Feb 07 2010
Walkabout is on vacation until Feb 22...
Feb 05 2010
by Diana Nelson Jones/Feb 5
Probably none but my neighbors among you care about a pedestrian bridge in Allegheny Commons Park. Most people haven't even heard of our park; it is little by Frick and Schenley standards. But it is our city's oldest, established first as grazing lands back when there were still vestiges of native American habitation, when the North Side was Allegheny City.
It is about 90 acres of greenery. People from at least a dozen neighborhoods descend on it regularly. It has ball fields, tennis courts, promenades, benches and a huge variety of old trees. It has war memorials, the National Aviary, a lake that people skate and play hockey on and an off-leash dog park. It has been altered significantly over the years, and I love it as it is, but I will love it more when the restoration that is underway brings it back to an elegance that has eroded.
But the restoration almost certainly will not include our bridge. The Historic Review Commission gave its approval this week to have it demlished based on the credible report by Pat Hassett, assistant public works director, that the concrete is not stable enough to restore and that chunks falling onto the railroad tracks below pose worrisome liability for the city.
When the commission voted to raze the bridge, completely unexpected tears fell down my face. I love the Commons and spend part of every day in it but I was expecting that vote. Still... places get to us that way.
Back in 2002, when fences went up to keep people off the bridge deck, I thought it would be for a short time. There were no holes on that deck when the fences went up, no
weeds growing through it. Nothing looked wrong. The repairs I assumed were in the
offing should have taken no more than a few weeks or months and cost,
well, not $2 million.
Months turned to years and my puzzlement slipped to anger.
The bridge is now what Pat Hassett calls "a ticking time bomb." After a decade of complete neglect? Well, yeah. It was obviously not a ticking time bomb in 2002, when the concrete might still have been restored.
I don't blame anyone today for what happened - or didn't happen - almost 10 years ago. I blame people today for not fixing today what in 10 years will be a crisis or cost a small fortune. Ten years of neglect is a lousy message to send to residents who are deeply invested in their city. If the bridge were my property, the city would not give me 10 years to do nothing.
A replacement is promised, and a replacement will fulfill the same mission. The schematic looks handsome enough.
I accept loss but that's not all this is. As a society we put off tomorrow what we could better afford today. It's easier to defer; money is always tight. We can't afford it now, either, but we have to afford it now. As the stewards of our historic treasures and as adults, shouldn't we act responsibly instead of making our own crises?
I look forward to the new bridge, but I look even more forward to the day when we don't wait 10 years, either because we give a damn or because taxpayers won't allow it.
People like to say change is inevitable... we just don't like to change ourselves.
Feb 04 2010
by Diana Nelson Jones/Feb 4
The Young Preservationist Association's video contest deadline is Feb. 12, so hurry up and film something of historic importance and get it to them by the deadline. There's a $500 prize for the winners.
Awards will be made at a banquet on April 10, when YPA will highlight four historic sites in Hazelwood. YPA will also present the Michael Eversmeyer Promise Award -- named for the late great preservationist -- to an emerging preservation leader.
Registration information is available on YPA's
website, http://www.youngpreservationists.org/preserve-pittsburgh-summit-set-for-april-10-2010
* * *
What to do with the old Allegheny branch of the Carnegie Library, the one lightning struck several years ago? Many North Siders suffer low-grade angst over the fate of this building. It is a city-owned historic landmark that the library system is using minimally at this point and will stop using altogether at some point.
The New Hazlett Theater will hold a brainstorming session at 6:30 tonight for residents and representatives representatives of the city, the Community Design Center of Pittsburgh, the Children's Museum and the Warhol Museum. The focus will be on reuse.
Loysen + Kreuthmeier Architects have been deployed to recommend options. They will present at subsequent meetings and make a final report based on the public's input.
For questions or to be added to the e-mail contact list for this project, contact Melinda Pietrusza at the New Hazlett Theater via e-mail at pietrusza@gmail.com.
* * *
Across the North Side, in Deutschtown, the East Allegheny Community Council is calling for participation at its general meeting on at 7 p.m. Feb. 9, at the Pressley Street high-rise behind the Cedar Avenue Giant Eagle. Representatives of Duquesne Light are expected to turn up.
DL is planning to install a cooling station in a garage behind 726-728 Cedar Ave., to the consternation of surrounding neighbors.
This option was chosen after DL's previous plan to build a huge rectangle in Allegheny Commons Park was met with fierce opposition from people from a dozen North Side neighborhoods.
DL needs to upgrade the junction where lines that run from Lawrenceville to Brunot's Island come together. The garage would be home to modulating oil valves, electronic controls, system communication devices, battery charger and back-up plus heating, ventilation and air-conditioning units and lighting.
* * *
Got a burning, cooling or other kind of issue in your neighborhood that people are meeting about? Alert Walkabout at djones@post-gazette.com
Feb 03 2010
by Diana Nelson Jones/Feb 3
Many of us have yet to embrace the idea that Downtown is a neighborhood, but if you stretch a little more, you might start seeing Downtown as several neighborhoods -- not officially but in the organic way that people give form to places.
Walking along Penn Avenue the other day, from where it branches off at Liberty and Grant, I mentally gathered all the buildings advertised as lofts and apartments, from 10th Street down to 8th. I did the same in the same blocks of Liberty. These are two of the handsomest stretches of urbanity anywhere. Just look at this architectural street scape of Liberty Avenue.
It isn't yet a neighborhood but with corresponding developments of new apartments in the Century Building on 7th Street and with recent residents at the Encore, the historic cluster of marvelosity on Penn and Liberty is headed in the direction of neighborhood. It already has in Rosebud what many neighborhoods don't -- a grocery store. It has lots of street trees. Providing the store and the trees survive, there's potential for a small massing of destinations and amenities residents need to thrive.
This part of Downtown is one of my favorite stops on my personal architectural tours. But this city has so many areas of architectural splendor that Walkabout's Architectural Tour would occupy the better part of three days at least.
If you're a Downtown resident, let me know your thoughts on the neighborhoody-ness of where you live, and share a photo. Send it to djones@post-gazette.com.
Feb 02 2010
by Diana Nelson Jones/Feb 2
Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest will hold another round of Tree Tender training starting Feb. 17 in the Strip. FPUF will hold four three-day courses and two one-day courses through July.
Registration is open now. Go to http://www.pittsburghforest.org/treetendercourse. The cost is $40 for three sessions, with meals included and a "Tree Tender" T-shirt when you finish.
Trees are your best antiques. ~Alexander Smith
Here's the schedule:
* February 17, 24 and March 3 at the Rothschild-Doyno Collaborative (an architectural studio), 2847 Penn Ave., Strip District;
* March 24, 31 and April 7 at the Kingsley Association, 6435 Frankstown Road, Larimer;
*May 11, 18 and 25 at the Citiparks Magee Senior Center, 745 Greenfield Ave., Greenfield;
*September 16, 23 and 30 at the Riverview Park Activities Building, Riverview Drive, Perry North;
*Saturday, June 19, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Rothschild-Doyno Collaborative;
*Saturday July 17, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at St. Mary on the Mount Church, 403 Grandview Ave., Mount Washington.
"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and
a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools." ~John
Muir
Tree Tenders are the city's volunteer arborist wannabes. We serve as helpers in FPUF- and city-directed tree projects in neighborhoods and as guides (read: nags) to our neighbors about not hanging backpacks on branches or tying bikes to trees or planting flowers in the little spaces the trees need all to themselves.
You, too can be a nag and, better yet, learn how a tree should be pruned and why, and the reasons behind the do's and don't's and the reasons why the city needs all the tree advocates it can get. Although we are a heavily forested city, much of our hillside tree collections are invasive species, and of our 30,000 street trees, 10 percent have been removed since 2005 because they were diseased or dying.
"Of
all the wonders of nature, a tree in summer is perhaps the most remarkable; with
the possible exception of a moose singing "Embraceable You" in spats." ~Woody
Allen
Feb 01 2010
by Diana Nelson Jones/Feb 1
Walkabout is thoroughly jazzed about the on-line neighborhood information tool that the city planning department unveiled today, called SNAP.
SNAP stands for Sector and Neighborhood Asset Profiles/Action Planning but don't glaze over: It may be a wonk's paradise but it's also fun for normal people.
You can click on any neighborhood and find out where the public art is, where the parks are,
how densely the housing is arranged, the percentage of a neighborhood
prone to landslides, the percentage of people with higher-education
degrees, the percentage who drive alone to work, the value of building
permits per neighborhood, the number of street trees and property liens
and thumbnail narratives about the neighborhoods' histories.
For
instance, Esplen began as a railroad camp; 52 percent of the residents in Squirrel Hill
South commute alone in cars; 41 percent of Shadysiders have post-graduate degrees; 90.4 percent of Allentown is
undermined, and Northview Heights is sorely in need of street trees. Here's a tidbit a lot of people may not know: Larimer was Pittsburgh's Little Italy until the 1970s, a title since claimed by Bloomfield
If you're an activist in your neighborhood, www.pghsnap.com is a 792-page treasure trove of all the demographic, geographic, economic, educational, transportation, infrastructural and environmental data you need to accurately agitate for change. It provides data from multiple sources that will automatically update and it partners with the city's new interactive Geographic Information System (www.pghgis.com).
This photo is awful, I know (because I took it) but you can get a sense of how the color coding works. The blue indicates good housing conditions, the red indicates poor conditions and the green dots are sized according to the value of current building permits.
SNAP addresses all 90 neighborhoods separately and then as parts of 16 planning sectors. SNAP will be the framework for our city's first-ever comprehensive plan.
One part of SNAP is basic data teamed with the city's new interactive Geographical Information System mapping. Another part is an analytical clustering of data with indexing for housing characteristics and quality of life issues and a rating system to help neighborhood groups strategize.
"It is basically a collection of all the data that was out there already but in many places and with varying quality of analysis," planner Justin Miller said at an early-bird unveiling last month.
Elly Fisher, assistant director at the Oakland Planning and Development corp., said that non-profi has already begin digging into SNAP.
"We‘re looking at a real estate strategy in Oakland and SNAP has been invaluable in showing us the current state of the neighborhood's housing and to compare the different parts of Oakland. It helps us to drill down to actually have numbers at our fingertips."
Jan 30 2010
by Diana Nelson Jones/Jan 30
As a follow-up to the previous post "Doing the electric slide," Walkabout has gotten hold of a report that confirms Duquesne Light plans to locate what it terms its "assembly electronics" -- previously referred to as a cooling station -- in the garage behind two adjacent row houses at 726-728 Cedar Ave. in Deutschtown.
Several other locations, one within Allegheny Commons Park, have been nixed because of attendant problems and community opposition.
In the report, DL assures that it will work with an architect to make the structure "sensitive infill in the community taking into account the Victorian character of the surrounding community" and that it will work with Northside Leadership Conference to find a buyer for the two homes in front of the garage "at significantly less than DLC paid for the property."
Several people who live near those properties are against it. They fear there will be noise of humming or buzzing. They believe it will hurt their property values and that the space could be developed as housing.
The garage is a little stand-alone behind the two homes, which are beat up but could be beautiful under a preserving hand. Neighbors said they have been owned by slumlords.
DL -- according to the report -- says residents should not be concerned about environmental issues because the oil contained in the transmission system is mineral oil and that the basement of the garage will be designed as a sump to contain spillage.
The system will hold modulating oil valves, electronic controls, system communication devices, battery charger and battery back-up plus heating, ventilation and air-conditioning units and lighting. DL seems pleased that it has come up with a plan that keeps the apparatus out of the park and hidden from view. Some will agree that this is a nifty and clean solution.
It still has to go to the city for zoning approval.
Jan 29 2010
by Diana Nelson Jones/Jan 29
Duquesne Light's not talking, but some Deutschtown residents say they are bracing for the utility's decision to put a controversial cooling station into a garage behind two properties it is negotiating to buy on Cedar Avenue - 726 and 728.
DL last year proposed to build a 9-by-28-foot cooling station smack-dab on the Foreland Street entrance to Allegheny Commons Park, and residents from a dozen North Side neighborhoods let ‘er rip at a community meeting last fall. The staff responsible for authentically restoring the Victorian park also made it known that a big metal box would just not do.
Councilman Darlene Harris and other city representatives said they would not give their blessing to a humming rectangle in the historic park, and so DL looked for a solution across the street.
Their spokesmen have claimed the station must be within about 100 feet of where lines that stretch from Lawrenceville to Brunot's Island come together. The junction apparatus is currently buried about where DL wanted to put the box. In past discussions, DL spokesmen nixed the idea of reburying the station after upgrading it. Residents insist that if an extention of the T can be built underwater then a cooling station can be updated, ungraded and reburied safely under the park.
That solution might cost DL more than they want to spend. Walkabout tried to pin down some details and got only this: "We have no comment at this time," from Joseph Vallarian, a DL spokesman.
But let's go with the too-expensive scenario for the sake of Joe Ferrara, who has been upgrading two properties at Cedar and Foreland - across from the potentially humming garage - and has complied with all the rules of an historic district.
"I didn't want to spend $30,000 on windows, either, but I had to," he said. "We had to spend tens of thousands of dollars to comply with codes and regulations," he said. "Duquesne Light has to respect the integrity of the neighborhood, too."
Jeff Cieply lives across from the garage and said he is worried about potential noise and potential harm to his home's value.
When people say "no comment," you really have to resist filling in the blanks. We understand that Joseph is under a zip-your-lip directive, but in that void, people talk about things that remain to be known as if they already know them, which opens the door to hype and hysteria.
The box might not hum as loudly as one resident said he heard it would - the equivalent of an air conditioner for a five-story building. Are we talking a brawny five-story building or a sliver of one? Maybe the box isn't going to be as big as earlier proposed... maybe the garage would be so well-insulated that even a cat wouldn't hear it hum.
This might be a case of "be careful what you don't want or you may surely get something worse." This could be a dandy solution that residents' opposition might totally screw up, throwing the park back into play, but we don't know....
....yet. Walkabout is trying to find out what it is DL doesn't want you to know yet. Stay posted.
Jan 28 2010
by Diana Nelson Jones/Jan 28
North SIders are good at abiding, what with the on-again off-again good-news-bad-news cycle of reports and rumors we live with. But some among us are taking a dilemma by the horns and - no bull - starting a magazine. Yes, one of those things you can thumb through and that uses the printing process.
The first issue of "Northside Now," a quarterly, 9-by-6-inch full-color instrument of neighborhood promotion, has been out for a month, and its creator, the North Side Cultural Collaborative, is ready to celebrate - this evening from 5:30 to 7:30 at the New Hazlett Theatre in Allegheny Square. 
The event is free and open to the public. Johnny Angel is scheduled to perform, as are the Swiss Singers - a traditional group made up of forebears of the North Side's Swiss immigrants.
The collaborative is sort of new, though the people who make up its board have been talking about doing a publication and complimentary web site - www.northsidenow.com - for several years. The point is to showcase the good stuff, said editor Robin Rosemary Miller, who heads the Northside/Northshore Chamber of Commerce.
The project has support from the Buhl Foundation and Rep. Jake Wheatley and from the institutions represented on the board, from Allegheny General Hospital to the New Hazlett Theater.
John Graf, owner of the Priory Hotel and president of the collaborative's board, said one goal is to get the word out about the Charm Bracelet, the collective effort of all the North Side's cultural institutions. The concept was envisioned a few years ago as a metaphoric linkage. (The reassembled auto in the top photo is at the Children's Museum and the kid trapped in the twilight zone of my bad photography is in the penguins exibit at the National Aviary.)
We're looking to go wide," John said, "to include the whole North Side and not just the glitzy pockets [i.e. North Shore]."
"We're not competing against the Chronicle [the neighborhoods' newspaper]," Robin said. "We're the good-news bureau, telling people about the quirky and the fun things. Our niche is nothing other than bragging about our neighborhood."
Make that neighborhoods. Plural. The North Side is 19 neighborhoods. Some are featured in the first issue, including Troy Hill with its world-class collection of religious relics at Saint Anthony's Chapel; the North Shore's Andy Warhol Museum, whose director Tom Sokolowski is interviewed; and Brighton Heights' Friday's Market, where Tom Friday is one of the city's few butchers left.
After being almost vacated, almost obliterated then kicked around awhile and dissed for crime that did and did not happen, the North Side is healing its scars and kind-of sort-of almost There.
Federal Hill rowhouses are being built and occupied, the new Carnegie library branch is established, a strategic corner on North at Federal is serving up coffee and WiFi as Crazy Mocha and little birds are telling us that soon, pretty soon, possibly soon, the Garden Theater block is going to turn.
Our maxim is: Never hold your breath unless you're under water.
Jan 27 2010
by Diana Nelson Jones/Jan 27
The denial of additional stimulus money for neighborhood stabilization is not quite the end of the world for Pittsburgh as we know it, but it's making a lot of people who have been working for years to help blighted neighborhoods pretty heartsick ... to think of all the good it might have done.
In yesterday's paper, we reported that the city was turned down in its application for $29 million of $2 billion in federal stimulus money that Congress earmarked to mitigate the effects of foreclosures. (We got $6 million last year.) To be fair, HUD was swamped with applications from cities asking for a total of $15 billion, and Pittsburgh's foreclosure rates are down. With this latest batch of dough, Congress is favoring recent foreclosures in sunshiney places like Las Vegas, Phoenix and Floor-EE-dah. This very special mountain of foreclosures, if you recall, was the drummajor in the Grand Parade of Disaster that pundits call "the recent economic downturn." It's only as old as a typical house sparrow lives and its blight hasn't had time to fester.
Whereas here, the beast that settled in in the early 1980s is by now incontinent, bleary-eyed, making strange, scary sounds and still munching away at our storied ‘hoods...
... and Congress is rescuing Las Vegas. [Insert Jon Stewart expression here.]
Who knows how far a bunch more millions (they could have at least given us a few) might have gone toward tipping some of our ‘hoods back to rights? Walkabout knows that oft times money is a poor substitute for everybody doing right by self and others, with joy in his heart and stuff like that, but it sure does pay some bills.
Anyway, here's what might have been:
* In the Hill District: funding for a housing project on DInwiddie Street;
* In Beechview and Mancheser: the rehabilitation and resale of several foreclosed properties.
* In Garfield: Of several dozen vacant houses, some would have been razed, others sold at very low rates to people who would put $50,000-$70,000 in them to live in. Stimulus money would have been the Urban Redevelopment Authority's grease to get banks to make loans to these potential home owners.
Rick Swartz, executive director of the Bloomfield-Garfield Corp., said it would have been more creative if HUD had been directed to give banks federal tax credits
to donate properties to non-profits or redevelopment authorities,"
entities that could then prepare the homes for reuse.
He said Pittsburgh dared to propose in its application a foreclosure prevention component to help struggling home owners. One way might be to seal up their homes to lower their utility bills and give them some relief. But Congress doesn't see prevention as the best medicine, at least not this go-round.
Meantime, he said, "We are going to see more foreclosures in Garfield."
‘Course by then Congress might be into prevention... but nobody seems to be counting on miracles these says.
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