Community Corner
Develop PGH Bulletins: Blight, Conservatorship Changes, Demolition Funding Get Lawmakers' Ears
He said that tumbledown structures decrease the values of neighboring properties to the tune of an estimated $1.2 billion.
June 11, 2021
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State House Republicans pledged to strengthen the fight against blight in Pennsylvania communities at a hearing that included lengthy testimony by Allegheny County’s development director.
Lawmakers at the hearing, held at the Salvation Army Allegheny Valley Worship and Service Center in Brackenridge, said that existing anti-blight tools may need to be updated, and new ones created, to address the effects of depopulation and deindustrialization.
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“We can produce effective change with this,” said Rep. Carrie Lewis DelRosso, R-Oakmont, who hosted the meeting attended by 10 lawmakers. “The state of Pennsylvania and the Commonwealth deserve much better with this.”
Allegheny County Economic Development Director Lance Chimka told the lawmakers that 30 of Allegheny County’s 130 municipalities have median home sale prices of $60,000 or below. That often means that the market values of houses are less than the debts attached to them, making rehabilitation financially difficult. “It’s a complete market failure for many of our communities,” he said.
He said that tumbledown structures decrease the values of neighboring properties to the tune of an estimated $1.2 billion. That results in more than $5 million a year in lost property taxes for the county alone, with higher losses to the involved municipalities and school districts.
Erosion in state development funding has made it harder for local governments to reverse blight, Chimka said. While new state-created tools have helped, they have not met the need, he said.
For instance, the 2008 conservatorship law, which allows responsible owners to take stewardship of blighted properties, has been adopted by “predatory” actors seeking control of buildings in “rapidly appreciating” markets.
Conservatorship should not be used “to gas our already hot markets,” he said, recommending tighter eligibility requirements.
Democratic lawmakers in a March hearing discussed potential changes in the conservatorship law, following PublicSource’s reporting on use of the tool by developers.
Chimka said the county has so far raised $2.1 million for demolition of blighted properties through a new fee on deed and mortgage filings. But local governments have submitted $7.6 million in applications for that money, an indication of the vast need to raze empty buildings.
The next challenge will be finding ways to spur development on land cleared through those demolitions, he said.
Lawmakers in attendance discussed legislative tweaks that could ease the clearing of liens from properties and help land banks to transfer properties to new owners. They also mulled potential new tools, including creation of a statewide registry of property owners, and assessments that could be levied on owners of blighted buildings. Republicans are the majority in the state House and Senate.
Blight remediation “doesn’t have a party attached to it,” said Lewis DelRosso.
Rep. Rosemary Brown, R-Monroe and Pike counties, majority chairwoman of the House Urban Affairs Committee, pledged “further work to look at strengthening some of the acts that are in place.”
An empty bank branch, which Citizens Bank is hoping to raze and replace, cleared a hurdle toward historic designation, which could thwart its proposed demolition.
Built by Mellon Bank 52 years ago on Penn Avenue in East Liberty, the branch became part of Citizens in 2001, but was shuttered last year.
At 11,000 square feet, it's nearly four times as large as today's typical branches, Citizens Head of Property, Strategy and Execution Jared Wallace told the commission. "It’s a very large, intimidating, dark building," he told the commission. "It’s not welcoming and it's not fit for [its] purpose any more for us."
Brittany Reilly, of Preservation Pittsburgh, nominated the branch for historic status, and the city's Historic Review Commission agreed. The City Planning Commission's role in nominations is to review whether the designation would be good for the adjoining properties and surrounding neighborhood. Pittsburgh City Council then gets the final say.
Reilly told the commission that the unusual building, with its green glazed brick, vast windows and accordion-like shape, is "a welcome mat into East Liberty, which has undergone unfathomable change, transformation, resurgence and growth.”
Because it was a product of Mellon Bank's exceptional architecture and design program, embraces the modernist period of architecture and reflects the era of urban redevelopment, it should be preserved, Reilly argued.
Architect Gerald Morosco, retained by Citizens, countered that isn’t even among the best of the Mellon Bank branches.
Commissioner Becky Mingo noted that the city is trying to preserve and reuse resources, including buildings. “I see this building as serving a wonderful purpose at this juncture of two very important intersections," she said, adding that it "works very well within the neighborhood context."
While several commission members were absent from the final vote and one abstained, a majority approved the historic designation.
Citizens can't demolish the building while the historic nomination is being considered. If council approves the designation, any plan to demolish would have to win the approval of the Historic Review Commission. The City Planning Commission would also have to approve demolition, because the building is within the special Baum-Centre district.
Duquesne University can move forward with plans to expand its Forbes Avenue presence, but should work with Pittsburgh staff to avoid overbuilding along the Uptown artery, the City Planning Commission ruled.
Duquesne’s plans to build a College of Osteopathic Medicine, plus one new dormitory and one new academic building, are the centerpieces of the proposed Institutional Master Plan that came to the commission for a hearing and vote. If approved by Pittsburgh City Council, it would guide campus development through 2031.
The College of Osteopathic Medicine, a $53 million project, is not expected to exceed 120 feet in height. Duquesne’s proposed plan, though, doesn’t rule out building the dorm and the academic building to 180 feet, and leaving little public space on their respective sites on Forbes.
“I’d really like to see some sort of commitment to a courtyard or other carve-outs in the building,” said commissioner Rachel O’Neill, referring to the dormitory. She said she’d like to avoid approving the creation of “a kind of tunnel-vision situation” on Forbes.
Rod Dobish, Duquesne’s associate vice president and chief facilities officer, said it would be hard to make commitments without consulting with the developer slated to construct the dorm.
In a compromise, the commission voted – with one abstention – to approve Duquesne’s proposed master plan, with the condition that the university work with Department of City Planning staff to refine plans and avoid creating what commissioner Becky Mingo called “one solid cube” of buildings along Forbes.
The plan next goes to council for approval.
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Rich Lord is PublicSource’s economic development reporter. He can be reached at rich@publicsource.org or on Twitter @richelord.
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