May 28 2009
City of Asylum Pittsburgh’s plan to restore and link two blighted properties in the Central North Side went before the Zoning Board of Appeals yesterday.
The organization, which provides homes and care for writers in exile, proposes to create a cultural destination with three properties anchored by 1406 Monterey St.
Henry Reese, co-founder of the Pittsburgh City of Asylum, said the nearly 4,000 square feet would comprise a bookstore, a cafe, a public gathering space for readings, performances and other events and apartments on the upper floors.
The parcel between the buildings is now a lot that would become a glassed-in courtyard.
Nine residents from the neighborhood turned out to show their support of the plan, including two who live across the street. One of the properties in the plan is a former bar to which many neighbors attributed noise, criminal mischief and shootings.
“I saw first-hand the problems that preceded Mr. Reese’s efforts,” said Robert Havrilla, a resident of more than 10 years. Parking, which figures in three of the five petitions for zoning exceptions, is not an issue, he said. “When the Mattress Factory has events are the only times I ever see all the streets filled.”
Attorney Joel Aaronson said his client is “asking for relief from off-street parking requirements” because a study, done by Trans Associates, an engineering firm, showed that within a 650-foot radius of the site, more than 200 parking spaces are empty. The study included checks at various times of day, evenings and weekends, he said, adding that a 650-foot radius would lasso two-and-a-half blocks in all directions.
“We have wanted to have other cultural entities [nearby] to create a synergy among them,” said Barbara Luderowski, co-director of the factory-turned-museum. “I couldn’t be more thrilled.” (This is the Post-Gazette’s print version ended.)
“I am so happy to begin to form a density of arts organziations in the community. My gallery will profit from the traffic; people will have two destinations instead of one... and if another coffee shop comes in, even if it competes with ours” — the Mattress Factory operates a cafe — that’s fine because we have needed these kinds of things.”
“Henry’s done an amazing job; the alley [Sampsonia] is a destination” for regular events and tourists who seek out the house on which Chinese poet Huang Xiang wrote poetry in Chinese when he was the City of Asylum’s first writer in exile in 2004.
“We have wanted to have other cultural entities [nearby] to create a synergy among them,” said Barbara Luderowski, co-director of the factory-turned-museum. “Henry’s done an amazing job; the alley [Sampsonia] is a destination” for regular events and tourists who seek out the house on which Chinese poet Huang Xiang wrote poetry in Chinese when he was the City of Asylum’s first writer in exile in 2004.
Mr. Reese said the City of Asylum programming has been done in people’s homes because the neighborhood had no public space. City of Asylum is based on Sampsonia Way, behind the Mattress Factory, whose principals were on hand to support the new cultural center.
Mr. Reese’s first presentation to memebrship of the Central Northside Neighborhood Council last year got mixed reviews. Architect John Radelet’s gorgeous design, with an etched-glass facade, was to have replaced two of the buildings.. Many residents ooh-aahed the proposed building; others said it flew in the face of the neighborhood’s Victorian look.
Mr. Radelet said the etched glass was Diane Samuels’ idea. She is an artist, Henry Reese’s wife and co-founder of Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum. But because many in the neighborhood nixed the dramatic departure of the design, even while some thought it magnificent and spine-tingling, Mr. Radelet went back to the drawing boards and proposed a design to restore the two buildings and link them via a glass cafe in the middle.
“Our residents are happy that this rendering keeps the buildings” in place, said Greg Spicer, vice-president fo the Central Northside Neighborhood Council.
May 28 2009
Manchester, one of the city's oldest historic districts, has 84 properties on the city's condemnation list. The list isn't new but Manchester properties are showing up on it in increasing numbers, a scary trend for a neighborhood whose main selling point is its historic fabric.
An "emergency" meeting was held last night at the Manchester Citizens Corp. on Allegheny Avenue, prompted by a letter from Yarone Zober of the mayor's office.
"Folks," it starts, "It is critical for Manchester community, working with City/URA and PHLF [Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation] to construct a broad-based redevelopment plan..."
Some 70 people came out. Rev. James Robinson, a founder of MCC, commandeered the meeting toward the end, saying, "I was here when the residents stopped the bull dozers" in the early 1970s. "We need to develop a plan. I'll be the chairman. Who wants to be on the committee?"
A few hands went up. Rev. Robinson ended up with a list of 16 names and phone numbers. A new plan would update the 2005 Manchester Neighborhood Transformation Initiative, which recommended 100 properties for restoration, 20 for demolition.
In four years, those numbers are close to flipping. Stay tuned for updates on Manchester's frantic dog-paddle to save its architectural heritage.
May 27 2009
Born on Pius Street
by Mary Alice Gorman
I was born on Pius Street and so were many of my cousins who still live here in Pittsburgh.
Our dads were in the WWII and our moms were part of a family of mostly women who lived in the family home. Our grandfather was a brewmeister at Duquesne Brewery.
If the local history was accurate, it would tell of the ethnic Savings and Loan groups that existed so immigrants could buy homes. Our grandfather was on the board of many German S&Ls. Our home on Pius St was sold to the American Legion, and the next time was a very recent sale to someone who made it a house tour place to visit.
Grumpy Old Men
by William McCloskey
The year was 1978 and I was living on South 16th Street in a rickety row house in the 100 block, south of Sarah Street. The only foliage on the entire block was a scrawny maple tree that managed to grow in a little strip of grass between my sidewalk and the street. Despite its gnarled appearance, this poor tree put out large, beautiful, brilliant leaves.
My little boy, Pete, was five years old and living with his mother in Brentwood, but he spent the weekends with me. After the calm, conservative, orderly quality of his home neighborhood, he found the South Side really interesting -- especially its buildings and its people. It seemed to him they all were ancient and somewhat broken-down.
One of our weekend rituals was a Saturday afternoon visit to McCann's, a spotless, eight-stool neighborhood joint right around the corner, run by a tiny, tough-as-nails woman named "Sis." Well into her 70s, Sis favored designer jeans.
Pete would stand on a milk crate to play pinball and I drank three beers (Stroh's -- if you can remember the brand) with the oldtimers at the bar. These guys were the real South Side deal: old, grumpy and hunched over in their work clothes, though most of them had long ago quit working. When they spoke, it was only to moan and complain -- about the mills going down, about the weather, about the Pirates, about the numbers, about the politicians, about their lazy sons.
One autumn Saturday, in the midst of all this gloom, a small, childish voice piped up: "Do you want to buy a leaf?"
There was Pete bravely addressing the clientele, pulling his Little Red Wagon that was filled to overflowing with maple leaves from our tree. "How much?" snarled one of the old guys. "A quarter," said Pete. Every one of those old boys bought a leaf from Pete. Some of them bought several leaves, "for the wife and daughters." And they insisted that he take a dollar for each one.
Grumpy? Sure. But wonderful people. Said the one on the stool beside me: "Now that's the kind of son you want to have."
# # #
Send your South Side story to djones@post-gazette.com or add it as a comment.
May 26 2009
A lot of people already think of the South Side as theater. The story line's always the same, though - too many unruly young drunks spilling out of too many bars.
City Theater and actress Tami Dixon want to hear the other ones.
If you're a South Sider, bring your story to a workshop at City Theater, 57 S. 13th St., this Sunday at 5 p.m. and it might end up as part of the documentary "Slope Stories: Tales from Pittsburgh's South Side." Register by emailing her at tami@webbricolage.com.
Ms. Dixon has three years of funding from the Fox Foundation Fellowship to create this work based on the stories people bring her.
She has lived in the Slopes for four years and is focusing her interest there, but her research is bringing out a fascination for the entire neighborhood.
Living in the Slopes is so quiet, she said, "sometimes all I hear is a bird singing or a train in the distance.
"I'm 500 feet from the Flats, and the difference is so striking. I was recording sounds one day, and the closer I got to the Flats, the more the sounds grew - traffic, people shouting."
She has read up on how geography enabled the social divide, with the workers living on the Slopes, using the steps to get to work and shop, and the industry captains living below.
"It's amazing the extent of the industry and the human spirit in the midst of terrible hardship, with people working 14, 15 hour days, coming home to sleep and then going right back out to work again."
She said she does not have an agenda, that the stories people bring are the stories she will work with as an actress. But as a history buff, she said she hopes some stories take her back in time.
"I have all these ideas for how personal stories support community development," she said. "It speaks volumes that everyone wants to be remembered and acknowledged, wants to tell who their ancestors were and of all the hard work and sacrifice."
She is looking for at least 10-15 people who have good narrative from depth of experience. "We will do some [conversation] exercises to get the dialog flowing, then I think it will all just open up."
In the meantime, send me your South Side stories. If you don't want to go to the trouble of registering, email me at djones@post-gazette.com and I will post them.
May 22 2009
It had a wonky title - "Sustainable Community Essentials, - but yesterday's Smart Growth Conference at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center was exhilirating.
More than 200 people forwent a gorgeous day to sit indoors and talk about the ways their townships, boroughs and cities can turn population loss into economic gain, creatively divert stormwater (for economic gain), solve land-use problems (for economic gain), design minimal-waste housing developments (for economic gain), preserve buildings (for economic gain) and, most of all, to RETHINK.
I shout that word because it seems to be the new mantra. I think the dictate should simply be THINK. Some people can't rethink because they didn't think in the first place. Those who have progressed beyond dereliction of duty have rethought already.
If you keep allowing developments that need new sewers while old sewers deteriorate, you aren't thinking. If you keep allowing developments that need new sewers, you're probably sprawling where future residents will have to drive even further.
Planning to help developers make money is not thinking.
Oops... fell off the soapbox.
***
So anyway, the conference featured Douglas Farr's keynote speech.
It was so good, I hope you all catch it on WDUQ radio, 90.5-fm. It will air at 6 p.m. either on June 21st or 28th in its entirety.
Sustainable Pittsburgh, the head sponsor of the conference, picked the right guy. He is a sustainability guru whose company, Farr Associates of Chicago, (www.farrside.com) has been a leader in green building and finding ways to show what rethinking looks like, how it feels to walk around in and how exciting it can be to change the way we live, in a mesh of great architecture, great planning and a great natural environment.
Municipalities are shooting themselves in the foot by requiring the opposite of smart growth, he said. For instance, some towns have rules that new homes must be spaced a certain distance apart and codes that require a certain amount of off-street parking.
"Stop it!" he said. "Fix it!"
He showed the "walk scores" of three places we all know a little about - East Liberty, Mount Lebanon and Cranberry. East Liberty had an 89% walkability score, Mount Lebanon a 66% score and Cranberry a 17% score.
"How do we make driving the new smoking?" he asked, suggesting that it's possible: Once, you could smoke on planes, at work and even in the meat aisle at the market; people on TV and the movies all smoked. Now, you're a pariah who can't even smoke outdoors in lots of places.
"We have gone from recreational driving to addiction," he said.
His book, "Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design With Nature," is expensive but invaluable as a smart-growth bible.
***
When people ask me "What the heck does ‘sustainability' mean, anyway," I break it down to the root, sustain.
Webster's Dictionary is helpful here: sustain: v. 1. To keep in existence.
If you are profligate and wasteful and don't replenish, you will cease to exist.
Smart growth encourages density for pedestrian scale, mass transit to discourage driving and an integration of planning. A plan to plant street trees could be done in coordination with a rainwater-diversion water feature planned as part of a housing development. One housing development Farr cited has a loop water system that brings rain water down to flush toilets.
It sounds like a fantasy, even in this day, to imagine that Americans could shift so drastically from the car-mall-landfill-riding mower-obesity that we're mired in. But I talked to a lot of people at the conference who all seem to think we are shifting. Some people reported their township managers are loathe to go green, maybe not convinced yet that a sustainable township is a less wasteful, less costly, healthier, more appealing one. But others are starting to understand there is money to be made and saved. That's the message that hits home with most people.
"If parks are too spread out, you are losing real estate value," Farr said.
Real estate values. Now that's something the denial crowd might perk up for.
Of all the people in attendance - members of various city councils (none that I saw from Pittsburgh), township managers, public works folks, planners and architects, staffers for environmental non-profits, neighborhood leaders and people from NGOs - just one was a mayor.
Kenneth LaSota, who is paid $85 a month to be the mayor of Heidelberg, is also a geology professor at Robert Morris Unviersity.
"Our borough is involved in trying to build a rain garden along the Route 50 corridor that runs through Heidelberg," he said. (A rain garden is strategically planted to catch run-off.) It's been three or four years in the planning, he said.
Etna, too, is planning a sustainable Main Street, John Tokarski told me. He's Etna's Main Street manager, a former Weed and Seed coordinator for the city of Pittsburgh.
"We are soliciting green incubator businesses," he said. "Chatham University just finished a rain study for us, and we're seeking stimulus money " to turn what has been a regular flooding problem on its ear - a way to use the water.
Michael Stern told me that his firm, Prada Architects, is working on a green strategy with the neighborhood of Larimer. Sustainability is "a core part of our practice," he said.
Almost to a person, the attendees want to be part of the solutions to waste and bad design, including the waste of blighted houses. Everything is interconnected, and smart-growth proponents get that.
But Farr said 20 percent of people think climate change isn't true, that it's macho to deny it.
So, if people pooh-pooh the environmental benefits of smart-growth, bring it around to a concept they understand. Make it an economic argument. Whatever works.
May 21 2009
Here's your chance to help the Polish Hill Civic Association rent a sound system, pay security guys, buy materials and buy ads to put on the second annual "Art What You Got" festival in July. On Saturday, the PHCA is holding a $5-a-person fund-raising party at Gooskis, 3117 Brereton St.
From 9 p.m. until closing, live music by UkuLizzy, a ukelele soloist and Horse or Cycle, a folk band, will be followed by DJ Mary Mack, DJ ja(M) (bo)X and a live video mix by Blissy (dance party, 80's, punk).
"The music is as eclectic as the festival," said Leslie Clague, PHCA's Art What committee chair.
So far, 50 people have applied to exhibit at the July show, some Polish Hill residents among them. They will include artists, crafters and craftsmen and performers, she said. The Warhol Museum also plans an exhibit. Other programming is in the works.
Visit http://blogski.phcapgh.org/ and http://www.phcapgh.org/, as seen in Walkabout's blog roll.
May 20 2009
Venture Outdoors is bringing kayaks back to Allegheny Commons Park on the North Side this year - not just every other Wednesday but every day, starting Monday.
The non-profit, whose mission is to get everyone out walking, biking or rowing for at least a few hours, ventured into the park - a veritable eden for idylls, paddles, screaming kids and dogs rolling in stuff - last summer for experimental evening hours.
"The times we were there we were at capacity for the whole two hours," said Liam Cooney, V.O.'s projects manager. "So we were a hit."
Hours are 11 a.m. to dusk on weekends and 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday.
It costs $5 per person to go out on the lake for 30 minutes. In that amount of time, you can memorize every pebble in the textured bottom of Lake Elizabeth, which is more a giant pond than a lake and about three feet deep, if that. It's a good place to guide your first kayak if you're scared of popping one down into a river. But unlike whitewater kayaks, these kayaks only turn over if you're dead set on slapstick.
V.O.'s other full-time hours are at PNC Park - 11 a.m. to dusk Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to dusk Saturday and Sunday - and in North Park at the boathouse, where hours are the same as at Lake Elizabeth.
Visit www.kayakpittsburgh.org.
May 20 2009
On a recent trip to Norway, City Councilman Bill Peduto was inspired by people who wanted to go for a Sunday hike whether the weather was like today's or nasty awful.
He came home, called his old friend Sean Brady and got Sean's organization, Venture Outdoors, on board for a three-pronged campaign that leaves politics on the sofa watching TV. Called "Pedal, Paddle Peduto," the campaign is to get people onto the rivers and trails - some of Pittsburgh's paths to reinvention, after all - and get them to talk about issues that Peduto is passionate about.
He has become the go-to council member for New Urbanist thinking. He's not the first one you'd envision in a kayak, but nobody on council leaps to mind as a river rat. Some years ago, he and Sean Brady took excursions on rivers and bike trails around the state. The thought came to him.
" ‘What if we establish a public-policy discussion - led by experts in the fields of riverfront development, urbanism, architecture, history and environmental issues - while walking, biking and kayaking?'" he said at a small press conference today in Market Square. "It'll be 35-40 people learning more about Pittsburgh than they ever knew and seeing it from a perspective they've never seen."
When you walk or ride the trails and row the rivers, you pass - at viewable speeds - many examples of good and bad architecture, good and bad new development, good and bad environmental stewardship, historic places and sites that cry out for land-use planning.
It's a prize to get well enough known that you can make things like this happen, he said.
"This is the kind of thing that makes politics and campaigning tolerable."
Each outing will cost $27 per person; there's room for 35-40. (If you want to take all three tours and sign up before May 31, your total cost is $35.)
On June 14, you can join Bill, Lisa Schroeder of the Riverlife Taskforce, Tom Baxter of Friends of the Riverfront and architect Rob Pfaffmann for a kayak tour and discussion about the riverfront's future, its trails and architectural design along it. They will launch from the quay beside PNC Park.
On July 5, you can join Bill, Louise Sturgess of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, Don Carter of Urban Design Associates and Eve Picker, of No Walls Productions for a bike tour of Downtown and riverfront trails. Discussions will cover Pittsburgh's history, unique architecture and urban planning.
The City Parks Walkabout on Aug. 2 is my favorite, for obvious reasons. Join Bill, Marijke Hecht from TreeVitalize Pittsburgh and folks from the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy and Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest for a hike around Schenley Park and discussion about our city park system, its history and green-space stewardship.
To sign up for the series, visit www.ventureoutdoors.org, click on "activities calendar," forward to June 14, then the other two dates for more information. (You have to be a member to register on-line.) Or call 412.255.0564.
May 19 2009
For years, the new houses popping up in Garfield were here... and there.
Now they're everywhere.
If you walk along North Winebiddle, Broad and Dearborn Streets, you pass enough new housing to lose sight of the fact that, recently, this was a very troubled and blighted neighborhood.
Today, Penn Avenue's Garfield side streets are walkable to enough amenities to start the argument that Garfield is starting to tip. It's not just housing. It's also more than a decade of efforts to bring artists to storefronts. It's also a national trend that cities are making a comeback.
Crime statistics are down, too, another piece of the national trend.
Garfield had 228 part-one (most serious) crimes in 2008, almost half what it had in 1999.
Twenty-five years ago, when Garfield was hitting rock bottom, builder Steve Catarinella began working with the Bloomfield-Garfield Corp. (BGC) to replace decrepit housing. The plan calls for 50; 31 have been built. The first one, in 1984 "was very suburban," he said. It was a split-level ranch, what people wanted then.
The new single-family detached homes look more like something between city and suburb. But new home-owners in Garfield 
have no illusions about where they live.
"There have been a couple of iffy things around," said Pam Crisostomo, who bought in April 2008. "There was a shooting. But the only thing my neighbor and I have had issues with are kids running through our yards."
One neighbor had to deal with five or six youth recharging their cell phones on her outdoor electric plug, she said.
Pam is 25, a title examiner for a real-estate insurance company who moved here from Jacksonville, Fla. there years ago. She said she is so happy in the neighborhood that, even if she hit the lottery, she probably wouldn't move.
She was living in an apartment in Friendship with "a picture in my head of what I wanted" when she saw it on the cover of the Bulletin, the neighborhood newspaper published by the BGC. She called the BGC and a week later put down a deposit on a market-rate $132,500 house.
Her sister and sister-in-law have bought new houses nearby, too.
"I feel extremely safe," she said. "I know a lot of young couples and families who are getting interested in the neighborhood because of affordable housing. A bunch of us who bought houses here go to church together."
Her sister-in-law's house has been vandalized, she said, "but they're building up the lot beside hers, so maybe that will help."
"There are still pockets of mischief," said Rick Swartz, executive director of the BGC. "We know there are properties in these blocks that, if we don't get control of them, everything could roll back to where we were 10 years ago. We have an obligation to 31 families to make sure the neighborhood they bought into does not fail. It's quite an incentive to keep at it."
"We're patient," said Pam. "We are excited to see what happens in the area over the next five, 10, 15 years."
May 18 2009
The other night in the New Hope Church basement, I let my mind wander as Rev. Rodger Woodworth moved from the podium to the blackboard, his fatherly words taking me back to being 16, antsy and wanting to do anything but sit for two hours of instruction on a beautiful evening.
I tried to remember my first job interview and couldn't.
Be prepared... Be 15 minutes early... Be confident.
All the kids listening to Rev. Woodworth's advice will be interviewing for jobs next week with Urban Impact, a North Side organization that supplies teen-age workers for summer camp.
In scanning the room, I could see which kids were there because they got $300 to take the 12-week class and fulfill all the duties - showing up, creating a resume, doing homework - and which kids I would hire. There were five who looked almost eager, sitting forward at the table, maybe practicing the reverand's advice to "make eye contact" and "smile."
"The first day was boring," said Cheyenne Cheeks, 17, of Observatory Hill. "But one of the days, we went to the cafe [Cafe ‘n' Creamery, a shop the New Hope Church supports on the corner of Shadeland and Woodland Avenues].
"A barrista was there, and they demonstrated how they make coffee and talked about how you serve and talk to customers." She brightened up. "We all had to do a 30-second presentation to capture someone's attention. We practiced greeting each other, introducing ourselves. I wish I had taken this class a year ago."
"This was the first time I ever made a resume," said Miranda Brown, 16, of Troy Hill.
What goes on a 16-year-old's resume?
Babysitting, mowing lawns and shoveling snow for the neighbors all count, even taking a trip to Toronto, Rev. Woodworth said.
"If they do well and interview well, they are pretty much guaranteed a job," he said. Urban Impact required this class for all potential hires for the first time this year. Rev. Woodworth said he wants to expand this pilot program to help teenagers get jobs elsewhere, too.
Of the first three kids who wanted to talk to me, Julian Williams was the same kid I saw on the 16B on the way to the church. His expression struck me. I ride the bus a lot and almost never see a 15-year-old boy grabbing my eye contact with a sweet smile.
Later, when I interviewed him, he said, "This will be my first year ever working. I want to experience the work ethic."
When I left the church to catch the 16B home, I passed some aimless kids on the street. Got on the bus, sat down. Flashed on that scary teen time. Groaned inside at the thought of that first resume - or of any resume, for that matter.
More Posts
Next page »