The last class of Schenley represents bittersweet chapter in a proud history

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 5/29/2011.

Excerpt: It started 95 years ago, in a grand limestone edifice filled with light and fresh air. It will end in a nondescript hallway in a windowless former middle school, likely soon to be demolished itself.

Though the battle over Pittsburgh Schenley High School was fought three years ago, the school will sputter to its end this week. There will be no more DeJuan Blairs bringing the Spartans a state basketball championship, no more Andy Warhols prowling its art classes, no more Ray Browns playing in the orchestra.

What remains are the roughly 190 kids who stuck it out -- forsaking pep rallies, after-school clubs and even a decent lunch hour -- to give Schenley a proper goodbye.

"They fought to stay together and now we're at the end," said principal Sophia Facaros. "The physical space has changed, but what the heart of Schenley is has never changed."

The Pittsburgh school board voted to close Schenley in 2008, after receiving estimates of between $42 million and $87 million to renovate the building, including fixing issues with asbestos and falling plaster. The 5-4 decision didn't go down easy with Schenley supporters, who tried rallies, protests and petitions to keep the school open.

The building has been vacant since the end of the 2008 school year. While there has been interest from several prospective buyers, all eventually decided not to purchase the building.

The Lower Hill before the Arena: : A rambunctious, crowded, loud place with 'everything you needed'

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/17/2011.

Excerpt:  In 1957, the year demolitions began to clear land for the Civic Arena, the Lower Hill had been designated a slum. But what the bulldozers destroyed was the last of the city's great immigrant melting pots.

Crowded, unsanitary, multilingual, multicultural, multiracial and unsavory here and there, its old architecture and vitality were the wrong kind. The Lower Hill had come up against a postwar society thinking about space.

The $21 million "Cinderella Project" proposed to revitalize 100 acres with what the newspaper called "a long-needed municipal auditorium."

No longer needed after 50 years, the since-renamed Mellon Arena itself is a step from the wrecking ball. The Historic Review and Planning Commissions have voted not to recommend historic status to preserve it. City council, which has yet to vote, is the last hope of preservationists.

Preservation was not an issue in the 1950s, nor were the sacrifices people were anticipating within the arrowhead-shaped land bounded by Bedford Avenue, Crawford Street, Centre Avenue and Washington Place.

Uptown: Pittsburgh's next hot neighborhood?

LINK

Link to November 21 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article.

Excerpt: When Chris Spina went to Duquesne University in the 1970s, he didn't think the area was a neighborhood. Most students commuted and few ventured to Fifth Avenue.

The northern boundary of Uptown, Fifth Avenue now bustles with students, restaurant patrons, hockey fans, concert-goers, workers and potential investors.

It's a pivotal time for the roughly 905 households that nestle nearly invisibly into the industrial and institutional streetscape. Tens of thousands of drivers pass through every day without seeing the neighborhood. But it is starting to assert itself.

On a recent balmy day, do-it-yourselfers on ladders pounded and painted along Locust and Tustin streets. Ed D'Angelo popped out of his Forbes Auto Repair shop on Gist Street to hail sculptor James Simon. Children were walking home from school. A dog barked.

It was a village moment in a place that John Fleenor, a Gist Street resident and artist, calls "a work in progress."

Pittsburgh ranked in nation's Top 20 on Brookings Institution list

Link to June 17 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article.

Excerpt: Pittsburgh, Boston (30th) and New Haven have relatively stable economies and for the same reason: They are centers for both higher education and health care.

"The most interesting thing about Pittsburgh, and the reason it is doing so well is that its economy is based on 'eds' and 'meds,' and parts of manufacturing that are not hugely affected by auto manufacturing," said Howard Wial, one of the authors of the Brookings study.

Are malls a dying breed?

Link to February 22 Pittsburgh Post Gazette article.

Excerpt:
From shuttered storefronts to near-empty corridors, hard times have hit some of the region's largest shopping malls.

Once the pillars of local consumerism, malls from Frazer to Monroeville to West Mifflin are struggling with vacancies as the nation's deepening recession takes its toll on retailers and shopper confidence.

At Century III Mall, one wing of the sprawling West Mifflin complex is nearly empty because of an exodus of stores. By a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette count, more than 30 storefronts are empty.
In Frazer, the Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills is coping with some 37 vacancies, as the huge ranch-style mall continues to struggle to find a niche since its opening in 2005.

And in the east suburbs, Monroeville Mall, where the 1978 cult classic "Dawn of the Dead" was filmed, finds itself amidst a real-life retail horror story, with roughly 20 empty storefronts by the newspaper's count.

Fifth, Forbes poised to turn the corner

Link to January 4 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article.

Excerpt:

Don't put away the champagne just yet. In 2009, there finally might be something to celebrate in Downtown's Fifth and Forbes corridor, long plagued by boarded-up storefronts and low-end retail.

After the collapse of high-profile city-led redevelopment efforts over the past decade, the corridor appears poised to turn the corner, with the completion of several projects that could reshape Downtown in ways not seen since Renaissance II more than two decades ago.

The latest resurgence, totaling more than $300 million, will be built on housing, with nearly 140 units to be finished this year, as well as a mix of office and retail space.

Next month, the first residents will be moving into luxury condominiums at Piatt Place, the former Lazarus-Macy's store, at Fifth Avenue and Wood Street. About four months later, the Three PNC Plaza building, also on Fifth, Downtown's first new skyscraper since 1987, will be greeting its first tenant, the Reed Smith law firm.

By late July, the new Downtown YMCA will open in the former G.C. Murphy store on Fifth, and the first of 46 apartment residents will be settling in, as part of a $40 million transformation.

Development news (8-20-2008)

New bridge opens; hailed as gateway to Oakland

Link to November 25 Pittsburgh Post Gazette article.

Excerpt:

Officials opened the new $29 million Boulevard of the Allies bridge over Forbes Avenue in Oakland yesterday.

The former span, built in 1928, was structurally deficient and weight-restricted. The new structure will carry about 28,000 vehicles a day.

Liberty Tunnels qualify as city's biggest ashtray

Link to September 11 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article.

Excerpt:

More than 75,000 vehicles a day travel the 1.1-mile-long tunnels, a lifeline between the city and the South Hills.

Signals at both ends result in stop-and-go traffic and, often, long, slow queues. As a result, many smokers light up inside the tunnel, and when they're finished, they throw the butts out the window.

Large fans used to blow motor-vehicle exhaust fumes out of the tunnel also sweep some of the butts outside.

Other butts roll down Saw Mill Run and West Liberty Avenue ramps at the southern end, collecting at the bottom at the curbs or around traffic islands. The same thing happens at the McArdle Roadway-Liberty Bridge intersection.

While tossing cigarette butts on public property constitutes littering and could be subject to a fine, police rarely, if ever, enforce the law.

So many cigarettes accumulate in drains inside the tunnels that the grates have to be removed at least once a year and the butts have to be sucked out by a truck-mounted vacuum. The annual butt cleaning costs PennDOT about $6,000.