Category Archive: Threatened Historic Resources
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Renovation of Edgewood train station back in limbo
By Joe Grata,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Saturday, February 19, 2005Renovation of Edgewood’s historic train station will have to wait. Again.
The Port Authority board’s engineering and construction committee yesterday recommended rejecting all bids for the train station improvements and rehabilitation of the Swissvale Avenue and Whitney Avenue pedestrian tunnels under the Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway Extension.
Engineering and Construction Manager Henry Nutbrown said the low bid for only the general construction portion of the project was $715,000, well more than the $420,000 estimate. The electrical and heating-ventilation low bids totaling $124,000 also exceeded estimates.
“We believe the proper course is to step back, redesign and reduce the scope of the project” in order to bring costs closer to budget, he said.
A group of Edgewood officials and residents fought the 2.3-mile busway extension for more than a decade. Consequently, the Port Authority dropped the local improvements from plans and went ahead with the busway, anyhow.
The buses-only road opened between Wilkinsburg and Swissvale-Rankin in July 2003. A year later, the borough and the authority reached agreement on changes to the 1,500-square-foot train station. Now housing an antique shop and real estate office, the historic building is adjacent to the busway at the bottom of Maple Avenue.
Once the scaled-back renovations are done, the Port Authority is to lease the building to Edgewood for a nominal amount for 29 years. The borough is to use it for community purposes.
In other business, the authority board:
* Recommended a $2,450,000 extension of an agreement with consultant Booz Allen to oversee a $151 million contract to buy 28 light-rail vehicles and rehabilitate 40 old LRVs, all by late next year.
So far, all 28 new cars have been shipped; 14 are used in daily service. The first two old vehicles have been rehabilitated and are being tested on South Hills tracks; five more have been shipped to CAF USA’s plant in Elmira, N.Y., for work.
* Gave preliminary approval to a maximum $400,000 extension of a $6.6 million contract with a group of consulting firms to continue work on a draft environmental impact statement for a proposed high-speed, magnetically levitated train between Pittsburgh International Airport and Greensburg.
Maglev Inc. and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, partners in the maglev project, are awaiting Federal Railway Administration approval to release the statement for a 45-day public comment period and four public hearings. They expect those proceedings to take place this spring.
* Heard Nutbrown report continuing progress on development of an intermodal transportation facility in Robinson. By this time next year, he said work is expected to be under way on an 820-space park-n- ride lot and on Montour Run Road improvements at The Pointe at North Fayette retail center.
* Was told staff and Bethel Park officials are working toward what Nubrown called “a satisfactory outcome” to the municipality’s plans to impose a 10 percent parking tax on the authority’s new 2,200- space parking garage at the South Hills Village T station.
“The tax at this time would be counterproductive to our efforts and could result in reduced ridership,” Nutbrown said, rather than boost ridership after $500 million in light-rail improvements over the past several years.
(Joe Grata can be reached at jgrata@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1985.)
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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Mon-Fayette Expressway extension will leave a heavy impression – Road cuts into history
By Patricia Lowry,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Friday, December 10, 2004All along the 24 miles from Jefferson Hills to Oakland, the newly approved northern leg of the Mon-Fayette Expressway will cut through populated areas, affecting historic buildings and cultural and natural landscapes.
Older communities will be dwarfed and divided by an elevated, four-lane, limited-access toll road, and pristine hillsides will be sacrificed. Nowhere will its impact be felt more than in Braddock, Duck Hollow, Hazelwood and Turtle Creek.
The $2 billion project, which was given a go-ahead yesterday by the Federal Highway Administration, was 12 years in planning and is expected to take some 10 more years to build.
Here’s a look at the path it will cut:
After leaving Duquesne and crossing the Monongahela River, the highway would divide into two branches — heading east into Turtle Creek and west into Braddock, with both branches eventually connecting to the Parkway East.
It will run through North Braddock between Bell and Braddock avenues on concrete piers, then swoop down into Braddock, where it will travel through the borough on an elevated, earthen berm 25 feet high and 300 feet wide. It will run between Talbot and Woodlawn avenues, partly on an abandoned railroad right of way, then through several blocks now occupied by a mixture of houses and vacant lots.
The toll road will require the demolition of 73 buildings in Braddock and North Braddock that until earlier this year had been eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The state Bureau for Historic Preservation determined the district no longer qualified as historic due to a loss of integrity caused by demolitions.
But many historic buildings remain, including the Clawson brick row houses that lie in the expressway’s path, at 1223-1229 Braddock Avenue. Built between 1908 and 1915 by John Clawson and Thomas Scott, they are considered good examples of steelworker housing, although they now are vacant and deteriorating.
The highway would separate most of Braddock and all of North Braddock from the riverfront, with access only via tunnels through the berm.
It also would alter a landscape with historical significance: Braddock’s Field, site of a major battle in the French and Indian War. The battle site, on a hill in North Braddock, will overlook the expressway.
At Duck Hollow, perhaps the city’s smallest and most isolated neighborhood only two houses lie in the expressway’s path, neither of them deemed historic.
The Hollow is snuggled in a recessed valley where Nine Mile Run meets the Monongahela River, where blue heron and other water fowl often can be found. The highway’s impact on the riverfront and its green hillside from Nine Mile Run to Hazelwood is a great concern, said city planner Patrick Hassett.
While the turnpike commission will try to elevate the highway on piers, engineers don’t yet have enough information about the composition of the hillside to know exactly how to treat it.
“We may see some retaining wall there,” Hassett said.
The commission will work with the Nine Mile Run Design Advisory Team to address the highway’s overall appearance and scarring of the hillside. The commission suggests color, texture and detail-enhancing materials on retaining walls and roadway structures.
In Hazelwood, the expressway will be sunk 25 feet below street level at Gloster Street. New bridges would carry Elizabeth and Tecumseh streets and Hazelwood Avenue across the expressway. Three at-grade covers would be built over the toll road, each about 600 feet long, to allow parking and public open space on top and provide areas for potential new development.
The right-of-way would take 10 acres from the 222-acre National Register-eligible historic district, removing 18 structures. The most significant are a two-story, red brick L-shaped house with Italianate influences, built by James Barker in 1875, and the former D.L. Thomas dry goods store, built about 1895, which retains its original storefront and ornamental brickwork.
“Hazelwood is still evolving,” Hassett said. “The one big concession they made was to depress the highway but many of the other impacts were deferred to the final design stage.”
At Bates Street, where the toll road will connect with the Parkway East, the turnpike commission also has opted for a full interchange connecting to the Boulevard of the Allies, with ramps flanking and then traveling above Bates Street as it climbs to the boulevard. One of the ramps would eradicate the Shrine to the Blessed Mother, tucked away in a hillside grotto overlooking the parkway. About 25 buildings also would be demolished, although none are thought to have historical significance.
The highway’s eastern spur, after leaving Duquesne and crossing the Mon, would pass under two of the five concrete arches of the Westinghouse Bridge, erected in 1930 with a central span that was, at 460 feet, then the broadest concrete arch in the country.
The expressway would travel 60 feet above the borough of Turtle Creek on concrete piers. Its visual impact on Turtle Creek would be high, reports the turnpike commission’s Environmental Impact Statement, “since the overhead structure would extend across the downtown.”
The highway would come within 75 to 85 feet of three historic churches — St. Colman, McMasters Methodist and United Presbyterian.
As the expressway moves into final design, local preservation groups yesterday called for more study, reinvestment in existing infrastructure and features that would minimize the impact on hillsides and historic neighborhoods.
“We felt that the transportation industry had not proven the economic benefits” of the highway, “nor did they justify the exceptional cost,” said Arthur P. Ziegler, Jr., president of Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
“We now are facing major invasive surgery,” said Rob Pfaffmann, president of Preservation Pittsburgh. “We need to look for every opportunity to keep the road from cutting off arteries to historic neighborhoods, sites and riverfronts.”
(Patricia Lowry can be reached at plowry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1590.)
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No decision reached on Woodland Hills’ East Junior High location
By Mike Scheinberg
Wednesday, December 08, 2004Woodland Hills school board members wrapped up their final session of the year last week without reaching a consensus on a location for a new East Junior High School.
So any vote on the school’s future will not be made until next year. Cost of the new building would be at least $17.1 million.
Board President Cynthia Lowery said she hopes a final decision can be reached at the January board meeting.
Lowery added that none of the municipalities in the school district seems to want the school.
“We are not getting encouragement from any of them,” she said. “But we have to put the school somewhere.”
Lowery, who still favors the Eastmont School site in Wilkins, said the current East Junior High site in Turtle Creek could be used for stadium parking.
“Eastmont is the best site available,” Lowery said. “East and West junior highs should be similar. The property down in Turtle Creek is too small.”
Board member Linda Cole agreed with Lowery.
“A new building in Turtle Creek would have to be three or four stories. New buildings like that are not being built these days outside of the cities,” Cole said.
“We have to do what is best for the children of the district,” Lowery said. “It is a little disheartening that nobody seems to want the junior high building in their community.”
The board is split on where to locate the school. Three possible sites have been under consideration. They include the present site, Eastmont and a site next to Woodland Hills High School in Churchill.
Board member Randy Lott said he favors keeping the school in Turtle Creek.
“The presence of the junior high there is important for the community,” Lott said. He added that he is not overly concerned about the new Mon Valley Expressway in Turtle Creek. Other board members have expressed concerns about noise and safety.
School board members planned to meet with Turtle Creek council members this week to discuss the junior high further.
Board member Robert Tomasic has indicated a preference for combining the district’s two junior highs into one big school near the high school. But Churchill police said they are against this proposal because they don’t want to patrol another large school building in the borough.
Cole said there are too many pupils for one junior high building.
“This is a huge decision,” Lott said. “We need to take our time with this.”
Approved at last week’s board meeting was a $2 million capital improvement plan for the schools. Business Manager Richard Day said the money would come from the district’s capital reserve fund and still leave about $3 million in the fund.
The list of improvements included $300,000 in upgrades to fields, tracks and scoreboards at several schools. Other projects included replacing carpet at Dickson and Rankin, repairing restrooms, installing new lockers at the high school, repairing roofs and upgrading libraries.
In other action, Lowery was re-elected board president and Marilyn Messina was re-elected vice president in the annual board reorganization meeting.
(Mike Scheinberg is a freelance writer.)
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Historic church closes its doors forever
By Megan McCloskey
TRIBUNE REVIEW
Tuesday, December 7, 2004The statue of the Virgin Mary still sits atop the hill where generations of Croatians have prayed in the grotto beneath her, but it has been almost a month since worshipers last attended Mass in their historic church.
Despite parishioners’ fight to save the building from the wrecking ball, the St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church building on Route 28 will close permanently today.The 100-year-old church needs repairs the parish cannot afford and has been closed since mid-November because of a boiler leaking carbon monoxide, said the Rev. Ron Lengwin, spokesman for the Diocese of Pittsburgh.
Robert Sladack, who has been attending the church for 70 years, said he is heartbroken. Sladack was baptized, schooled and married at the East Ohio Street church.
“I was hoping to have my funeral there,” he said.
The Rev. Gabriel Badurina, pastor of St. Nicholas parish, said he understood parishioners’ feelings of loss and pain, “but life has to move on.” The parish has two churches. The other is in Millvale.
The St. Nicholas parish is not alone in that sentiment.
Two other parishes this year have had to look at consolidating buildings, joining 17 others that have done so since 1994.
Good Samaritan Parish in Ambridge closed three of its four buildings this fall. St. John Vianney Parish, which encompasses several south Pittsburgh neighborhoods, has sent a proposal to Bishop Donald Wuerl for approval to do the same thing.
From 1988 to 1994, 48 church buildings closed during Wuerl’s reorganization and revitalization plan that was aimed at adjusting the diocese to better fit the changing demographics of Catholics in Pittsburgh, Lengwin said.
Many of the Catholic churches in Pittsburgh had been formed by European immigrants who came to the city to work the coal mines and steel mills. Croatians settled in the North Side and founded St. Nicholas, the first Croatian Catholic church in North America.
Keeping the church open is “extremely important” to keeping Croatian traditions alive in Pittsburgh, Sladack said. He is co-chairman on the Preserve Croatian Heritage Foundation, formed after the parish voted in 2000 to close the building.
“We are not giving up the fight,” Sladack said.
However, the diocese said closing the church is a way to preserve a Croatian heritage that is dwindling along with the numbers of parishioners. With the consolidation, Lengwin said, the 400 members of the two-church parish — which had 900 members in 1994 — can go to Mass together in Millvale. Badurina also will increase the number of Masses celebrated in the Croatian tongue to one a week, up from one a month, Lengwin said.
Both churches were recommended for closure during the diocese’s reorganization plan, but Wuerl wouldn’t let that happen because of the need for preserving Croatian culture, Lengwin said.
“These are not easy decisions to make,” he said. “Everyone’s been given time to see if there was a solution to this problem.”
Members of the foundation said they don’t think their proposals to save the church were given adequate consideration by the pastor or the diocese.
“They just wanted to close the church,” said Jack Schmitt, a board member with both the foundation and Pittsburgh Preservation.
Both groups lobbied successfully to get the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to reconsider its plans to widen Route 28, two of which included razing the church.
After the East Ohio Street building earned a historical designation by the city, the Catholic Diocese successfully lobbied to have churches excluded from any further landmark designations, said Cathy McCollom, chief programs officer for the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
Megan McCloskey can be reached at mmccloskey@tribweb.com.
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University Club art to be auctioned
By Melissa Meinzer
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, October 25, 2004A venerable Oakland institution is on the way out – and so are all the treasures.
The University Club, the 114-year-old social club for university graduates, will cease operations on Nov. 15. Members decided to dissolve the club last week, due to low membership and money woes. So what’s to become of the club — displaced members, the impressive art collection, the beautiful eight-story building on University Drive?The city is pulling together around its fallen comrade, with many hands pitching in to help.
“We would welcome them to join our long, rich history of family and culture,” said Keith Zimmer, general manager of the Concordia Club, nearby on O’Hara Street. “They’re our neighbors. We’re sad to see them go.” The Concordia Club has been open for nearly 130 years.
The Concordia would accommodate parties or events that had already been booked at the University Club, if those dates were available at the Concordia, Zimmer said.
Jeanne Davis, general manager of the Pittsburgh chapter of the Harvard-Yale-Princeton Club, Downtown on William Penn Place, echoed Zimmer’s sentiments.
“We have extended an invitation to them to join if they’re interested,” Davis said. “We hope they will.”
The collection in the University Club – 60 paintings and 170 lots — will be auctioned off by Constantine & Mayer, Inc., of Oakmont on Nov. 20, in the Adams Room. The collection includes furniture, paintings and other art.
“It’s a world-class collection,” said Jeff Constantine of Constantine & Mayer, containing important Italian, English, and American works, many with ties to Pittsburgh.
He said that the club and the auction house agreed it was important to hold the auction in the city, despite national and international interest in the collection.
“We’re hoping that 80 percent stays in Pittsburgh,” Constantine said. “We know that a number of members are interested, as are some affluent Pittsburgh collectors.”
The fate of the building itself is unknown. Completed in 1923, it was designed by Henry Hornbostel, who also designed Soldiers & Sailors National Military Museum & Memorial and much of the campus of Carnegie Mellon University.
“We understand the difficulty these clubs have these days,” said Arthur Zeigler, president of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. “We just hope that a new use can be found for the building.”
He said that the interior could easily be made functional for modern use, and that its strategic location made it an asset to the Oakland community. The Foundation would assist anyone looking to update and use the facility, he said.
“Architecturally, it is a handsome building,” he said. “We’d like to see it reused, not demolished. I’m optimistic.”
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A piece of this
Want to own a piece of history? Stop by the auction of the University Club’s art, artifacts and furniture on Nov. 20. The sale begins at 11 a.m. with previews Wednesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the morning of the sale.
Call the auction house, Constantine & Mayer, at (412) 828-7015 for more details. Open up your piggy bank!Some of the paintings up for auction:
“Arch and the Sea, Venice 1927.” Beppi Ciardi. Italian. Estimated at $15,000 $20,000.
“Mignon, 1921.” Malcolm Stephens Parcell. Pittsburgh. Estimated at $10,000-$15,000.
“The Bath.” Claude Gaston De Latouche. French. Estimated at $20,000-$30,000.
“Spring Landscape.” Christian J. Walter. Pittsburgh. Estimated $8000-$10,000.
“Laurel Ridge.” William J. Hyett. Pittsburgh. Estimated $3000-$5000.
“Abraham Lincoln.” John Gutzon Mothe Borglum. American. Estimated $15,000-$20,000.
– Estimates courtesy Constantine & Mayer, IncMelissa Meinzer can be reached at mmeinzer@tribweb.com.
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Winchester Thurston needs expansion space at its Hampton campus – This barn free for the taking
By Jill Cueni-Cohen
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Wednesday, September 08, 2004Since opening its doors in 1987, the Winchester Thurston School in Hampton has retained the feel of a charming little farm.
“This area used to be an old horse farm, and the upper field used to be the outdoor arena,” said Nancy Rogers, director of the campus on Middle Road, which houses kindergarten through fifth grade. “The farmhouse holds our fifth-grade class, and they’re known as the Farm House Gang. [The property] also has a springhouse. … We had it renovated, and it’s used as an auxiliary science center, now called the Pond House because it’s down by the pond.”
A white, 4,000-square-foot Dutch-style barn with a gambrel roof completes the pastoral scene.
But it won’t be there for long.
Eighty pupils attend the Hampton location of the independent day school, which has its main campus in Shadyside. But more are expected, so the school plans to expand — and the barn has to go.
Rather than tear it down, though, school officials are offering to give it away — as long as the taker complies with several requirements, the most important being that the barn is dismantled and removed from the site in its entirety.
Although the barn is used only for storage, the pupils enjoy having it on their campus and have been preparing for the loss by drawing pictures and writing poems about it, Rogers said.
“Everyone’s attached to the barn because it’s part of our landscape and is visually nice to look at,” she said. “One day there was a science class going on, and our janitor was in the hay loft, helping them do an egg-drop experiment. It was such a cute thing to see.”
Inquiries about the barn, which was built around 1940, have come from as far away as Oklahoma in response to an e-mail that was circulated by the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, said Eric Harrison, program and construction manager for both Winchester Thurston campuses.
Gwyneth Windon, culture and heritage programs manager at Oklahoma’s tourism department, said the group was hoping to save the barn from destruction.
“We love barns, but we don’t have the money to move it,” she said. “I wish I was a philanthropist and could just say, ‘Move it here,’ but it’s not old enough to be of interest to certain people. I called because I just wanted to see if there was a chance we could help.”
The majority of the inquiries have been from local people. “Most are people who need a barn for their working farm,” Harrison said, “and some are parties affiliated with the Amish, who are experts in this field.
“One individual has a cut-flower business and wants it to become a part of their operation; another lost his barn in a fire and needed it to be replaced,” he added. “There’s a whole spectrum of people in the business of agriculture and commerce that need it to fulfill some of their business requirements. The response we’re getting indicates that people are seeing a great deal of value in the barn.”
Harrison said Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy, who has a farm in the northern suburbs, called him about the possibility of removing the barn. Indiana Township engineer Jim Mitnick considered but then dismissed the notion of taking the barn. “I looked at the barn, but because it’s 100 percent nailed, it would be [too difficult] to take down and rebuild. It’s also made of nothing but 2x4s and 2x6s, and there’s absolutely no value there.”
Mitnick added that he has had some experience in barn relocation, but it’s preferable to work with a barn that’s been assembled with a combination of pegs and nails. “With a peg barn, you can pull the nailed members off easily and disassemble the barn. It took my barn four days to take apart. It would take four months to get all the nails out of the barn [at Winchester Thurston], and you would end up ruining 50 percent of the wood.”
Mitnick said he thought the school should bulldoze the structure and be done with it. “There’s nothing historical about it and not one decent piece of wood in the entire barn.”
Despite Mitnick’s assessment, Harrison is still optimistic that the barn will find a good home.
“It has a second floor and a first floor, which opens onto grade,” he described, “and its condition is rated from good to excellent. There’s been no penetration of the elements to cause deterioration in the structure, and no break or deterioration in the frame work or the roofing. I think it’s very attractive, and with some work, it can be made even more so.”
The school plans to construct a building that will contain a large multipurpose room, a music room and a glass-enclosed art room that will overlook the pond.
“This is part of the construction we have planned for both campuses,” Rogers said, adding that the school expects it to be finished for the 2004-05 school year.
The new building will retain rural, country elements, she said.
Jack Miller, director of gift planning for the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, commended the school for trying to save the barn.
Miller said that the foundation, which runs a rural preservation network, looked at adapting the barn to become a visitor center for its historic Neville House in Collier, but its style was not of the right period.
“We saw that we couldn’t make an adaptive use for the barn, but we didn’t want to see it destroyed,” said Miller. He and the foundation’s preservation expert went through the barn and did not see any problems with the wood, which could be used in a number of ways.
“Wood is expensive,” he said. “And if the structure can be adapted, who’s to say you shouldn’t do that? Who cares what anyone says?”
“Harrison has received all these calls, and my guess is that someone will take him up on this offer. For decades, people have told us that historic preservation doesn’t make sense, and for years we’ve been proving that it does,” added Miller, noting that Station Square, the location of the foundation’s home, is a perfect example of preservation gone right. “If a person can find a creative way to use something, it makes sense to encourage them.”
Miller said it’s heartening to hear how many people are interested in saving the barn. “Just the fact that there’s a barn left [in Pittsburgh] is amazing. What this tells me is that people have a sense of the significance of preservation. Adaptive use is really the key to our future.”
(Jill Cueni-Cohen is a freelance writer.)
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Historic status for ex-factory site crumbling
By Sandra Tolliver
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, June 24, 2004The owner of the former Nabisco bakery in East Liberty has asked the city to withdraw a nomination to designate the building a historic site because the property owner was not party to the request.
The Historic Review Commission bylaws, however, say a nomination can be withdrawn only by the nominator, although a building’s owner has the right to speak at a public hearing.Both the Regional Industrial Development Corp. (RIDC), which owns the building, and the Young Preservationists, which nominated it for city historic status, will send representatives to the commission’s July 7 meeting.
Robert Stephenson, president of RIDC, said historian Lu Donnelly should have contacted his organization to discuss the idea before nominating the former Nabisco factory. Donnelly filed the nomination on behalf of the Young Preservationists as a member of the group’s advisory board.
“I think it’s very rude for people to take it upon themselves, without discussion, to go forth and make a nomination like that,” Stephenson said.
In a June 14 letter to the city’s Department of Planning, the RIDC president had asked the historic-preservation staff to withdraw the nomination.
“We certainly weren’t trying to ruffle anybody’s feathers,” said Deborah Gross, vice chair of the Young Preservationists.
She said the organization still believes the Nabisco plant is a valuable part of Pittsburgh’s history.
“It’s significant architecturally. It’s significant in terms of national industrial history,” Gross said. “It’s certainly a visual landmark and a real place-making piece of architecture for the East End.”
Nabisco built the factory in 1918 and operated it until 1998. A second operator, Bake-Line Group, reopened the plant as a bakery for four years but closed it in March.
RIDC — a private, nonprofit economic-development corporation — continues to evaluate proposals for the building’s re-use, Stephenson said.
“We’re trying to do something with the property, and it will be done in a first-class, quality fashion,” Stephenson said, declining to comment on specifics of any proposals. “The bakery concept is still being somewhat looked at.”
Historic designation by the city does not affect a building’s use but does require approval by the Historic Review Commission if a property owner wants to alter a building’s exterior, change signage or demolish a building.
Sandra Tolliver can be reached at stolliver@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7840.
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Route 28 plan called intrusive by some
By Joe Grata,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, June 17, 2004A number of Pittsburgh groups, including the Riverlife Task Force, have suggested that the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and its consultant go back to the drawing board with alternatives for rebuilding Route 28.
They suggested that a new PennDOT “hybrid” plan, with six miles of retaining walls 40 to 60 feet high along a two-mile stretch between the North Side and Millvale, would gouge the hillside and fly in the face of efforts to preserve and enhance Pittsburgh’s famous river corridors.
The hybrid grew out of recommendations made a year ago, and thought to have been embraced by PennDOT, to minimize the walls, save historic St. Nicholas Church and homes atop Troy Hill, and create a less intrusive urban boulevard that would still provide for a nonstop flow of traffic on Route 28.
But many of 120 people who turned out for an open house at the Washington’s Landing at Herrs Island boathouse yesterday expressed disappointment with the new proposal.
“We really thought a design would be presented to accomplish goals that I thought we agreed to,” said Ted McConnell, chairman of the Riverlife Task Force Transportation Committee.
The task force has sent a protest to state Transportation Secretary Allen D. Biehler.
“What’s bad is that they still have monstrous retaining walls,” said George White, speaking for the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. He accused PennDOT of pussyfooting about acquiring the railroad land below Route 28 at the expense of digging into the hillside next to the roadway.
“We still haven’t recovered from scars on the landscape” when PennDOT carved Route 28 into the bottom of high hills farther up the Allegheny Valley, said Terry Wirginis, president of the Gateway Clipper Fleet that operates cruises on the three rivers.
As a resident of Indiana Township, Wirginis said, he would have no problem commuting on a new Route 28 with a 35 mph speed limit instead of the 45 mph limit that is part of PennDOT’s proposal.
PennDOT revealed last week that it had narrowed an original 11 alternatives for rebuilding the congested stretch of Route 28 to three options, including a new one known as “Alternative 6M.”
That option, expected to cost an estimated $180 million, includes an urban-type of boulevard with curbs and sidewalks at the North Side/East Ohio Street end — a feature that has seemed to generate little opposition in two meetings held thus far.
It’s the other end, starting just east of St. Nicholas Church, that has drawn the criticism. PennDOT proposes higher speeds, limited-access features with 10-foot-wide shoulders and wider ramps. While those may be safer, they also require more horizontal space, and therefore multiple retaining walls, from the 31st Street Bridge to the 40th Street Bridge.
For example, a profile of PennDOT’s plan shows four “thru” lanes, two ramps, barriers and all shoulders would take up 136 feet of horizontal space compared with 92 feet in the Riverlife Task Force’s plan, which was prepared by an independent consulting engineer versed in urban highway design.
The task force plan also proposes several “steps” or much lower walls where trees and shrubs would be planted, as well as landscaped plazas at the two bridges and Rialto Street, where all local traffic would intersect.
Lisa Schroeder said the task force does not want to delay PennDOT’s timetable, which calls for starting four years of construction in fall 2008.
“Early community consensus can help move it through the federal approval process,” she said. “We also think using our proposal around the most critical point [the 31st Street Bridge] will save time and money.”
PennDOT design development engineer Todd Kravits said he and the state’s consultant, Michael Baker Inc., which has been paid about $10 million so far, thought the changes made in Alternative 6M would satisfy diverse public and private interests while maintaining consistency with the rest of Route 28.
Kravits said the department would be happy to meet again with the Riverlife Task Force but said the group should be more specific and provide more information about its demands.
A third and final open house will be held from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Tuesday on the 31st floor of the Regional Enterprise Tower, Downtown. Formal public hearings are to be held in the fall.