Mar 31 2009
Nothing's simple anymore, you think as you sit outside your favorite coffeehouse, smoking and sipping a latte at the same time!
Relegated to the cold, you at least have a place to sit.
But you were right. Nothing is simple anymore. Now the law has come to sidewalk cafes.
Actually, the law has been there. The current law requires that a business buy a permit to establish a sidewalk cafe. But so many business owners don't and don't get caught unless someone complains.
As of Jan. 1, 2010, establishments will have to display a permit on the front window.
City Council voted unanimously, with Doug Shields absent, to approve a bill that Bruce Kraus crafted with help from every branch of the city's administration to change the definition of and enforcement over seating that takes up part of a sidewalk.
Before you think this is another effort of Big Brother, let Bruce Kraus explain, as he did recently when discussing his bill: "The law has been vague," he said. "It's too brief and doesn't address a lot of questions." For instance, "it wasn't clear where to go for the permit."
As of 1-1-'10, you go to the Department of Public Works. You give them $25, a flat fee, instead of paying per square foot - another change in his bill. DPW, which will enforce -- not the Bureau of Building Inspection -- will mark the parameters of your cafe area. It has to be no further out from a storefront than five feet. If you don't have five feet, you have to leave at least 36 inches for a wheelchair to pass. You also have to go see the folks at Building Inspection to get your site plan approved. It has to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act, for starters.
The new law will allow any establishment, even a bookstore that serves coffee, to put out some tables. The current law stipulates that sidewalk cafes be adjuncts of restaurants only. No one can grandfather in with seating plazas beyond five feet; but they can petition for an exception.
Mr. Kraus was visibly proud when he introduced his legislation, which took three months of planning and brought people from public works, public safety, zoning and the legal department together.
Permits will have to be renewed every year, but he promised a more streamlined process, based on a model in Chicago.
Promising a streamlined process is a risky thing to do, whether it pertains to hobbling through the brambles of the city's multi-layered system to get any business started or to how things really go down on the street. Residents of the South Side know something about that.
They may be glad to know that chairs and tables must come in by 2 a.m. No last-call lingering.
Mr. Kraus called his bill "a more user-friendly system for business."
We have eight more months before we see how simple things may become.
Mar 26 2009
Two prime-real estate mud pits have stakeholders in our city's most tourist-prone neighborhood livid.
A half dozen residents and advocates of Mount Washington implored CIty Council at a hearing yesterday to do something to make Craig Cozza either finish developments on Grandview Avenue or fence them properly until he can.
They can't be called developments at this point since nothing has happened for years. The larger project is in the 1400 block of Grandview. The smaller is at 341.
Resident Don Decker expressed "frustration that the city permits developers but does not oversee that the development proceeds."
Chris Beichner, executive director of Mount Washington's Community Development Corporation, said the lots are "unsightly and dangerous" because the fencing is not adequate and trespassers push it down. "Why not ask developers to meet a timeline? And then the city should enforce these timelines."
"More than 1 million visitors walk along Grandview Avenue" every year, he said. "We're disgusted and embarrassed" that they have to see Cozza's mud pits.
Frank Valenta, who lives near Sweetbriar, said he has asked for council's intervention six times since the "first mess" started. He said that was 10 years ago. "All of you council people have a stake in what we're here for," he said. "The view!
"It's a crime, and it's immoral, what one developer is allowed to get away with on a major street in Pittsburgh."
Cozza Enterprises' website claims it "strives to temper the visions of a new Pittsburgh with the city's neighborhood principle. Its philosophy is to meld creative new designs with the existing fabric of Pittsburgh's communities."
It's safe to say that mud, weeds and floppy fences don't meld with the fabric of Grandview, which is wow central in Pittsburgh.
"I know," Mr. Cozza said yesterday. "It has been a long time." He said he just got clear of a lawsuit with one of the residents. It held up the large project, near Sweetbriar Street, which is to be 37 condos, he said. The smaller one is 14 condos.
"All the plans are being finished up now and i really think we will be able to start the smaller project this year. I'm more confident we are going to get that financed, and we're probably going to put that project out to bid this spring.
"It's been a long hard road," he said. "You can't get financing when you have a lawsuit hanging over your head." He said he bought the larger property seven years ago. It has been three years since he got a building permit for the other one.
"Now is a difficult time to be building condos. We will do it as fast as we can. We would love to get it going. We had issues with neighbors" over both projects. They were against the projects getting started when it looked like they were going somewhere and now they are angry they have gone nowhere.
"It hasn't been fun," he said. "For what it's worth, i'm tired it has taken so long, too."
For what it's worth, Council isn't sure what it can do when a project is privately funded.Stakeholders want a law, pertinent to any developer, that would say, simply: Make sure you can finish in a certain time or lose the land.
In the meantime, said Coucilman Bruce Kraus, "let's enforce the laws we have: Require him to keep the property safe,"
A strong fence and weed clearing isn't too much to ask. Mr. Cozza has promised imminent action in the past. This is yet another wait-and-see thing... with another tourist season almost in bloom.
Mar 24 2009
That must be my party, I think as I enter Del's Cafe on Brownsville Road. A young woman, her eyes sparkling, stands up to motion me to the booth where three other people are sparkling. For the next hour or so, Natalia Rudiak, her father John Rudiak and friends Alice Vaday and Brandon Dilla hold a neighborhood love-fest while I take notes.
Usually, I have an inkling of a place's condition before its advocates regale me with examples. But the only thing I had heard about Carrick was its momentum has shifted and it could tip either way. It used to be bedrock stable but, as in so many places, slumlords, vacancies, litter, graffiti and crimes have encroached.
That's true in some of the city's most vibrant neighborhoods. Next topic...
At the Tree Tenders training I took in February, arborist Matt Erb of Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest (FPUF) said some of the most enthusiastic and effective tree advocates live in Carrick. More recently, Boris Weinstein, Pittsburgh's king of the redd-up and chair of the Clean Pittsburgh Commission, sent me a list of winners of the first-ever Bob awards -- named for the late Mayor Bob O'Connor, who started the "Redd Up" campaign. Carrick was "most improved." He put me in touch with Dawn Harder.
Dawn and her husband moved here from Colorado three years ago and "have fallen in love with Carrick," she said. She started the Carrick Litter Patrol last year.
Litter education is "a challenge," she said. Besides its own litter, Carrick gets blown garbage from Route 51, she said. But 50-60 people turned out for the big spring clean-up last year and several volunteers keep their own blocks picked up. She is working with schools to get children involved and agitating for more trash cans and recycling bins on Brownsville Road and in recreation areas.
Dawn is like Boris in her enthusiasm for litter control. Boris spawned a movement when he started Citizens Against Litter in Shadyside several years ago. His energy is contagious. He soon had a network of volunteers and was helping other neighborhoods organize. The Earth Day redd-up he orchestrates every year brings out thousands of people in almost every city neighborhood and dozens of surrounding boroughs. Those clean-ups are scheduled for April 19, 24 and 25, depending on the groups. (For more information, contact Boris at boris.weinstein@verizon.net.)
For Carrick, last year was the big ramp-up year. Dawn's litter patrol started officially last spring, about when John Rudiak and Joe Krynock started pondering the history of Hornaday Road and ended up founding the Carrick-Overbrook Historical Society. They have been collecting old photos and documents in the Carnegie Library branch.
Last year, a new Sprout fund mural inspired Brandon Dilla to get more involved in the Carrick Community Council, and last year, Alice and Natalia took the training to be tree tenders. All three have become active in the community council, which brought the Carrick Corn Festival back last year from a 3-4 year hiatus.
Carrick has had its champions over the years, but this little band has overlapped its attentions so that tree tenders serve on the community council and petitioned for a mural and established a web site and collect emails on clipboards in the grocery aisles. Alice, a Realtor who has lived in the neighborhood for 35 years, also collects emails when she sells houses.
Carrick is getting 60 new trees this year from TreeVItalize, and Alice has been stumping to get enough permissions to plant that many. The web site www.carrick-overbrook.org has 31,000 hits in less than a year.. Other neighborhood sites include www.carrickcommunity.com and the google group carrickPA@googlegroups.com.
"We are trying to make connections," said Natalia, 29, who was born and raised in Carrick, lived away for several years and has returned. She is a community-development consultant to non-profits.
Sitting in the booth at Del's beside her father, her hands making tumbling motions, she is excited about all the things the group wants to do. "We'd like to have a house tour, and do a thing like the doors of Ireland: the stained-glass of Carrick. But we have to be patient."
Carrick's fan base sounds like the fan base of many neighborhoods. They tout the best schools, great old houses that are affordable, a rich history and a whole lot of people who feel as they do.
Family ties brought Brandon Dilla up the hill from Brentwood after he graduated from college. He is 26 and lives in the house his grandparents raised his mother in. His friends in the East End ask him why in the world he lives in Carrick. "I'm not trying to be non-conformist, but I don't want to live somewhere that everyone has already found," he said. "Plus there's the connection to my grandparents."
He pulls out a photo from 1971. In it, his mother, just married, is kissing her father goodbye. Two ladies with up-do '70s coifs sit on a couch in the background. "Those women still live next door," Brandon said. "They keep an eye out for my house."
"Our neighbors next door are the same," said John Rudiak. "We all take care of each other."
"I've never felt more at home anywhere in the world than I have in this neighborhood," said Alice, a self-described Navy brat who grew up in San Diego. "But no one knows we're here." She said she sells fabulous houses for under $100,000 and even bought one. "The highest has been $130,000."
"We have had an issue of marketing Carrick," said Natalia. "We don't have a cupcake store or haute couture, but you can still afford a great house and a beer for 75 cents."
Mar 24 2009
Democracy-in-action can be a tiresome thing: Meeting after meeting, hearings ad nauseum, people saying the same thing over and over, cleaved to their cause, unswayed by the other guy and frustrated.
But if you're disinterested it can also be comic.
Last night's exhibition played out at Westwood Elementary, with lots of impressionable kids in attendance.
The tireless residents of Chicken Hill, a.k.a. Ridgemont, went at the tireless agents of SouthStar Development, with a panel of city council members, a couple of people from the Pittsburgh school board and a moderator who, it's a good bet, won't be accepting opportunities to keep order with a microphone anytime soon.
City Council may vote tomorrow on whether to rezone 10 acres to accommodate SouthStar's plan to build 178 residences called City Vista. The plan would abut the Parkway Center Mall.
Councilwoman Theresa Smith called the meeting to give anyone who had not yet opined or found out what was going on a last chance to know the facts, conjectures, alleged conspiracies and imminent disasters awaiting them. Fifty people came.
Greentree Borough has approved allowing 16 acres to be residential development within a commercial zone. That way, the Greentree portion could be developed as either one if the city does not rezone its land and the plan has to be altered.
Irving Firman, SouthStar's attorney, said the area is "ripe for development. The market forces are saying it, and we think this is a very good plan." Although the mall is moribund, he said hundreds of new (and better-off) people within walking distance should revive it. "Businesses go to where people are."
The six new buildings would be phased in over time, depending on the market, he said. One would be eight stories, with two levels of parking.
At one point, about two hours in, with one resident dangerously red in the face yelling about lies and another man yanking around in his seat like a dog on a tether, having warned about methane explosions the drilling will cause, moderator Johanna Murphy was looking like a teacher in the classroom from hell. She started out warning people about interjecting, then argued with people who persisted to interject, then seemed to give up.
Civil engineer Dan Deiseroth explained that the undermined land has been drilled without incident, but the methane guy in the audience said he doesn't believe they have drilled because we would have all been destroyed if they had. Interjections about water service, traffic and erosion rained down from the audience, with school and council panelists also interjecting.
Councilman Doug Shields stood up and opened his arms like a conductor.
This was supposed to be the developers' turn to talk and address questions that filled about six pages on a big easel that Ms. Murphy had compiled and it was already 9:30 and two questions had barely been broached.
"Listen!" yelled Mr. Shields. More quietly, he said, "Listen... to... the... answers. I want to hear the answers. Take a breath. Count to 10."
Chicken Hill is a nook of about 400 people in houses on sloping roads between the West End and Greentree. The kids have to play in the streets, traffic on Greentree Road is a headache and the residents say the water pressure defies indoor showers, but they extol a quality of life unmatched anywhere in the world.
"Pittsburgh is changing," said Lynn DeLorenzo, principal of DeLorenzo & Co., SouthStar's local partner. "This site will be developed." She said her firm is interested in making a place that is close to buses and not a contributor to sprawl. The plan is to reforest with native trees and build 65 percent of greenspace into the village.
"We felt that by not developing in a suburban market, people could reduce emissions."
But the plan calls for 650 parking spaces, a number required for the anticipated population.
"That doesn't seem very green-friendly," said Councilman Bruce Kraus.
Cars are a bane to Chicken Hill now, its residents say. One way in from Greentree Road, Hamburg Street, is a narrow, crumbling road two cars can't pass on. The developers say they need it but agreed to use it only for City Vista residents to come up, not go down. They also propose to widen it by three feet, but people of Hamburg say there aren't three feet to be had.
City Vista, if filled, would double the number of people now in Ridgemont. They would be considerably better off, paying housing prices in the hundreds of thousands, with their own clubhouse and pool and hiking trails. The current residents in their modest homes say they are getting nothing. One man implored city officials to "at least give us a park for our kids to play in."
"Their buildings will block the sun and I will be a mushroom," said one woman.
Another man thundered, "Let us alone!"
Mar 10 2009
Walkabout will be on vacation from March 11 until March 23. In the meantime, if you are a blogger posting about the city's neighborhoods, issues of comunity-building and urban living, send me your blog link.
My e-mail is djones@post-gazette.com.
I will monitor the submissions and link the most interesting to my blog to encourage conversations not just with me but among all of you.
Carry on.
Mar 10 2009
Flotilla Way is one of the ugly stepsisters of the city's street grid. Otherwise known as alleys, these poor little ways and lanes get no respect. They catch more litter than main thoroughfares, hold mountains of trash bags on garbage day and consider dandelions to be flowers.
They also seem to be the city's last priority.
Flotilla's name -- if inspired by a small fleet of ships -- is curious. Two cars can't pass each other without acting like novice tango partners, and, in fact, the roadbed is one-way. It runs furtively in the shadows of South Braddock Avenue through Regent Square. It reminds me of some of the roads in Central America. You go 10 miles-an-hour if you care about your car.
Stephen Neely, a music instructor at Carnegie-Mellon University and the High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, uses it to park in his garage. He is fed up by how much neglect it has suffered over the years and said he has been agitating on Flotilla Way's behalf for three years to no avail.
"Without trying to be overly dramatic, our cars have suffered," he said."It has been this bad three or four years." When the city does patch, he said, some of the patches add to the problem, being as high as the potholes are low.
But, of course, Flotilla is kin to hundreds of bumpy, rutted, crumbling arteries large and small that have to take a number in the city's long line-up of infrastructure needs.
Public Works director Guy Costa told City Council recently that pavement costs have "skyrocketed" and are the biggest part of the street resurfacing budget. Last week, Council approved spending $7 million for contracts to pay for hot-mix asphalt and asphalt milling, sawing and sealing cracks, truck rental, brick and block repair, handicap ramps, concrete replacement, equipment and labor,
The supplies, mechanics and labor of this endeavor cost $230,000 a mile. The city has 20,000 segments of street and one-third have been evaluated for the next round of triage. Mr.Costa said the department does not have a current 2009 paving list but will have by April.
Most city dwellers have an alley or a street condition that frets them and many feel like nuisances trying to get something done. It feels like being ignored.
Mr. Costa said that "311 calls are the best way to get our crews out."
The city, like most of us, has to scrimp on the budget it has, but if 311 is the best way, a lot of people must be wondering what the worst way is.
Mar 05 2009
Thanks to a bunch of happy louts in Oakland after the Steelers won the Super Bowl last month, furniture has become a burning issue on Grant Street.
City Council recently passed Bruce Kraus' legislation to make it a violation of city ordinance to keep upholstered furniture -- that clearly made to be inside a home -- on outdoor porches. Mr. Kraus had met with Oakland organizations, university officials and police to solve a universal campus problem after furniture left outdoors was burned in celebration the night of Feb. 1.
During council's recent deliberations, Councilman Ricky Burgess said he grew up spending evenings on the porch with family watching TV and implied that this practice is a cultural rite. He considered the proposed bill an intrusion on a way of life, especially among the lower socio-economic citizenry. He said he doesn't want to "prevent people from doing something they can do harmlessly."
In the end, the vote was unanimous.
Couches on porches are a sweet tradition, especially in parts of rural America. They aren't all susceptible to getting stinky, mildewed and ratty, but in rural parts, neighbors aren't near enough to care anyway.
Councilman Doug Shields pointed out the public health hazards associated with upholstered furniture left out where rain can dampen it and vermin and insects can take up residence.
"People have placed all sorts of junk on porches to the displeasure of their neighbors," he said, calling it a quality-of-life issue."
Councilwoman Tonya Payne said she could see both arguments, "but people should be mindful of what happens in Oakland every year." Not only are couches sometimes burned, but some of them fly. "To see a loveseat flying off a balcony with people below is scary."
"God forbid that in the midst of chaos and anarchy over a football game we lose a block or two of frame houses because someone thought it was cool to burn a couch," said Mr. Kraus.
Mar 03 2009
The Grand Hall at the Union Project was an exuberant din of teens and young adults for Tuesday night's monthly Youth Talent Showcase.
The rules: Phones off. No boos or hissing. No leaving while people are on stage. Show respect to everyone who performs.
The YungSuperStars led off. They're three guys in hats, the lead one in a Pirates cap who grabs his crotch as he sings. The words are indistinguishable if you're an older white chick but everyone else gets it and knows the words, chiming response to the calls.
Afterward, the group waited sheepishly in the floodlights for the judges' feedback.
"Your use of the stage was excellent, even when you were singing back-up," said dancer and choreographer Verna Vaughn. "You had an excellent connection with one another, supporting one another." The guys smile and nod. "That's a beautiful thing." Cheers throughout the hall.
"You in the blue, you can't be so nervous," said judge Emmai Alaquiva, director and founder of Hip Hop on L.O.C.K.
Paidboyz clambered to the stage next, like a baseball team rushing out of the dugout after a win. They were 10 guys moving and dancing together so closely you couldn't count them all. They did two pieces, finishing the second pointing to the ceiling with their entire bodies, saying "rest in peace, I said peace."
The critique: "I must say i was a little worried when I saw half the audience run up on the stage," said Jamillia Kamara, an artist and intern at the University of Pittsburgh. "My favorite thing was seeing you being vulnerable. I saw your faces, I saw the emotion, and that's what it's about."
Ms. Vaughn: "I believe you guys would benefit from the rap workshop as far as giving the lead vocalist space, whoever we need to focus on. You have to understand the technique that's going on when you watch it on TV. What looks like mayhem is really not. That second piece was beautiful. You did what artists do, reaching into their experiences."
"Good job brothers," said Mr. Alaquiva.
Ms. Vaughn, who teaches at the Kingsley Center, tried to impress on the young crowd that these talent shows and workshops for hip-hop, poetry are their chances to get advice from professionals.
The Union Project will complement the monthly talent shows with corresponding workshops in hip-hop, spoken word and poetry. A dance workshop will be scheduled for May.
"What we want to do is develop true artists," Ms. Vaughn told the hall full of performers and their friends. "There's a lot to learn. Respect the people who have come here to help you because we believe in you. We want you to present and represent well. And don't underestimate who's watching."
Mar 02 2009
Fifteen years ago, the Historic Review Commission ratified and adopted an inventory of buildings compiled by its historic planner, Mike Eversmeyer.
It was intended to help the city guide these buildings' owners and potential buyers toward preservation. But it was not distributed widely enough, Mr. Eversmeyer says, and some of the buildings on the list have actually been demolished; others have been saved from the wrecking ball by last-minute appeals.
Mr. Eversmeyer also intended that the commission would review the list regularly and update it. Instead, the list has languished. Two of the buildings on the list, the ARC House and the former Malta Temple, both on the North Side, have been the fought over in recent hearings. Both buildings' owners intended to demolish the buildings and complained that preservation efforts have delayed or prevented their projects and caused economic hardship.
If these projects should not go forward, the owners of inventoried buildings say they should know at the outset that they are limited in what they can do and that demolition is not an option.
Is it time for the Historic Review Commission to bring that list back to the table, reconsider it, update it and recommend that City Council adopt it for distribution to any buyer of the properties on it?
WIth such a scenario, more buildings would be spared and, as Mr. Eversmeyer put it, "developers wouldn't walk into an ambush."