possibility in mckeesport revised

7/28/2019 Possibility in McKeesport Revised

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Possibility in McKeesport

Ryan Van Dinter and Sean Plunkett

McKeesport is viewed as down and out. Blighted properties line the citys streets and the

5th Avenue business district is now a dark corridor of concrete monsters. Then there are swathes

of vacant industrial properties where National Tube Works once beat steel into tubes and

pumped life into the city.

The pulse has slowed at the industrial site, owned by the Regional Industrial

Development Corporation, and redevelopment has been difficult as railroad tracks once clogged

all of the main entrances. However, the flyover ramp from Lysle Blvd. to the RIDC site may add

a dose of adrenaline to redevelopment efforts. The ramp was completed just over a year and a

half ago at a cost of $10.9 million, according to an article by Jason Togyer. Mayor Cherepko and

Tim White, Vice President of Development at the RIDC, state that building the flyover ramp was

an extremely critical component to developing the RIDC site. Mayor Cherepko goes on:

Some people dont quite understand the true significance of what that ramp brought to the city.

Some say its a bridge to nowhere. But, when you have your large companies, manufacturing or

industrial, and when they come in and they do their studies...they figure in what, well what will it

cost them in production, in manpower if youre waiting for trains. Additionally, former Mayor

and now state Senator Jim Brewster was quoted by Patrick Cloonan as saying, The flyover ramp

is the final step in reclaiming the former mill site for economic development.

More companies have expressed interest in the industrial park since the flyover ramps

installation. Mr. White indicated that Duquesne Light has made a commitment to relocate to the

old mill site. In an article by Jennifer R. Vertullo, hopes are high that this and other future

possibilities will help in revitalizing the downtown business district. Activity on the RIDC mill


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site will spur additional activity, both on the site and within the downtown district, states

Community Development Director Bethany Bauer in Vertullos article.

The steel industry sparked McKeesport to life. McKeesport was a hamlet of only

twenty-five hundred people in 1872, writes Hoerr, when Boston industrialist John H.

Flagler...founded the National Tube Works. With the increased use of natural gas and need for

steel tube, McKeesports population boomed from 2,500 people in 1870 to 20,751 people in

1890 and more than doubled again to 55,355 by 1940.

This population growth was due in large part to a large supply of Eastern Europeans in

Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other countries. Steel companies

sought them out for the dangerous, dirty, and extremely hot work in steel mills. As evidenced in

HoerrsAnd The Wolf Finally Came and romanticized in Thomas Bells Out of This Furnace, the

original steel workers suffered a harsh existence of 12-hour shifts, a 24-hour turn, and only one

day off a month. Although their lives were on the line every day, one thing is certain: they came

to this country with the hope of a better future and existence for themselves and their families.

A Google aerial map of RIDCs industrial park in McKeesport, PA. Access points circled in red.

http://goo.gl/maps/tfQsI


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Jason Togyers, journalist and producer ofTube City Online is closely tied to

McKeesport and the region through his ancestors work in the mills. My grandfather came over

in about 1910 from Hungary, said Togyer. On his fathers side his great-grandfather and

grandfather came over when he was about 15 years old, maybe younger than that. His dad was

going to work in the steel mill in McKeesport, to send some money back to Hungary [to] bring

the rest of the family over. His great-grandfather never returned from Hungary, possibly due to

World War 1, leaving Togyers grandfather alone in McKeesport to fend for himself. Togyers

story is intriguing, yet one of many stories that depict the beginnings of McKeesport.

Dr. Evan Stoddard uses the poem from the 1916 Duquesne Jubilee to describe the effect

the steel industry had on mill towns like McKeesport:

Like the meteor the town of Duquesne has darted out of space and cut a horizon. Unlike

the meteor it remains in the horizon, more lustrous than ever, and constantly growing in

intensity of beauty and attractiveness.

Today, McKeesport is a distressed city. According to Hoerr, during World War II, the US

produced 54.1 percent of the worlds raw steel. A great share of this came was produced and

finished in the Mon Valley mills and works. During the steel boom, rapid increases in population

and industry left city planning by the wayside, in an area surrounded by cliffs and rivers, creating

a city difficult to access by roads or public transportation.

Additionally, McKeesport held itself separate from Pittsburgh and other areas, and the

Mon Valley region is known for its rivalries. Earlier mayors feared that metropolitanism would

decrease the autonomy of the city. Finally, there was a lack of diversification in the economy

with city budgets based on taxes of the steel mills production projections. This seems to

contradict the towns autonomy, but in reality, it works out perfectly. The citys identity and


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social fabric was born on the backs of low-class, European immigrants and Blacks that had

migrated from the South after the Civil War.

The steel towns were geographically separated by the cliffs and rivers cutting through the

valley. Although these towns shared a common trait of being involved in creating steel and steel

products, geographic separation allowed for the growth of regionalism and strong senses of

identity tied to their towns. Were very proud of our neighborhoods and sense of community,

states Jason Togyer, but it holds us back.

One challenge is financial. As population declines, municipalities struggle with creating,

finding, and maintaining revenue streams. The most pressing challenges in the city, first and

foremost, is what I think all municipalities and boroughs at this time, when you see your state

government, and your federal, comes to money, says Mayor Cherepko. The bottom line is your

expenditures continue to increase every year, and your revenues are decreasing for that matter.

They are not even staying the same, as McKeesports population ages and becomes increasingly

transient. Almost half of the 19,771 people living in McKeesport do not generate taxes or lives

on fixed income from social security, making tax increases difficult. When you have a

financially distressed population like ours we need to be careful, says Cherepko. Its amazing

how hard a small [tax] increase can hit the pocketbooks, of seniors especially.

For interactive data go to

https://www.thinglink.com/scene/379492805799575

554#tlsite


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McKeesport is also losing grant and aid money from state and local governments. There

has been a systematic effort in this country going back to the Reagan administration of

disinvestment in these older urban communities, says Togyer, discussing the elimination and

cutbacks to the Model Cities Program, Community Block Grants, and redevelopment programs.

With effects from the sequester still looming, it is likely that grant and aid money will diminish

further. Simply put, the money is not there and the city needs creative financing solutions, says

Cherepko.

A second problem facing the city is its blight. The number of vacant buildings in

McKeesport is astonishing. There are currently 10,088 houses in the city, of which 1,735 of these

houses are vacant. The highest concentration of vacant houses is behind a largely empty 5th

avenue, where redevelopment in the 1970s created a monstrosity of a shopping mall that is now

boarded up. All too often, people do not understand how expensive it is to tear down a house,

says the Mayor. We contract those out for $8,000 to $10,000 per home. If you have 500

homes in the city that need torn down, that would cost $5 million. We budget maybe $50,000

to $100,000 to tear down houses. Most of the time its closer to $50,000.

Ryan Van Dinter 2013 Jonathan Denson 20112

http://www.jonathondenson.com/2011/11/mckeespor


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Togyer believes that fighting blight puts the city in a defensive stance. You dont get a

chance to innovate, and thats what is holding McKeesport back. In the long run, its not building

for the future, its holding on to what you have. However, he also understands the implications

of the current financial situation and a defensive stance may be the only viable option. A 2011

report from the University of PittsburghsPittsburgh Economic Quarterly shows that there are a

total of 3,105 tax delinquent parcels in McKeesport, costing the city $182,592 in lost taxes,

annually. Collecting these taxes would allow the city to demolish ten blighted properties every

year, without needing to purchase expensive equipment or outsource to contractors.

Clean up at the former steel site in McKeesport was a process riddled with financial and

regulatory obstacles. The early days of environmental regulation focused on limiting new

pollution. This changed with Love Canal in the late 1970s. Love Canal was a small town near

Niagara Falls built on a toxic dump site. The residents of this area experienced illnesses,

miscarriages, and deformations at birth. The Superfund Act came in its wake to address soil

contamination at heavily polluted sites.

The RIDC purchased McKeesports industrial zone from USX to move the city forward.

To do this, RIDC had to release the company of its environmental liability. Essentially, all of the

soil at the site had to be remediated and removed. However, competing regulations between the

Environmental Protection Agency and Pennsylvanias Department of Environmental Protection,

as well as the Superfund Act, made this process incredibly expensive and time consuming.

In 1989, the RIDC attempted to develop McKeesports waterfront to bring in businesses

and get people back to work. The process was riddled with obstacles, especially because it was

one of the earliest brownfield redevelopment sites. Environmental costs in cleaning up the

former USX site in McKeesport were projected to reach $335 million. Since cleanup, Tim


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White, Vice President of Development at the RIDC says RIDC has spent $55 million in

outfitting, roofing, and chopping up old foundations to prepare the site for tenanting.

However, cleaning the site was not enough. Challenges still remain. One challenge from

the older generation is expectations for steels return. Unfortunately, new technology in steel

making requires a fraction of the manpower that it used to. A second challenge is that people no

longer need to leave near the factory. Dr. Stoddard quotes Mike Dawida that the people

working [at these mills] live in other places, because they have the mobility and the money to

live elsewhere, and so the communities around them died before the mill left. 1

This leaves the question of what is possible on the former site where a once massive

National Tube Works blocked an entire population from the banks of the Monongahela. Until

recently, certain companies were not considering the site because of access issues. Several

railroads block access to the site from Lysle Boulevard, one of the citys main thoroughfare.

While the site was being rehabilitated, hours were lost each day waiting for trains at a single

crossing to the site. Further, time spent waiting for trains is a major consideration that inhibited

companies from tenanting the site.

The city of McKeesport and the RIDC have been criticized for lacking innovative ideas

for redevelopment and revitalization. In a 1998 the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of

Public and International produced a capstone report calledA Second Chance: Brownfields

Redevelopment in Pittsburgh. In the report, the authors claim that there is an inconsistency of

vision in the old steel towns of the Mon Valley where creative and innovative ideas for the use

of the land are dismissed. Creative ideas are not what people are used to, and there is no plan for

a defined future within which such ideas may fit.


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To an extent, Mr. Togyer agrees. McKeesport has done a very bad job of marketing

itself as a bedroom community to Pittsburgh, he explains. Theres a resistance to say that

McKeesport is a suburb of Pittsburgh and should be treated like that. This resistance is tightly

tied to McKeesports history. Hoerr quotes the advantage of McKeesports location on the

Monongahela as being 12 miles closer to Philadelphia than Pittsburgh. Further, an industry

study by Edward K. Muller, Morton Coleman, and David Houston on creating a regional

transportation called Skybus claims that in 1963, McKeesports mayor was opposed to building

the system fearing a loss of autonomy and metropolitanism.

However, Togyer believes the movement of people back to urban settings and

neighborhoods can work in McKeesports favor. First, it has the ambience of a city built around

wealth generated during the Industrial Revolution and World War II. Although 1970s urban

renewal partially scarred the downtown, the Peoples Building and other historical sites still

exist, offering both grandeur and quaintness of a small city. Further, Togyer explains,

McKeesport lies at the confluence of two rivers. Neither the urban landscape nor natural scenery

can be duplicated anywhere else. Togyer believes that much of what is happening in

Lawrenceville can be transplanted in McKeesport. He contends that people want a cheap, urban

living experience and that you can live like a Russian oligarch in the Mon Valley on $50

thousand a year.

For the industrial site, not much creativity is allowed. Tim White explains that various

factors limit what can be done in the park. The first factor is that the site is an Act 2 Superfund

site. Therefore, nothing edible can be grown on the property, although a warehouse distributing

prepackaged dry foods would be allowed. The second factor is that when RIDC purchased the

property the signed deed had a covenant attached stating that the property could not be used for


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residential purposes. Third, McKeesport is often criticized for not doing what Homestead did

with retail. However, White claims that the actual town of Homestead is not much better off than

before its own Waterfront became a retail and office center. The RIDC focuses on bringing in

high tech manufacturing and industry that will bring better jobs and wages to the area. if you

put a Wal-Mart on our site, White says, it will kill off a little business on Main Street. With

an expanding retail corridor in McKeesports Christy Park, large retail outlets would do just that.

Current economic factors in the Allegheny region provide a ray of sunshine for

McKeesport. Stoddard claims that Pittsburgh did well during the latest economic downturn,

maintaining a stable population level. Stoddard goes further saying that the high tech industry in

Pittsburgh is expanding and in about 20 years these companies will need to expand into readily

available shop space. White bolsters this claim stating, The overall industrial market in the

Pittsburgh region has definitely improved in the last 18 months, faster than the national

economy.

McKeesport is at its lowest population level since it first exploded in its early days. The

city is underserved by three limited bus lines and lacks access to a major highway. For now,

entertaining the idea that it can be a garden suburb to Pittsburgh is difficult, especially in the

absence of quality jobs. However, obtaining a few solid employers can drastically change the

fortune of the city.


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White has noticed a resurgence to increase domestic [manufacturing] opportunities. In

Mr. China Goes to America, an article in The Atlantic, James Fallow claims, A convergence

of trends make operations in America more attractive and feasible, just as the cost and friction of

operating in China are increasing. Charles Fishman, theInsourcing Boom, follows a new trend,

and old idea, where manufacturing companies are becoming more efficient by using shop floor

input when designing new products and building these products in the US. Worker input can

only accomplish when the workers and engineers share a common language and work in close

proximity to each other. Second, shipping goods from China has become cost prohibitive as oil

prices and gas prices continue to increase. Finally, GEs Appliance Park can get the their water

heaters and dishwashers from the warehouse to Home Depot in 30 minutes rather than two to

three weeks if it was shipped from China.

McKeesport is ideally situated to meet the demands of new manufacturing for space,

time, and access. The flyover ramp and $17 million in road improvements eliminated access

obstacles. Although McKeesport is not ideally located on an expressway, it is not too far away

either, situated only 6.5 miles from the Mon Valley Expressway and 10 miles from I-376.

Additionally, the industrial park also offers access to multiple railroad lines and river transit if

A view of RIDC industrial park in McKeesport. Ryan Van Dinter 2013


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necessary. Energy is also a boon to McKeesport. The city is located on the largest known shale-

gas reservoir in the world. Energy is abundant and cheap in the region, making relocation and

expansion feasible for companies looking to save money.

Finally, White points out, McKeesport has dedicated certain sites as Keystone

Opportunity Zones. TheKeystone Opportunity Zone Program Guidelines states, This unique

program develops a communitys abandoned, unused, underutilized land and buildings into

business districts and residential areas that present a well-rounded and well-balanced approach to

community revitalization. Relocating companies benefit as credits, waivers and broad-based

tax abatements, local and state taxes on economic activity in Keystone Opportunity Zones are

significantly reduced. White claims, there are businesses looking to grow and expand in the

region. They have real estate agents and consultants search and analyze for them. Being a KOZ

could be a selling point for one of these expanding regional businesses.

And the city is desperate to regrow. I think that we should not close any door or window

on any opportunity, says Cherepko, I will fight hard for anything that wants to come in down

there that might really move the development a little more quickly. Development could be a

mix of retail and industrial, but, according to White, retail just is not feasible and could

negatively impact the community. However, the door is not closed, and if the opportunity

presented itself, the city could grant a zoning variance to include retail, or rezone for certain

mixed use purposes. There is nothing stopping someone from saying I want to open up a

microbrewery, explains White, they would just have to get a variance, and I am pretty sure that

the city would [grant it].


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A lot of hard work will still remain in McKeesport even after new companies move into

the industrial park. There is a clear disparity between neighborhoods near 5th avenue and

Renzihausen Park. The census tract around Renzihausen contains the largest share of

homeowners and the lowest percentage of African Americans. Likewise, the census tract

containing Christy Park has a population of 3,017, of which 2,545 are white and 341 are African

American. The largest majority of African Americans appear to live in the census tracts behind

5th avenue, where new development is largely stagnant. There are only 82 vacant houses in

Renzihausen. Numbers of vacant houses in the remaining census tracts range from about 116 to

383. These houses are often blighted and in need of demolition or repair.

Even if jobs do come to the industrial park, McKeesport may still have to wait for years

for its tax base to grow, and will thus continue to face increasing financial difficulties. According

to Hoerr, McKeesport lost $517,000 in annual revenue by 1990. In 2003, USXs obligation to

pay about $350,000 in property taxes to the city ended. Mayor Cherepko said that taxes have not

been raised in the city since he was a councilman, and it is unknown when the last tax increase

occurred.

Map of vacant housing in McKeesport. Follow link for more demographic data based on the US

2010 census. https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=ml


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Those who do end up moving into the Mon Valley for work will likely commute from

White Oak, Port Vue, or another nearby borough. This can be in part due to a slow removal of

blight, or perceptions of safety. Further, if no extensions are approved, taxes may not be realized

from companies entering the KOZ for nearly a decade.

Despite all this, retail follows employment, according to White. If you get a business

and they hire a bunch of people, then they need to get lunch somewhere, buy gas somewhere,

and live somewhere. So all that stuff ripples and it build your for your retail demand and

residential demand. When the time comes, hopefully McKeesport will be able to house, service,

and market to a new population of young, hip, tech savvy adults with the ability to work in high

tech manufacturing or remotely as prototypers, and desire to live in a low cost, urban

environment.

Another obstacle for McKeesport is in the nature of the area as a whole. Allegheny

County has about 130 independent municipalities, ranging from tiny boroughs to Class III cities

like McKeesport and Pittsburgh itself, which is a Class II city. In these 130 independent

municipalities, sharing through regional committees is both geographically and socially difficult,

according to Togyer.

All 130 of the municipalities in the County have their own governments, complete with a

mayor and city council, a police department, a fire department, and ambulance services. These

For interactive data go to

https://www.thinglink.com/scene/379492805799575

554#tlsite


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functions are expensive to maintain, and the municipalities are often loathe sharing resources

with one another. McKeesport does contract out police and fire services to neighboring

townships, but its rare to see in the region as a whole.

There are also rivalries among these townships that go back as long ago as a century,

Togyer says. Hoerr writes, For the old-time fans of high school football, the idea of making one

town out of Clairton and Duquesne is tantamount to merging Iran and Iraq. The rivalries are a

result of how the big steel manufacturers divided the area. Communities formed from ethnic

enclaves, and each enclave had its own church. If someone was Hungarian, they lived in the

Hungarian enclave and went to the Hungarian church; they would never have gone to the Italian

or Polish churches.

Aside from race or nationality, class was also a dividing factor, although class and

nationality often went hand-in-hand. The companies made housing for the management, which

consisted largely of the Scots-Irish and English, separate from housing for the workers by design.

They wanted to limit the interaction between the laborers and the management. This was the case

in virtually every steel town. According to Glenn Katrancha, a retired steel worker from

Johnstown, there was a definite division between the workers and the managers. The managers

lived on the hill, separate from the workers, both physically and economically.

McKeesport is not down and out. Rather, it may have bottomed out and is ready to take

the next turn. Construction of the flyover ramp makes the industrial park a viable option.

Completion of the Greater Allegheny Passage Trail will increase exposure to the city as day

tripping Pittsburghers and adventuring tourists meander down the path or cycle to Washington,

D.C. Theres very positive wind blowing in our direction, claims White, and McKeesport is

likely to get picked up by the wind.


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End Notes

1Footnoted in Transformed: Reinventing Pittsburghs Industrial Sites for a New Century, 1975-1995. Mike Dawida, whoserved as both a state representative and senator from the Mon Valley and later as a county commissioner, observed: A lotof these communities had begun to fail even before the steel mills left. Braddock, for example, is considered one of the worst

communities in Allegheny County and still a failed community in many ways, and the mill still operates there. But the milloperates with a technological expertise that requires one-tenth of the people that it did twenty years ago. So fewer people,the people working there live in other places, because they have the mobility and the money to live elsewhere, and so thecommunities around them died before the mill left. So you had this mixture of older people who had worked in the mills,thinking it would come back; they couldnt comprehend that even if the mills came back the communities were in a failure tobegin with.

2http://www.jonathondenson.com/2011/11/mckeesport-long-abandoned-ruins-of.html

possibility in mckeesport revised

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