McKeesport Embraces grant funding, Looks toward Redevelopment
As the people of McKeesport look to the future of the city, many find themselves asking one question — what next?
Michelle Wardle, executive director of the McKeesport Heritage Center, has tracked and studied the city’s development and decline overtime. She cannot tell the future, but she does knows one thing — the city has to find a solution.
“You’re not necessarily going to get a commercial district in downtown McKeesport again, [so] they need to figure out what they are going to get. What’s going to be right for this city,” Wardle said.
The McKeesport City government along with the Regional Industrial Development Corporation are working to develop an answer.
The City has hired Homestead-based consulting firm Urban Design Ventures, LLC to create its five-year action plan for development to be submitted to HUD for future community development block grant funding. Urban Design Ventures provides community, economic and housing development, redevelopment planning, urban design and historic preservation services to its clients.
According to its website, Urban Design Ventures “specializes in the administration, management, and technical assistance to access these Federal Grant programs,” referring to CDBGs among others. The firm has worked with a number of clients across states, and, more locally, consulted for larger governmental entities like the City of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County to smaller cities like the City of Jeannette and the City of Monessen.
But according to Chris Briem, a regional economist from the University Center for Social and Urban Research, there is no clear development plan or model for today’s distressed urban communities. While McKeesport is the largest municipality in the Monongahela River Valley, Briem said its lack of fiscal capacity prevents the city from having the funds to make major investments in the area.
“Resources must come from outside and from other major investments, and that has been true of the last couple decades,” he said.
Development Challenges
The city and RIDC have faced a number of development challenges, many of which relate to the overarching issue of the area’s limited fiscal capacity, failing infrastructure and heavy industry-focused past.
McKeesport, according to Barna, is a victim of the time period in which they redeveloped.
“Late 50s, early 60s, when they redeveloped urban areas that was the scorched earth redevelopment [where] the thing was go in and level everything,” he said. “Now a lot of buildings that they tore down would be restored if redevelopment had come to McKeesport 30 years later.”
Now, much of McKeesport’s diminished fiscal capacity stems from the municipality’s dwindling tax base. So, although McKeesport is the largest municipality in the Monongahela River Valley and as such is doing better than some of the smaller communities with an even more limited capacity, they have a tax based dependent on what has been lost and do not have the funds to make investments in major area redevelopment.
According to Timothy White, the Regional Industrial Development Corporation vice president of development, RIDC has worked to develop the Industrial Center of McKeesport, which is the former site of a portion of U.S. Steel. RIDC started the project, he said, more than 20 years ago, and has faced the “broader challenges in [the industrial redevelopment] market.” In part, the project is focused on bringing industrial employment back to the area to produce “family sustaining jobs,” and White said the area has seen some progress.
“We have seen a significant amount of redevelopment if you compare it to some of the old mill sites in the region. Over 600 people work there everyday,” he said.
For Briem, their is still much to be done in McKeesport and the community “needs to consider how they can develop to succeed in the future.”
“What are they meant to be? A good place to live? To reside and bring your family? Should they still serve this function,” he said. “This has to be integrated with an area where people will be able to work or they will go elsewhere. So there is a path, but it is a very different path from strictly building heavy industry.”
John Barna, McKeesport Heritage Center Board President, said that going to downtown McKeesport is sad because he remembers “what it looked like in its heyday.”
“Now you walk down there and there’s nobody on the streets [and] very few businesses [are] open,” Barna said. “Even on a sunny day it’s depressing.”
While Briem said that much of successful development projects come from county-level involvement and state level intervention, federal funding is ideal “but doesn’t come in as great a quantity.”
Funding Assistance
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awards the city Community Development Block Grants —grants meant to be used for “providing decent housing, creating sustainable living environments and creating economic opportunity,” according to HUD guidelines — each fiscal year.
McKeesport’s annual action plan for the 2014 fiscal year utilizes about $948,989.00 of CDBG funds. According to the city’s fiscal year 2014 plan, the money goes toward fire department equipment purchases, accessibility improvements such as handicap ramps, lease of a street paver, an excavator program lease, rodent control, community development department administration and consulting services administration, among others.
Without the funds to bolster the virtually nonexistent tax base, Elash said that the city’s future would be bleak.
“We wouldn’t survive without the block grants. Without the [community development] program, I think the city would be Act 47,” he said. “The money that comes into the city through various reimbursements through the [community development] budget, it would be impossible to operate without it.”
Regional development, Briem and White agreed, directly impacts the community and workers who surround the city.
Briem noted that much of the community members trained in the former heavy manufacturing industry need similar industries to return to, or a need for training in a different skill set will grow. White said that the RIDC is focused on attracting non retail jobs to the Industrial Center to cater to the skill set of the established population and to create longer term employment solutions.
“We want to make sure they are family sustaining jobs in the market,” White said.
White said the industrial side of the site — which is open to heavy industry, light industry or high-tech options that produce “high quality manufacturing export driven jobs” in need of building, renting or owning operating space — has been active while the office market hasn’t seen as much growth.
“The rent values in most of the [Monongahela River Valley] don’t support the cost of construction in the area, so it is hard to do a deal and get money back to cover the mortgage of the building or land,” he said.
The Past's Shadow
The industrial site poses unique problems for development because of its manufacturing past.
The cost to develop is more expensive on brown fields — or former heavy industrial sites — in comparison to building on vacant land, according to Briem, because they pose environmental and infrastructure costs.
But the RIDC has taken steps to ready the industrial center— which has about 23 acres of land — and remedy any shallow foundation or potential manufacturing health risks. The RIDC is now “actively looking for industrial prospects,” White said.
The RIDC, like other development groups in the area, face monetary challenges in shaping the land. Two of the structures at the industrial center and in need of development, according to White. One structure, the Tube building, has a roof and a partial wall, but the 200,000 sq. ft. footprint requires more funds to redevelop than the RIDC has to spend. The second structure, an old rail house, has an 30,000 sq. ft. footprint but would require millions of dollars to bring up to occupancy. These issues leave the RIDC looking for alternative funding sources at the state or philanthropic levels.
These challenges speak to what Briem refers to as McKeesport’s “scale issue.”
“Few [community development centers] can take on the development of an industrial brown field,” he said. “Their impact most often has to be on a community level in terms of building some housing in order to see some change. But when we are talking about 100 acres of former heavy industry brown field, those are areas that won’t get much of the CDBG money or [community development center] help.”
According to White, the state has “played a significant role overtime” in helping to develop the site through a “broad mix of programs geared toward capital development” on the public side of the funding spectrum. Briem, however, noted that there are infrastructure issues as well as environmental issues when it comes to developing the industrial center and downtown areas.
“The goal of public and private sectors working together is to ameliorate those issues,” Briem said.
Redevelopment Potential
Locally, the city government disseminates the grant funds for development as it sees fit, in accordance with HUD regulations, because the city only has one sub recipient — the McKeesport Housing Corporation. But the city and the RIDC have not always seen eye to eye about the area’s potential for redevelopment.
J. Jason Elash, McKeesport city solicitor, said that he thinks “there’s stagnation [in the Industrial Center] now” in terms of development. Elash said that once the flyover ramp was built in McKeesport that the city was interested in moving the Eat’n Park into the Industrial Center “because there’s not a lot of room for them to expand.”
“It would’ve been very beneficial if they had moved into the industrial park on the other side of the flyover ramp, and once the ramp was built, I think [Eat’n Park was] amenable to doing that, but RIDC doesn’t want any retail or any of that type of operation over there,” Elash said. “Because heavy industry — it’s a perfect spot [where] you have the rail, the river, all of those magic components. But, if people aren’t coming you need to do something.”
If retail jobs were placed on the site, White explained, it may hurt the ability for the city to redevelop the downtown’s business district.
“That’s not our intent,” he said. “We want to create demand in the business. For example, we want to create demand by having jobs for workers who need some place to go to lunch. If we put that on the site, it would hurt the main business district.”
Time will only tell what is next for the area as the city, consultants and RIDC work toward redevelopment, but “it’s a long process, and [the RIDC is] over 20 years into that project,” according to White.
As for the slow and steady approach, Briem remains skeptical.
“If it hasn't happened in the last thirty years i’m not quite sure it will happen anytime soon,” he said.
Michelle Wardle, executive director of the McKeesport Heritage Center, has tracked and studied the city’s development and decline overtime. She cannot tell the future, but she does knows one thing — the city has to find a solution.
“You’re not necessarily going to get a commercial district in downtown McKeesport again, [so] they need to figure out what they are going to get. What’s going to be right for this city,” Wardle said.
The McKeesport City government along with the Regional Industrial Development Corporation are working to develop an answer.
The City has hired Homestead-based consulting firm Urban Design Ventures, LLC to create its five-year action plan for development to be submitted to HUD for future community development block grant funding. Urban Design Ventures provides community, economic and housing development, redevelopment planning, urban design and historic preservation services to its clients.
According to its website, Urban Design Ventures “specializes in the administration, management, and technical assistance to access these Federal Grant programs,” referring to CDBGs among others. The firm has worked with a number of clients across states, and, more locally, consulted for larger governmental entities like the City of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County to smaller cities like the City of Jeannette and the City of Monessen.
But according to Chris Briem, a regional economist from the University Center for Social and Urban Research, there is no clear development plan or model for today’s distressed urban communities. While McKeesport is the largest municipality in the Monongahela River Valley, Briem said its lack of fiscal capacity prevents the city from having the funds to make major investments in the area.
“Resources must come from outside and from other major investments, and that has been true of the last couple decades,” he said.
Development Challenges
The city and RIDC have faced a number of development challenges, many of which relate to the overarching issue of the area’s limited fiscal capacity, failing infrastructure and heavy industry-focused past.
McKeesport, according to Barna, is a victim of the time period in which they redeveloped.
“Late 50s, early 60s, when they redeveloped urban areas that was the scorched earth redevelopment [where] the thing was go in and level everything,” he said. “Now a lot of buildings that they tore down would be restored if redevelopment had come to McKeesport 30 years later.”
Now, much of McKeesport’s diminished fiscal capacity stems from the municipality’s dwindling tax base. So, although McKeesport is the largest municipality in the Monongahela River Valley and as such is doing better than some of the smaller communities with an even more limited capacity, they have a tax based dependent on what has been lost and do not have the funds to make investments in major area redevelopment.
According to Timothy White, the Regional Industrial Development Corporation vice president of development, RIDC has worked to develop the Industrial Center of McKeesport, which is the former site of a portion of U.S. Steel. RIDC started the project, he said, more than 20 years ago, and has faced the “broader challenges in [the industrial redevelopment] market.” In part, the project is focused on bringing industrial employment back to the area to produce “family sustaining jobs,” and White said the area has seen some progress.
“We have seen a significant amount of redevelopment if you compare it to some of the old mill sites in the region. Over 600 people work there everyday,” he said.
For Briem, their is still much to be done in McKeesport and the community “needs to consider how they can develop to succeed in the future.”
“What are they meant to be? A good place to live? To reside and bring your family? Should they still serve this function,” he said. “This has to be integrated with an area where people will be able to work or they will go elsewhere. So there is a path, but it is a very different path from strictly building heavy industry.”
John Barna, McKeesport Heritage Center Board President, said that going to downtown McKeesport is sad because he remembers “what it looked like in its heyday.”
“Now you walk down there and there’s nobody on the streets [and] very few businesses [are] open,” Barna said. “Even on a sunny day it’s depressing.”
While Briem said that much of successful development projects come from county-level involvement and state level intervention, federal funding is ideal “but doesn’t come in as great a quantity.”
Funding Assistance
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awards the city Community Development Block Grants —grants meant to be used for “providing decent housing, creating sustainable living environments and creating economic opportunity,” according to HUD guidelines — each fiscal year.
McKeesport’s annual action plan for the 2014 fiscal year utilizes about $948,989.00 of CDBG funds. According to the city’s fiscal year 2014 plan, the money goes toward fire department equipment purchases, accessibility improvements such as handicap ramps, lease of a street paver, an excavator program lease, rodent control, community development department administration and consulting services administration, among others.
Without the funds to bolster the virtually nonexistent tax base, Elash said that the city’s future would be bleak.
“We wouldn’t survive without the block grants. Without the [community development] program, I think the city would be Act 47,” he said. “The money that comes into the city through various reimbursements through the [community development] budget, it would be impossible to operate without it.”
Regional development, Briem and White agreed, directly impacts the community and workers who surround the city.
Briem noted that much of the community members trained in the former heavy manufacturing industry need similar industries to return to, or a need for training in a different skill set will grow. White said that the RIDC is focused on attracting non retail jobs to the Industrial Center to cater to the skill set of the established population and to create longer term employment solutions.
“We want to make sure they are family sustaining jobs in the market,” White said.
White said the industrial side of the site — which is open to heavy industry, light industry or high-tech options that produce “high quality manufacturing export driven jobs” in need of building, renting or owning operating space — has been active while the office market hasn’t seen as much growth.
“The rent values in most of the [Monongahela River Valley] don’t support the cost of construction in the area, so it is hard to do a deal and get money back to cover the mortgage of the building or land,” he said.
The Past's Shadow
The industrial site poses unique problems for development because of its manufacturing past.
The cost to develop is more expensive on brown fields — or former heavy industrial sites — in comparison to building on vacant land, according to Briem, because they pose environmental and infrastructure costs.
But the RIDC has taken steps to ready the industrial center— which has about 23 acres of land — and remedy any shallow foundation or potential manufacturing health risks. The RIDC is now “actively looking for industrial prospects,” White said.
The RIDC, like other development groups in the area, face monetary challenges in shaping the land. Two of the structures at the industrial center and in need of development, according to White. One structure, the Tube building, has a roof and a partial wall, but the 200,000 sq. ft. footprint requires more funds to redevelop than the RIDC has to spend. The second structure, an old rail house, has an 30,000 sq. ft. footprint but would require millions of dollars to bring up to occupancy. These issues leave the RIDC looking for alternative funding sources at the state or philanthropic levels.
These challenges speak to what Briem refers to as McKeesport’s “scale issue.”
“Few [community development centers] can take on the development of an industrial brown field,” he said. “Their impact most often has to be on a community level in terms of building some housing in order to see some change. But when we are talking about 100 acres of former heavy industry brown field, those are areas that won’t get much of the CDBG money or [community development center] help.”
According to White, the state has “played a significant role overtime” in helping to develop the site through a “broad mix of programs geared toward capital development” on the public side of the funding spectrum. Briem, however, noted that there are infrastructure issues as well as environmental issues when it comes to developing the industrial center and downtown areas.
“The goal of public and private sectors working together is to ameliorate those issues,” Briem said.
Redevelopment Potential
Locally, the city government disseminates the grant funds for development as it sees fit, in accordance with HUD regulations, because the city only has one sub recipient — the McKeesport Housing Corporation. But the city and the RIDC have not always seen eye to eye about the area’s potential for redevelopment.
J. Jason Elash, McKeesport city solicitor, said that he thinks “there’s stagnation [in the Industrial Center] now” in terms of development. Elash said that once the flyover ramp was built in McKeesport that the city was interested in moving the Eat’n Park into the Industrial Center “because there’s not a lot of room for them to expand.”
“It would’ve been very beneficial if they had moved into the industrial park on the other side of the flyover ramp, and once the ramp was built, I think [Eat’n Park was] amenable to doing that, but RIDC doesn’t want any retail or any of that type of operation over there,” Elash said. “Because heavy industry — it’s a perfect spot [where] you have the rail, the river, all of those magic components. But, if people aren’t coming you need to do something.”
If retail jobs were placed on the site, White explained, it may hurt the ability for the city to redevelop the downtown’s business district.
“That’s not our intent,” he said. “We want to create demand in the business. For example, we want to create demand by having jobs for workers who need some place to go to lunch. If we put that on the site, it would hurt the main business district.”
Time will only tell what is next for the area as the city, consultants and RIDC work toward redevelopment, but “it’s a long process, and [the RIDC is] over 20 years into that project,” according to White.
As for the slow and steady approach, Briem remains skeptical.
“If it hasn't happened in the last thirty years i’m not quite sure it will happen anytime soon,” he said.