Three Pittsburgh professionals want to fill the city’s transit needs and enhance the region’s status as a high-tech center by building maglev people movers.

They also want to make money.

At about the same time David O’Loughlin, Paul Martha and Robert Schwer formed the non-profit Western Pennsylvania Maglev Development Corp. in late 1992, they also formed Crawford Parking Corp., a for-profit company that could earn millions of dollars. They also are using an influential lobbying firm in Washington, D.C., to try to keep federal dollars flowing to their endeavor.

"Yes, it’s an opportunity for us and other Pittsburgh businesses to make some money. … It’s the American way," said WPMD president O’Loughlin. "I don’t think our fees are unreasonable. And, if maglev doesn’t happen, all of us lose what we have invested."

O’Loughlin, former Allegheny County planning director, identified 21 mostly Pittsburgh firms, in addition to Crawford Parking Corp., in the venture. In the $147 million first stage, a 5,000-space parking garage would be built behind the Civic Arena and linked to the Port Authority’s Steel Plaza subway station by a magnetically levitated shuttle. WPMD is trying to secure funding commitments and government permits for the first segment.

Meanwhile, WPMD and its affiliates are trying to meet Monday’s deadline to apply for $35 million in federal funds to start planning the second phase, $550 million in maglev extensions to Oakland and the North Shore.

O’Loughlin, 57, of Squirrel Hill, is president of both WPMD and Crawford Parking Corp.; Martha, 56, of O’Hara, is vice president; and Schwer, 66, of Ross, is secretary-treasurer.

While they list their salaries as $0 with WPMD, the three have already collected more than $210,000 combined as project managers and consultants for $466,000 worth of early maglev studies funded by the Mellon Foundation, the Pennsylvania Department of Commerce and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

O’Loughlin said creating WPMD as a non-profit corporation made it eligible for the Mellon Foundation funding but, more importantly, he said bonds for maglev projects could be sold at more favorable interest rates.

WPMD can pay out money for services and materials, as it already has. But under the law governing non-profit corporations, any "profits" it may someday generate must be reinvested in public projects, such as maglev extensions.

According to documents connected to the projects:

O’Loughlin and Martha stand to split $97,500, plus expenses, as $125-an-hour project consultants if the federal government approves their application for a $1 million grant for a low-speed maglev feasibility study later this year.

Crawford Parking is to receive $2.5 million, and possibly up to $5 million, as project manager for the $147 million Civic Arena parking garage-maglev shuttle system.

When the Civic Arena shuttle is finished, Crawford Parking could collect from $150,000 to $200,000 a year for "management and oversight" of the garage and maglev operation. That’s out of an estimated $15 million a year in gross parking revenues that also will be used to pay bonds, operating costs and other obligations.

Crawford Parking stands to benefit in similar proportions if WPMD builds $550 million in extensions to Oakland and the North Shore and parking garages for another 10,000 cars.

O’Loughlin said he, Martha and Schwer have taken money out of their own pockets and that some affiliate companies have contributed to project expenses. Otherwise, the affiliates have donated "in-kind" services such as civil engineering and financial modeling.

"The money [O’Loughlin, Martha and Schwer] have received isn’t gravy and going into our pockets, because we have to pay other people," O’Loughlin said. "We haven’t even covered our own expenses for all the years we’ve been working on this."

He said Crawford Parking, as project manager, will have to negotiate its future fees with bondholders and a board of directors that will be named to govern WPMD.

"We’re the developers, so the more successful maglev is, the more we should get paid," O’Loughlin said.

O’Loughlin and Martha are attorneys and friends who grew up together, working out and playing sports at the University of Pittsburgh, where they want to college, and playing baseball for the Little Pirates.

Martha was a football star for Pitt and the Steelers. When Martha later became president of the Penguins hockey team, at a time the DeBartolo family owned it, O’Loughlin was the county director of planning and development.

Martha is now a partner with the law firm of Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott. O’Loughlin is president of O’Loughlin Group, which has developed and holds interests in such properties as the Waterfront and Timbercourt, office buildings on Downtown’s Firstside and North Shore.

Schwer, a certified public accountant and owner of a Downtown accounting firm, has been doing work for O’Loughlin and Martha since 1980.

"We’re all involved together in [other] personal and business ventures," O’Loughlin said.

Jonathan Hall, president of Hall Industries on the South Side, which builds components for transit systems nationwide and is participating in maglev, credits O’Loughlin for his perseverance.

"If he was not so hard-working, positive and optimistic, if he didn’t believe this can be done technically, this project would have stopped long ago," Hall said. "He’s fighting a lot of battles. It’s a credit to him that he keeps going."

To help keep the project going, WPMD hired a Harrisburg business development and lobbying firm, Delta Development Group Inc., which, in turn, forwards half of its $8,000 monthly fee to Ann Eppard Associates Inc. That firm is named for a Washington, D.C., transportation lobbyist who is a former aide to U.S. Rep. Bud Shuster, R-Everett, and who still serves as his campaign manager.

As chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Shuster marshaled a federal transportation spending bill known as TEA-21 that singles out Pittsburgh as eligible for federal funds for the low-speed maglev "pilot project."

TEA-21 also includes $35 million for "start up costs" and makes WPMD eligible to compete for up to two-thirds of the cost of maglev extensions to Oakland and the North Shore after it builds the Civic Arena section.

O’Loughlin said Delta Group was hired in May 1997 because of its experience putting together grant applications, forging public-private partnerships and influencing government and elected officials. "They’re qualified people who are well connected politically," O’Loughlin said.

He said it "wasn’t just Shuster," but Republican U.S. Sens. Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum, and Democratic U.S. Reps. Frank Mascara, Bill Coyne, Ron Klink and Mike Doyle who helped get Pittsburgh and low-speed maglev funding in TEA-21.

As for Eppard, who is still under indictment because a Boston grand jury has accused her of taking $230,000 in illegal payments while serving as Shuster’s chief of staff, she’s still the choice of many private and public entities, including the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

"She’s a tremendous resource for Pennsylvania," said Leroy Kline, president of Delta Development Group. "And for us to have the chairman [Shuster] of that committee is a window of opportunity we may never have again."

O’Loughlin said it isn’t as important to WPMD if the money is perceived as congressional "pork" as it is to put Pittsburgh ahead of the competition.

"We’re talking about a big opportunity for Pittsburgh and the region," he said. "But you just don’t get federal money without making a strong case for it."

WPMD and its three incorporators have been extending their reach beyond Pittsburgh. O’Loughlin, Martha and Schwer formed another non-profit corporation, Southern California Maglev Development Corp.

SCMD is among four finalists for a $2.7 million feasibility study for the first 60-mile leg of a proposed moderate-speed (up to 150 mph) maglev system in the five-county Los Angeles area. It has also talked to officials in wealthy Orange County, Calif. O’Loughlin said they are looking for "cutting-edge technology" to develop the first five miles of a 28-mile system around Irvine.

O’Loughlin has also talked with officials in Colorado and Austin, Texas, about a low-speed maglev system like the one he is pursuing in Pittsburgh.