nearby will be an eclectic assortment of headgear — his caps and his Panama and deerstalker “Sherlock Holmes” hats.
“We couldn’t get rid of those,” Mr. Miller said.
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Down on the Farm
While Landmarks has gained national attention using planned gifts like easements to enable historic buildings to be adapted and reborn, our greatest satisfaction comes from helping people of all demographics support our mission and their families. Consider Clare and Duncan Horner.
Nearly three decades ago, the couple purchased a run-down house in the Mexican War Streets Neighborhood from Landmarks, then gave us a facade easement on the property. They went on to restore the building and acquire four others, now in various stages of restoration.
Thus, it should come as no surprise that when Landmarks recently offered to use Richard Scaife and Laurel Foundation funding to purchase a preservation easement on the Horner’s mid-19th century, 65-acre Greene County farm, the Horners not only agreed, but are using the $25,000 purchase price to restore the farmhouse and are refinancing their mortgage to secure the easement and make a $25,000 gift to endow the costs associated with monitoring it.
The story of the creative way the gift was structured and the Horner’s three-decade relationship with Landmarks will be featured in the next issue of PHLF News. For now, however, Duncan and Clare are just happy knowing that they’ve preserved a home for daughters Anne and Jocelyn.
As for the farm, “it’s a strategically located property on the intersection of two rural roads adjoining Ryerson Station State Park,” says Landmarks President Arthur Ziegler. “The woodframe Victorian farmhouse with carpenter gingerbread posts and wood barn represent the prior use of the property as an active farm.
“The site has both lowland and hilltop, a large pond with earth dam, a wooded area above the pond contiguous to the State Park woodland and there is a wetland with a wide variety of natural growth in the lowland. It’s definitely worth preserving.”
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Ferlo’s presence looming larger at city hall
Mayor’s business friends thicken their web in his absenceBy Mark Belko,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Sunday, August 13, 2006Three years gone from city hall, Jim Ferlo is anything but forgotten.
A former City Council president, Mr. Ferlo has loomed large in the young administration of Mayor Bob O’Connor, and his presence is, perhaps, greater than ever after last month’s purge of three top aides.
Yarone Zober, a former aide to Mr. Ferlo, now a state senator, is serving as deputy mayor while Mr. O’Connor recovers from surgery to drain excess fluid from his brain. Scott Kunka, who was appointed finance director in the shake-up, worked with Mr. Ferlo for years in City Council.
And some believe Mr. Ferlo, who was appointed by the mayor this year to serve on the influential Urban Redevelopment Authority board, could be in line to become its chairman with the firing of B.J. Leber, Mr. O’Connor’s former chief of staff.
Just how much influence Mr. Ferlo, a former adversary turned friend of Mr. O’Connor’s, carries within the administration is a matter of conjecture among City Council members and others.
But there seems to be little doubt that Mr. Ferlo, a one-time rabble-rouser who once was carried out of council chambers by police, has clout, maybe a lot of it.
“I feel he is one of about five people that’s in the inner circle from outside the mayor’s office,” said Councilman William Peduto, who lost to Mr. O’Connor in last year’s mayor’s race.
“I think the sort of fast-track promotion of [Mr. Zober], who essentially came out of nowhere, speaks volumes of the influence of Senator Ferlo,” said Joseph Sabino Mistick, who was an aide to former Mayor Sophie Masloff.
In a bit of political irony, Mr. Ferlo acknowledges that he might have more pull now than he did in any of his 15 years on council, including four as its president, when he was often on the outs with the mayor’s office.
“Do I have the ability to get things implemented more now because of my relationship with the executive branch? Absolutely, yes. And because of the position that Bob gave me, the honor and privilege of serving on [the Urban Redevelopment Authority] board? Yes,” he said.
But in the next breath, Mr. Ferlo said he had no interest in using his influence for personal gain as much as to pursue neighborhood and policy initiatives that long have been dear to him and to help Mr. O’Connor implement his agenda.
“I have no personal agenda. I don’t have friends or relatives looking for a job. I have no business ventures in the city of Pittsburgh. Maybe that’s why it’s so good to work with me, because I don’t have anything,” he said.
Some in and outside city hall saw Mr. Ferlo’s hand in the July 27 firings of Ms. Leber, Finance Director Paul Leger and Solicitor Susan Malie, or, at least, in the administration’s public statements after the purge.
“When the three people were fired, the first voice we heard was not a member of the city administration or City Council, but state Senator Jim Ferlo,” said former county Chief Executive Jim Roddey, who has criticized the dismissals.
But Mr. Ferlo, who helped to lead an attempted coup to remove now state Sen. Jack Wagner as City Council president in 1993, denies having anything to do with the purge.
“That’s just not true,” he said.
He acknowledged taking a lead in defending the firings, saying there seemed to be a brief “communications gap” in getting the administration’s position out to the public, one he sought to fill.
Mr. Ferlo said he pushed Mr. O’Connor’s top aides to make Mr. Zober available Monday, his first full day as deputy mayor, as did many in the media, and that happened before afternoon’s end. He also has direct access to many of the city’s directors.
One doesn’t have to look far to see Mr. Ferlo’s fingerprints on administration or URA initiatives.
At Thursday’s meeting, the URA board awarded a loan of up to $196,000 and a grant of up to $50,000 for a mixed-use retail and housing project on Bryant Street in Highland Park, one favored by Mr. Ferlo.
He had lobbied Mr. O’Connor before he became ill to sell three buildings in the Fifth and Forbes retail corridor, Downtown, to the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation for a restoration project, a sale authorized by the board at the same meeting.
“When people say I have access, it’s access that I’m helping to use or utilize for this group that has unmet needs and wants access to change, to progress,” he said. “Bryant Street has languished away. So can I be a better link? Yes.”
Still, the senator insists he has not “cornered the market” in terms of clout, and whatever amount he has is designed to serve the mayor.
“Whatever influence I do have is based on mutual respect and is something that makes sense in terms of Bob’s background, and goals and objectives,” he said.
“I’m trying to work in sync to fill out, to complement, the mayor’s agenda. … I’ve tried to be a positive influence and work positively with the administration.”
He has not always been a yes-man, voting against two administration-supported URA purchases of buildings in the Fifth and Forbes corridor in March.
The relationship between Mr. Ferlo, a onetime far-left activist who was arrested as a councilman for trying to stop the demolition of Syria Mosque in Oakland, and Mr. O’Connor, the jovial button-down businessman who cut his teeth in the restaurant business, wasn’t always so cozy.
In 1994, Mr. Ferlo outmaneuvered Mr. O’Connor for the council presidency, a job Mr. O’Connor thought he had locked up. Mr. O’Connor even chastised Mr. Ferlo afterward for the way he had handled it.
But out of those seeds of discord grew reconciliation and, ultimately, friendship. Four years later, Mr. Ferlo worked behind the scenes to help throw the council presidency to Mr. O’Connor, who used the post as a steppingstone to his campaigns for mayor, with Mr. Ferlo becoming one of his staunchest supporters.
City Councilman Doug Shields, a former aide to Mr. O’Connor, said he believed the friendship had its genesis in efforts to save the City Pride bakery, a campaign in which Mr. O’Connor assisted Mr. Ferlo in arranging a meeting with key business leaders. The Lawrenceville bakery, started by former Braun Co. employees, closed in February 1994 after two years in business. City leaders tried, but failed, to resuscitate it.
“That was kind of one of those moments where they learned to work together,” he said.
According to Mr. Shields, both bring something to the table, Mr. O’Connor, his ability to work with the business world, and Mr. Ferlo, his knowledge and penchant for getting things done in community development.
“I think they complemented one another in a lot of different ways,” he said.
And if anything cemented the friendship, it was Tom Murphy, who fought both on numerous policy issues.
“We got to be close and became good friends.We got to be personal friends,” Mr. Ferlo said. “I think we reinforced each other on policy issues.”
Mr. Ferlo met Mr. Zober in 1997 at the City-County Building. Mr. Zober, an avid Pirates fan, stood toe-to-toe with Mr. Ferlo when the then-city councilman questioned Mr. Zober’s support of an increase in the sales tax to fund new stadiums. Mr. Ferlo, a critic of the plan, was so impressed, he hired Mr. Zober the next day.
In addition to being an aide to the councilman, Mr. Zober worked on Mr. Ferlo’s campaign for the state Senate, a job he secured in 2003, and then joined Mr. O’Connor’s campaign for mayor last year.
Despite the high-level connections, Mr. Ferlo dismissed the suggestion that he is running the mayor’s office, a thought whispered by some at city hall and elsewhere.
“Go and interview 25 other people,” he said, “because they have the same influence.”
And if Mr. Ferlo is calling the shots, Mr. Zober isn’t letting on. He said in an interview last week that his focus is in implementing Mr. O’Connor’s goals while he remains hospitalized with primary central nervous system lymphoma.
“The agenda for us is Mr. O’Connor’s agenda,” he said. “We’re just picking up where he left off.”
Asked about Mr. Ferlo’s influence, mayoral spokesman Dick Skrinjar replied, “Senator [Jay] Costa, Senator Ferlo, and Senator [Wayne] Fontana have influence on the administration of the city of Pittsburgh. They represent the citizens of Pittsburgh in Harrisburg and influence the state Legislature and Senate on their behalf.”
Councilman Jim Motznik said he believed Dennis Regan, the chief of staff who is Mr. O’Connor’s longtime friend, and senior secretary Marlene Cassidy, have far more influence than Mr. Ferlo.
“I personally don’t think it’s much at all,” he said.
But others believe Mr. Ferlo’s clout increased by necessity. There are few with his knowledge of the inner workings of city government, which could be a key asset to a young administration, particularly with their leader ill.
“I think his leadership and experience have been called upon by those in the administration,” Mr. Peduto said. “He’s the smartest man at city hall. Jim Ferlo knows the city code inside and out. He wrote much of it.”
Mr. Peduto is one who believes Mr. Ferlo’s influence could be for the better. He said he had been working with the senator and Mr. Zober on a green building policy for the city.
“Would that have been Mr. O’Connor’s priority for a policy agenda? Probably not. There’s the potential that his influence can help bring progressive ideas as well,” he said.
(Mark Belko can be reached at mbelko@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1262. )
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This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette