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Posted Jun 6, 2018, 6:02 PM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Dec 2013
Posts: 5,210
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I hate to break the Business Time's paywall yet again, but they have a very interesting...and saddening...article about the proposed demolition of Holy Family Church:
Quote:
The owner of the former Holy Family Church property in the ninth ward of Lawrenceville has posted a demolition notice on the church in advance of a proposed sale and residential redevelopment
According to a posted sign in a window of the main church building, owner 44th & Summit Development LLC, an affiliate of Lawrenceville-based E Properties and Development, filed a notice of intent to demolish the church building on May 29; the Pittsburgh Department of Licensing, Permits and Inspection requires a mandatory 15-day waiting period before a demolition can go forward.
The move to demolish the church comes after years of effort to redevelop the property by a partnership affiliated with E Properties that included zoning approval for an apartment conversion as well as a legal challenge. The move also comes with the expressed disappointment of two of Lawrenceville’s leading community organizations, who are concerned about losing what they say is an historic church and sanctuary with long-established roots in the neighborhood.
Emeka Onwugbenu, CEO of E Properties, said the decision to demolish the church has been a painful one for him that comes after six years of attempts to redevelop and later sell the property.
“I”m a practicing Catholic. I take my faith very seriously. So from the outset, it wasn’t an option,” he said of how his thinking has shifted over the decision to demolish the church.
“We went through the process and looked at different options,” he said, noting the apartment conversion plan, an office project as well as one prospect of moving a new school into the property.
But he expects costs for such items as construction and asbestos abatement for a property that’s badly deteriorated makes it too much of a challenge to restore and convert to another use now.
“We have been very patient with the process,” he said. “But after six years, I had no other option.”
The property includes the main church and a former school, both of which were closed by the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh at the end of 2008 and eventually sold and subject to a variety of development plans since.
The affiliate of E Properties was granted approval for a 57-apartment conversion project for Holy Family in 2013, and the firm closed on buying it in 2014. The company pursued the plan and others until 2016, when it opted to put the property back up for sale.
Matthew Galluzzo, executive director of Lawrenceville Corp., which focuses on development, and Dave Breingan, executive director of Lawrenceville United, an organization focused more directly on resident concerns, met with Onwugbenu this week and discussed the demolition notice, among other issues.
Both expressed disappointment with the plan.
Galluzzo said he was 100 percent opposed to demolishing the church, although he was open to the possibility of razing the school building.
“Historically and currently, our organization values the preservation of the authenticity of place, ensuring that properties that contribute to the historic character of this neighborhood are valued,” he said. “I cannot overstate how disappointed we are that a demolition permit has been filed for this property."
In terms of the property’s historic value, Galluzzo described the church as a “hulking structure in the middle of the neighborhood” that’s more than 50 years old as well as part of the neighborhood’s fabric.
Breingan expected more immediate notice of the demolition posting and sees the decision as a violation of trust.
“We expressed very clearly to him that this from our standpoint is a violation of what we thought his commitment to the neighborhood was,” said Breingan of Unwugbenu.
Breingan described the church as an iconic presence for Lawrenceville and said “we repeatedly stressed that’s an important building for the neighborhood.”
Galluzzo and Breingan didn’t comment on or commit to any plans they might have to oppose the demolition.
The disagreement over the proposed demolition of the Holy Family Church is the latest flashpoint over preservation in a Lawrenceville that is one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods full of historic 19th century building stock as well as a hot market for development.
Currently, the property is being marketed by KW Commercial, whose sign on the church refers to it as “an approved building site” and characterizes the location of the 1.5 acre parcel as in “one of Pennsylvania’s hottest markets.”
The site is a block above Butler Street and behind Arsenal Bowl, the neighborhood’s bowling alley, and is a short walk up the hill from Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC.
Bolstered by the new robotics industry setting up in the neighborhood and the nearby Strip District, which is drawing in hundreds of new well-paid employees, Lawrenceville’s housing market has heated up dramatically in recent years. Homes there often sell for five times or more what they would've five or ten years ago, spurring ample infill housing construction and prices that typically reach well above $400,000.
Onwugbenu is based in Lawrenceville and has developed other projects there. His largest is the McCleary School Condos in the neighborhood’s tenth ward.
Onwugbenu said that the property is under agreement and that the sale going through is contingent on the demolition, adding he expects the plan will be for new townhouses.
After six years of efforts, Onwugbenu believes he’s exhausted his options for converting the church building that he now expects to lose money on the sale, given the time, effort and expense, as well as legal fees, of attempting to redevelop it.
A number of sources familiar with the plan who spoke anonymously to maintain their business relationships indicate that Toronto-based Craft Development Corp. has been considering an acquisition of the Holy Family property for a potential townhouse development.
Larry Regan, director of development for Craft, declined comment.
Craft is currently developing the Mews on Butler, a 68-townhouse project on a nearly three-acre site across from the Lawrenceville Shopping Center in the neighborhood’s tenth ward, for which Regan said the company is working through its pre-sale process and hopes to begin construction in the next 60 to 90 days.
KW Commercial has listed the property for sale at a price of $2 million, although it remains to be determined what a final sale price will be; Unwugbenu’s group paid $800,000 for the property nearly four years.
With the buildings no longer heated or having electrical service, he added they are now attracting vagrants and negative activity, calling the buildings in the current state a drain on the neighborhood.
“I’m worried that, God forbid, something bad might happen,” he said, arguing the neighborhood will be better off to have the site cleared for something new. “What I don’t want to happen is to drag our feet on this.”
The demolition notice’s 15-day waiting period on the church is expected to conclude next week.
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This is a textbook case of how NIMBYism fucks things up. There was a plan in place for a residential conversion which would have saved the buildings when the developer first got involved. NIMBYs litigated the process for various reasons (racism, parking concerns, etc) ultimately getting the variance for multi-family reduced until it was no longer cost-effective for E Properties to even do the project. Now the buildings will be knocked down, and worse, rather than build the 57-unit multifamily project which the variance allows for, we'll only have townhouses here. Exact count will of course vary based upon the width of the townhouses, and whether they build a row on Summit St, but probably no more than 40, and possibly as few as 24.
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