Category Archive: Threatened Historic Resources
-
Preservation act / Carrie Furnace can forge redevelopment
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Saturday, June 18, 2005It was an Allegheny County initiative launched under then Chief Executive Jim Roddey. Now the deal has been sealed by his successor, Dan Onorato. In the end the public will get an historic blast furnace, which could one day anchor a steel heritage site, and 137 acres of land, which could spark business, commercial and residential development in Rankin and Swissvale.
The tentative purchase of the Carrie Furnace site from the Park Corp. for $5.75 million from a state grant will be a bargain if the county’s plans for the abandoned industrial property come to fruition. One need only look across the Monongahela River, at Park’s success in developing The Waterfront complex, to see what can be done with a former mill tract.
Mr. Onorato praised that development this week, but said there was no need to duplicate The Waterfront’s big-box, suburban-style retail mix up and down the river. Each idle, former industrial site offers its own potential, and the challenge for developers is to draw out the best from each.
A key difference with the Carrie Furnace site is it contains a hulking old blast furnace, which operated between 1907 and 1983 during Big Steel’s heyday, that will be preserved and used as an educational tool. Plans are to build an adjacent conference center and hotel.
Combine that with the restored Bost Building, the reused Pump House and the historic spot of the 1892 Pinkerton landing on the other side of the Mon, and the county stands to build a greater case for Congress one day to declare the heritage area a National Park site.
But first the county must begin soil testing to gauge the extent of contamination. If all goes as planned, money can be transferred on the purchase in 90 days and the abandoned industrial site will come under the control of Allegheny County.
Then the public sector will have the challenge in Rankin and Swissvale of doing — or maybe even outdoing — what the private sector has done in Homestead and Munhall.
-
County’s purchase of Carrie Furnace property sparks visions of past and changes to come
By Ann Belser,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, June 16, 2005The potential of Carrie Furnace truly is in the eye of the beholder.
When August R. Carlino looks at the furnace, he sees a representation of the history of steelmaking.
When Charles H. Starrett III sees the property, he sees the future of economic revitalization for the Mon Valley.
The announcement Monday by Chief Executive Dan Onorato that Allegheny County has reached an agreement with the Park Corp. to purchase the furnace and 137 acres for $5.75 million brought people with many visions of the area together on the site.
“This is where our fathers and grandfathers worked,” said U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Swissvale, whose grandfather worked at Carrie Furnace for 40 years. His father worked across Braddock at the Edgar Thomson Works for 31 years. He said their labor, like that of so many others in the mill, made it possible for his generation to go to college.
Standing on the ground where his grandfather worked, Doyle said his generation will be the one to preserve that history.
“This is a good day and this site will be developed in our lifetime,” Doyle said. “We’re going to leave this better for our kids and grandkids and they’re going to know what our parents and grandparents went through.”
Doyle’s bill to make Carrie Furnace a national historic site has been passed twice by the U.S. House of Representatives. He introduced the measure again Monday afternoon and said this year he was going to try to get U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., to get the measure through the Senate.
And now the pressure is really on Carlino, the president of the Steel Industry Heritage Corp., to get the money to refurbish the old blast furnaces that make up Carrie Furnace.
County Executive Dan Onorato said it’s up to Carlino and his group to raise the money needed to turn the furnaces, which are rusting and have trees growing from the upper levels, into a historic site.
The heritage corporation has estimated that the stabilization and renovations of the furnaces, built in 1907, would cost about $78 million. The renovation will include a series of walkways around the furnaces.
“We’ve got all of our hard work ahead of us now,” Carlino said.
But while some are interested in the past, Starrett, the coordinator of the Enterprise Zone Corp. of Braddock, said the redevelopment of the 137-acre site, which includes some land in Munhall and Whitaker, will help spur the redevelopment of Braddock and Rankin. The plan that was developed for the site extends along the north bank of the Monongahela River from Swissvale to the Edgar Thomson Works in North Braddock and includes land between Braddock Avenue and the river in Braddock.
“This is all a state enterprise zone area,” Starrett said. He said that means that any companies that chose to locate there would qualify for state and county financing programs with 3 percent interest and qualifying companies can get a 20 percent state tax credit on property acquisition and construction costs.
The Carrie Furnace property probably will not be ready for new construction for at least 18 months while the county cleans up any environmental problems left over from years of producing iron on the site.
Onorato said Tuesday that at least the county would be moving toward redeveloping the land instead of letting it sit idle.
“A year and a half is nothing considering the steel mill left in 1983,” he said.
The redevelopment plan calls for a residential development on the property in Swissvale and the historic site with a hotel and conference center, offices, and a transportation center all in Rankin. Braddock would have areas in which more housing is built to fill in where some of the older homes have been abandoned or demolished and near the Edgar Thomson Works the county has planned to locate light industry and warehouses.
The overall redevelopment in the three boroughs encompasses 205 acres.
County Economic Development Director Dennis Davin said work has to be done to spruce up the area near Carrie Furnace. On Monday, as the dignitaries and members of the media were driving to the site, the signs to the Carrie Furnace directed them right past a home that was being demolished and through a neighborhood in which many of the buildings have been left neglected.
Davin said while the former steel site is being cleaned, Braddock Avenue is going to be spruced up, including the buildings at 849, 851 and 853 Braddock Ave. that had been renovated by the Braddock Enhancement Task Force but have been left vacant and need further renovations. Davin said the county’s Department of Human Services plans to move offices in there.
Another move on Braddock Avenue will be to create an entrance for UPMC Braddock on the Braddock Avenue site of the building. Currently that is the back side of the hospital and functions as a loading area while patients and visitors enter from Holland Avenue, a parallel street one block up the hill from Braddock Avenue.
(Ann Belser can be reached at abelser@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1699.)
-
Second chance for Carrie Furnace mill site.
County to buy 137 acres of abandoned mill property, hoping to create a model for redevelopment
By Ann Belser,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tuesday, June 14, 2005After four years of negotiations that spanned two Allegheny County administrations, Chief Executive Dan Onorato got to announce the prize: The county has agreed to buy an abandoned blast furnace and 137 acres of possibly contaminated land around it for $5.75 million.
Like a home buyer looking at a fixer-upper, it’s not the problems that the county is looking at when it sees the site, most of which is located in Rankin and Swissvale. It’s the potential.
“This is going to be the cornerstone of what we do with old industrial sites,” Onorato said on a hot day that was reminiscent of the blast furnace. “We have thousands of acres of waterfront just sitting there dormant.”
The deal also includes some land in Whitaker and Munhall.
Before money is exchanged on the deal, which should be in the next 90 days, the county will begin soil testing to see how much cleanup the site needs, said Dennis Davin, director of the county’s Department of Economic Development.
He said the cleanup should take a year to 18 months before development begins.
Yesterday’s announcement was made under a tent with the old blast furnaces behind Onorato. He said the county is not only going to revitalize the site, but also the communities surrounding it.
Talking about The Waterfront, a development of shops, restaurants, a movie theater, offices and apartments in Homestead, Munhall and West Homestead, he said, “I personally love what’s going on across the river … We’re going to duplicate it up and down the river.”
Plans for development of the Carrie Furnace area were drawn up by Dick Schmitz for the consultants MacLachlan, Cornelius & Filoni in 2001, when Jim Roddey was the county’s chief executive. The county has negotiated with Kelly Park, vice president of Park Corp., since then to buy the land.
The money for the purchase, $41,970 an acre, is coming from the state, which gave the county a $6 million grant that has to be matched with federal or local money. Davin said much of that will be from federal money designated for cleaning up brownfields and from federal Community Development Block Grants.
The land use plan calls for housing in Swissvale near the Pittsburgh line with a possible marina for recreational boaters near those homes. In Rankin, the old blast furnaces would be refurbished as part of a steel heritage historical site with a hotel and conference center to be built near the museum site.
Closer to Braddock, the plan calls for building office buildings with a large parking area nearby for commuters who want to park in Braddock and travel by bus, train or water taxis to Downtown. There also are plans for a bike trail through Braddock, Rankin and Swissvale.
Onorato said the county will not wait to start revitalizing the towns until it can build on the site. The county already is working with Braddock and Rankin officials to build housing.
In Braddock, a move to rejuvenate Braddock Avenue will include working with UPMC Braddock, which currently has an unattractive loading dock on the avenue, to develop a hospital entrance there. Small shops with apartments above them would be built along Braddock Avenue and light industry would be located between Braddock Avenue and the river and near the Edgar Thomson plant.
(Ann Belser can be reached at abelser@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1699.)
-
Purchase deal boosts Carrie Furnace plans
By Ann Belser,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Friday, June 03, 2005Allegheny County is close to an agreement to purchase the Carrie Furnace site, which has been vacant since the old iron-making facility on the banks of the Monongahela River closed in the mid-1980s.
The purchase of the former blast furnace should allow the county to proceed with a multi-million dollar plan to revitalize the Mon’s north bank from Swissvale to North Braddock.
The development is expected to include a steel industry museum, conference center, housing, offices, a transportation center and light industry.
Dennis Davin, director of the Allegheny County Department of Economic Development, said he hoped the purchase will be announced within the next week or two, but the county will not actually take over the property until the end of the summer.
The financial details were incomplete and the purchase price wasn’t available yesterday.
The news was greeted with a cheer from William H. “Lucky” Price III, the Rankin Council president who has been a member of the county’s Carrie Furnace Steering Committee for the last five years.
“That’s sounds good. I hope that’s true,” he said.
In September, Gov. Ed Rendell gave the county $6 million to be used for the site from the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program. That money has to be matched dollar for dollar by either local or federal money. It can be used to buy the site and for environmental cleanup and infrastructure improvements.
The 103-acre parcel is currently owned by the Park Corp., which bought the property in Rankin and Swissvale in the same sale in which it acquired U.S. Steel’s Homestead Works, which was a 311-acre site.
Park bought the land on both sides of the Monongahela River from the steelmaker in 1988 for nearly $3 million. The land in Rankin and Swissvale was valued at that time at $500,000.
In 2001, the county hired the architecture firm of MacLachlan, Cornelius & Filoni to develop a master plan for 205 acres that includes the Carrie Furnace site and areas of Braddock and Rankin between Braddock Avenue and the Monongahela River to the Edgar Thomson Works. The plan was put together after a series of meetings with residents in Braddock, Rankin and Swissvale.
The county has been negotiating with Park since 2001 to buy the Carrie Furnace property.
A redevelopment plan for the Carrie Furnace site and lower Braddock calls for the furnace to be refurbished into an exhibit as part of the Steel Industry National Historic Park, with a hotel and conference center built near the furnace, which is in Rankin.
The plan calls for building housing on 44 acres to the west of the furnace in Swissvale and office buildings to the east in Rankin.
The hot metal rail bridge that connected Carrie Furnace to the Homestead Works is slated to be converted to a automobile bridge connecting to the Waterfront development, a popular retail, office and housing development built on the former site of the Homestead Works. That development spans three communities, from Munhall through Homestead and into West Homestead.
The redevelopment plan goes beyond property that formerly made up Carrie Furnace and includes a large parking area that could serve as a park-and-ride for commuters using buses, water taxis and, possibly, light rail. The transportation center, to be built on 15 acres, would tie into a tramway running above the area. It would also be linked to the Eliza Furnace Trail for bicycles and pedestrians, extending it through Hazelwood and Duck Hollow to connect to the Carrie Furnace site.
In Braddock, the plan calls for encouraging small businesses, shops, and studios to locate along Braddock Avenue at street level with apartments above. There would also be housing built between Braddock Avenue and the river with light industry placed along the river and near the Edgar Thomson Works on the North Braddock border.
The Homestead Works is now nearly completely redeveloped. John Dindak, the mayor of West Homestead, recently announced that Costco, the chain of warehouse clubs, plans to build a store between the smokestacks and Sandcastle Water Park.
Other brownfields in McKeesport and Duquesne are now controlled by the Regional Industrial Development Corp. Businesses are already located on those sites, though there is more land available at both properties.
(Jerome Sherman contributed to this report. Ann Belser can be reached at abelser@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1699.)
-
Historic designation OK’d for Buhl building
By The Tribune Review
Wednesday, May 4, 2005The Pittsburgh Planning Commission on Tuesday approved a historic designation for the former Buhl Planetarium building on the North Side.
Built in 1939 on the site of the former Allegheny City Hall and donated to the city by the Buhl Foundation, it was among the first planetariums in the country.
The square structure of Indiana limestone topped by a copper dome was spared when the heart of the North Side was razed in the 1960s to make way for the Allegheny Center. After a decade of dormancy, the planetarium building has since 2004 been incorporated into the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. The designation now needs the approval of City
-
Route 28 redesign relies on railroad
By Jim Ritchie
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, April 27, 2005Norfolk Southern Railway Co. is negotiating with PennDOT to provide land for widening Route 28 in Pittsburgh, which could speed commute times and possibly spare the vacant St. Nicholas Roman Catholic Church.
Only a sidewalk separates St. Nicholas — the nation’s first Croatian Catholic church — from the busy highway, which PennDOT plans to rebuild from Millvale to the North Side in 2008. The project, previously estimated to cost up to $200 million, would add shoulders to the narrow highway and eliminate traffic signals at the 31st and 40th Street bridges that cause traffic tie-ups.
“It’s bits and pieces of other designs,” said Cheryl Moon-Sirianni, PennDOT’s assistant district executive for design. “We’re trying to please all of the stakeholders, and we think this alignment will please most of the traveling public, property owners and community groups.”
PennDOT would not divulge more details of its plan, but said it would reveal the design this summer, likely in July.
“We don’t want to go out to the public until we know what the railroad says,” Moon-Sirianni said. “Once we hear back from the railroad, we’ll have a better sense of where we’re going.”
Railway spokeswoman Susan Terpay declined to discuss details of the proposal because it involved a possible real estate transaction. “We continue to have ongoing negotiations with them, and we are reviewing the first draft of their proposed plans,” she said.
There’s just one hitch that has former St. Nicholas parishioners concerned: The project would close the church’s driveway from Route 28 and, so far, the new design does not provide for a replacement.
Members of the Preserve Croatian Heritage Foundation, which wants to preserve and reopen the church, lobbied PennDOT a week ago to build a new access road. They fear the absence of a new road in the design means PennDOT might use the church property, especially if talks with the railroad fall through.
“It’s essential that the access road go in,” said Robert Sladack, of Reserve, who belongs to the group. “On the more recent preliminary design, it was not listed.”
PennDOT has not ruled out building the access road, which could be added in later versions of the design, said Moon-Sirianni.
“Nothing’s been decided,” she said. “Everything is still on the table.”
Rebuilding Route 28, which is used by about 60,000 drivers each day, became an engineering nightmare in the last several years. Most problems are linked to the highway’s narrow path in the city. Numerous buildings, including the church and the Millvale Industrial Park, line one side of Route 28, while the railroad tracks border the other side. Behind the row of buildings is a steep hillside climbing up to Troy Hill.
In order for the new Route 28 to carry high-speed traffic through the city the way the Parkways North and East do, PennDOT must build shoulders on both sides to improve safety. Adding the shoulders likely would increase speed limits to 50-55 mph, from 35-40 mph.
PennDOT’s initial plan called for leveling the church to make enough room for a faster, four-lane highway. Churchgoers and preservationist groups objected and PennDOT decided to find alternatives.
The Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh closed the church in December and moved the parish to a Millvale church, but formed a group to research other possible uses, said the Rev. Ron Lengwin, a diocesan spokesman. The diocese advanced $50,000 to St. Nicholas parish to repair a broken boiler so it could heat the empty building during the winter and avoid damage such as frozen pipes.
PennDOT’s last round of proposals included tall retaining walls along the highway. Groups such as the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation and the Riverlife Task Force objected, and the transportation department again chose to find a new plan.
“We were concerned, as was Riverlife, about an 80-foot retaining wall,” said Cathy McCollom, the foundation’s chief programs officer.
Until now, PennDOT and the railroad were unable to agree on a plan that would use railway property. That changed after the proposal of a state law that would have allowed Allegheny County government to take railroad property through eminent domain.
“In the course of introducing the legislation, I found it was not necessary to push the movement of the bill because Norfolk Southern became amenable to working with PennDOT,” said state Rep. Don Walko, a North Side Democrat. “Suddenly, things just seemed to open up.”
Jim Ritchie can be reached at jritchie@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7933.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review © Pittsburgh Tribune Review
-
City of stairways may lose some of its character
By Tony LaRussa
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, March 26, 2005Efforts are under way to prevent the network of 737 public staircases linking Pittsburgh’s hilltop neighborhoods to the ground from becoming a casualty of the city’s financial crisis.
Pittsburgh’s staircases — the most of any city in the nation, even more than hilly San Francisco — were built in an era when automobiles were fewer and residents, especially mill and factory workers, needed a way to navigate the steep terrain. The staircases have 44,770 steps; the longest staircase, at 378 steps, runs along the “paper” street Ray Avenue in Brookline, linking West Liberty and Pioneer avenues.
About 18 of the city’s staircases have been closed off because they are in bad shape, according to the city’s Department of Public Works. Maintenance also has been abandoned on about a quarter of the steps that have not been closed off.
“Maintenance on the steps — removing snow, spreading salt and clearing debris and brush — is very labor intensive,” said Mike Gable, deputy director of public works. “We’re just not able to get to a lot of the things we did in the past.”
The city will, however, perform maintenance if it receives requests from residents or neighborhood groups.
In previous years, the city typically earmarked about $500,000 a year just for maintenance.
This year, only about $250,000 — all of it federal grant money — is available to pay for road paving and maintenance of retaining walls, fences and steps, Gable said.
The federal money can be used only in the 52 percent of city neighborhoods that qualify for aid, said Councilman Doug Shields, council’s finance chairman.
Among the cost-saving initiatives called for in the Act 47 financial recovery plan is a survey of the steps to determine which ones can be closed and demolished.
By mid-summer, the Public Works Department expects to provide city officials with a list of 60 to 100 staircases it recommends be demolished, said Rob Kaczorowski, the assistant director of public works.
The city’s plan to reduce its inventory of staircases comes at a time when neighborhood groups are rediscovering their value.
The Fineview Citizens Council uses its steps as a marketing tool for the neighborhood by hosting an annual 5-K “Challenge of the Hillside” race 400 feet up four public staircases. Money raised from the event is used to maintain the community’s 17 sets of steps.
The South Side Slopes Neighborhood Association launched an annual “Step Trek” celebration in 2000 that uses mapped routes along some of its 68 public staircases to showcase the neighborhood. Residents there also volunteer to clear brush.
Bob Regan, whose 2004 book “The Steps of Pittsburgh: Portrait of a City” chronicles the history of the city’s staircases, said he has been receiving an “overwhelmingly positive” response to his writings and lectures.
“My experience as I talk to neighborhood groups about the steps is that their consciousness has been raised,” said Regan, who conducted a lecture on city steps Thursday for the Lawrenceville Historical Society. “Folks who took the steps for granted begin to see them as a unique, historic artifact that they are willing to work with the city to preserve.”
Though the loss of some of the staircases might be inevitable, Regan said, he is calling for a cautious approach in the process.
“I’m not an idealist. I understand the realities of the fiscal constraint the city is facing. I realize some of the staircases will have to be closed and probably torn down. I just hope the city approaches it in a rational fashion,” said Regan, a Boston native working as a visiting professor of geographic information systems at the University of Pittsburgh.
“I’d hate to see a haphazard process at a time when we are just beginning to realize that these steps have the potential of being major tourist attractions.”
Kaczorowski, who is coordinating the survey, said the list that is turned over to the Murphy administration and City Council will have steps that are used the least at the top.
“We have some steps in the city that were originally built to provide access to a school that no longer exists, or that lead up to a street where there’s no houses anymore,” he said.
City Council President Gene Ricciardi, whose neighborhood has the largest number of staircases, 70, said the steps are among those uniquely Pittsburgh things that could help boost tourism.
“Besides still being a practical way for a lot of people to get around the hilltop neighborhoods, the steps can be a marketing tool for those who visit here,” Ricciardi said.
“They should be on the ‘must-do’ list with the inclines, the museums, the opera and the sports venues,” he said. “We are missing a golden opportunity if we don’t preserve them.”
Ricciardi said he will push for at least some of the revenue from a bond-refinancing proposal in the works to be used to maintain the steps.
Council next week will consider refinancing about $250 million in debt at a lower interest rate, which would generate about $7 million to finance public-works projects.
—-
Step by step
Some facts about Pittsburgh’s steps:Number of staircases: 737
Total number of steps: 44,770
Total number of feet: 24,176, or about 4.5 miles
Number of staircases that are legal “paper” streets: 334
Number of staircases with more than 300 steps: 5
Number of staircases with fewer than 25 steps: 189
Number of wooden staircases: 80
Number of brick steps: 1
Neighborhoods with the most staircases: South Side, 70; Beechview, 39
Number of neighborhoods with no staircases: 24
Decades in which most staircases were built: 1940s, 204; 1950s, 137
Longest staircase no longer in existence: Indian Trail steps, more than 1,000 wooden steps up Mt. Washington from Carson Street to the intersection of Shaler Street and Grandview Avenue, Duquesne Heights
For more information about Pittsburgh’s steps, visit: www.saveoursteps.org
Source: Bob Regan, author of “The Steps of Pittsburgh: Portrait of a City”
Tony LaRussa can be reached at tlarussa@tribweb.com.
-
Mellon cutting ties with historic building
By Patricia Sabatini,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, March 03, 2005Mellon Financial Corp. has decided not to renew its lease at Two Mellon Center, Downtown, ending its ties with a building that harks back to Mellon’s roots as financier to the nation’s corporate chieftains.
Mellon, which declined to say how much space it occupies or how many employees work at the ornate, Gothic-style structure also known as the Union Trust Building, said the move was an effort to cut costs.
Employees will be relocated in phases to the company’s three other Downtown buildings before the lease expires in May 2006, Mellon spokesman Ken Herz said.
Those buildings include Mellon’s headquarters on Grant, known as One Mellon Center; the adjacent Client Services Center; and 525 William Penn Place, also known as Three Mellon Center. Mellon has about 6,300 employees Downtown, Herz said.
In January, Mellon extended the lease at its headquarters building through 2028. The company owns the client services building and 525 William Penn Place, where it in turn leases space to Citizens Bank of Pennsylvania for its local headquarters. Citizens purchased Mellon’s banking operations in 2001.
The Union Trust Building, owned by the DeBartolo family since 1984, opened in 1923 as the headquarters for the Union Trust Co., founded by the Mellon and Frick families. The Mellon family’s banking operations merged with the Union Trust Co. in 1946 to form Mellon National Bank and Trust Co.
Herz said Mellon still planned to hold its annual meeting in the auditorium at Two Mellon this May.
(Patricia Sabatini can be reached at psabatini@post-gazette.com or 412-263-3066.)
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette