Park Place Blog

Thursday, May 7th, at 7:30 PM

Church of the Nazarene
300 Peebles Street,
Corner of Waverly and Peebles.

Project representatives from the Peebles Square affordable housing development project have requested a chance to speak to community members at the GPPNA monthly meeting. In case you haven’t yet seen it, the ground breaking has already occurred and construction has started. This is a chance for community members to see final plans and ask questions.

Joni Rabinowitz, long time resident of Park Place and Executive Director of Just Harvest was interviewed for Pop City.

See the article here: Pop Star: Joni Rabinowitz of Just Harvest

Downtown Pittsburgh, 200 Ross Street, 15219

The hearing is to address a request regarding the former Cooke funeral home, located at 210 East End Avenue. Currently the funeral home has a ‘non-conforming use’ to operate as a funeral home in the residential neighborhood. The Cookes have closed the funeral home and are requesting a change to another non-conforming use: making the house into 4 units, 2 on the first floor and 2 on the second floor with 7 parking stalls in rear and 2 car garage.

The non-conformity in question is that the zoning for the block is R-2, meaning a maximum of 2 units are permitted for any new uses. Years ago, the community had fought to change the zoning to prevent any more homes from being subdivided beyond 2 units. As a result, any property owners that wish to change the number of units in their property to more than 2 units must obtain permission from the zoning board. This hearing is the request seeking such permission.

The hearing is public and those wishing to express their opinions on the request for the non-conforming use are encouraged to attend the hearing. Attendees are generally permitted to speak for 3 minutes each. Please keep in mind that regardless of where you stand on this request, remember that the Cookes are long time neighbors and residents of Park Place, and all should be respectful and polite.

On October 25th, Park Place received 14 new street trees as part of the TreeVitalize program that will plant 20,000 street trees in Pittsburgh by 2012.  More than 26 Park Place neighbors and friends came out on a rainy autumn Saturday afternoon to plant the trees and help green Park Place. In about four hours, these volunteers learned how to properly plant trees, take care of recently planted street trees, and successfully planted all the trees.

The GPPNA Street Tree Committee (Hyla Willis, Joni Rabinowitz, and Henry Schumacher) worked with Marijke Hecht, TreeVitalize Director at the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and the Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest to apply for the program and organize the all-volunteer tree plantings.  Park Place is one of 20 neighborhoods participating in the TreeVitalize program to plant 900 trees throughout Pittsburgh this fall.

Street trees not only make the neighborhood look nice, but they provide a variety of tangible benefits for the neighborhood including: reducing home energy costs, providing habitat for birds and wildlife, increasing home prices, reducing storm run-off and river pollution, and providing cleaner air to breathe.  You can help restore Pittsburgh’s urban forest and improve the quality of life in Park Place by planting a tree on your property.

The GPPNA Street Tree Committee would like to thank the participating property owners for helping to green the neighborhood, all the volunteers who came out to help, Marijke Hecht at the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, the Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest, the Pittsburgh department of public works for sidewalk cuts, State Representative Joseph Preston, TruValue for donating watering buckets, and the East End Co-op for providing snacks.

If you would like to learn more about the benefits of street trees, how to take care of street trees on your property, or want to help grow Pittsburgh’s urban forest, contact the Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest (http://www.pittsburghforest.org/).  For more information about the TreeVitalize program, check out the website (http://www.treevitalize.net/index.aspx).  If you would like a street tree for your property during the Fall 2009 TreeVitalize planting, contact Henry Schumacher (hschumacher78@gmail.com, 412.657.8148) this winter.

The Greater Park Place Neighborhood Association (GPPNA) will be planting street trees throughout the neighborhood on Saturday, October 25th and we need your help.  The GPPNA is participating in the Western Pennsylvania Conservatory’s TreeVitalize program to plant 15 free street trees in the Park Place neighborhood.

We will need help planting, staking, and watering trees, getting photographs of the event, and with coordination on the day of the event.
Continue reading Volunteers needed to plant street trees in Park Place on Saturday, October 25th. »

The Zoning Board of Adjustments will hold a public hearing on the first floor of 200 Ross Street in downtown Pittsburgh at 9:20am on Thursday September 11, 2008.

This hearing is to review an application for a variance from the zoneing code regarding signage. The  Department of City Planning was unable to actually locate the application in the file, so that could not entirely explain what the request was. However, they took my contact information and promissed to call when the application was complete. It was thought that it was specifically regarding the number of signs permitted per facade (normally only one is permitted) as well as the size of the signs, and a sign wall on the corner of Penn and South Braddock.

Nothing looked particularly out of the ordinary on the signage on the building itself. The sign wall might potentially be a concern with it’s height being about 5′9″ on the plan, though it may be far enough back into the lot to not pose an issue. It is hard to tell for sure, as the plans on file were very small and hard to read.

Pittsburgh City Council In Our Neighborhoods

Pittsburgh City Council invites you to join them for a local town hall meeting.

District 9
Please join City Councilman Rev. Ricky V. Burgess and other members of council to discuss our district and share your ideas about how to improve our communities.

Thursday, August 14, 2008 6 PM – 8 PM
Helen S. Faison Arts Academy  7430 Tioga Street

Contemporary art center opening  in Park Place presents collaborative installations by youths.

207 Franklin Avenue, Wilkinsburg, Thursday, Opening August 7, 7-9pm 2008: Does Not Your House Dream?
The Park Place Arts Center: East Edge Arts Revival opens with exhibition of works by youths preparing for their futures.

The Park Place Arts Center –
The Park Place Arts Center is a neighborhood-based art center established in a three-story house in the Park Place neighborhood in June of 2008.  Our goal is to bring new cultural energy to Wilkinsburg, the greater Pittsburgh region, and the world by providing contemporary art events that push the boundaries of art on a monthly basis. We hold art classes for children and adults by appointment and grow a community garden. We are run in conjunction with the community coffeehouse, the Drawn In Café, located four houses away, which serves as a meeting area for community members.
Youthful involvement is essential to brightening the future of Wilkinsburg. As a center founded and run by artists age 25 and younger, our first opening presents installations by high-school artists dedicated to pursuing higher education and careers in the arts.
For further information visit www.parkplaceartcenter.org or contact Laura Linda Miller, Director. Phone 615.319. 9776. Email: lauralindamiller@gmail.com  or Chris Mucci, Assistant Director,  Phone: 203. 648. 7819. Email: chrismucci@gmail.com

Opening August 7, 7-9pm: Does Not Your House Dream? –
Come experience a house of dreams and nightmares created by twenty talented young artists participating in Carnegie Mellon University’s Pre-College Program. Installations include: Over 100 dreams written on paper radiating from a file drawer, a sideways room where furniture sits on the walls, beams of light refracted through glass crystals, a vertigo inducing video walkthrough, a darkened maze, and a portal filled with light.
This exhibition, organized by Jonathan Minard, pre-college instructor and member of the Park Place Arts Center, is one day only and free and open to the public.

UPMC/Western Psyhc is planning on building a Crisis center at 333 N. Braddock Ave.

The development group in Point Breeze is not in favor of this location. As I understand it, they feel it conflicts with the work and plans they have been doing in the immediate area of the site. They have hired a lawyer, and are protesting the approval that had already been granted by the city.

For more information, please contact Cheryl Hall (cluhall@aol.com)

The hearing is scheduled for:
August 7th, 2008 at 9:50 am at 200 Ross St., 1st floor. (Downtown)
UPMC met once in Park Place at the invitation of our city council member, Reverend Ricky V. Burgess, to present some general information about the planned facility.   We had some questions for the presenters, and I just followed up with Denise Macerelli’s offce at UPMC, but she was out on vacation. I’ll update with any information received.

Of note, is the following article, passed on by the Point Breeze development group:

Referrals to Western Psych halted
State intervenes after rash of incidents involving outpatients
Thursday, July 24, 2008
By Joe Fahy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08206/899182-455.stm

Visit www.environmentalcharterschool.org to see the many events planned for August.  Play dates for specific grade levels are scheduled throughout the month; a potluck picnic for 8/8 and the grand opening for 8/25.