The city's Urban Redevelopment Authority has reached a sales agreement on a vacant, church-owned parcel that would complete site development for a new Carnegie Library branch in the Hill District. The authority board will consider the matter and hear the library's plans at its monthly meeting tomorrow.

The parcel, owned by Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, is one of several on the northwest corner of Centre Avenue and Kirkpatrick Street that the authority has cobbled together for the library to develop.

Authority Director Jerome Dettore said the library asked the URA for help finding a site on Centre, "and we're excited, because they [the Carnegie Library] really are an economic-development generator."

Neighborhood advocates have said the well-being of Centre and Kirkpatrick is one of the most critical to the Hill's future.

"I'm very excited about the proposed site and I applaud the library for its efforts to invest there," said Evan Frazier, executive director of the Hill House Association. "It provides significant symbolism for growth in this community."

He said it will be the next increment in building momentum for more development.

"It's also an opportunity to create more conditions that will allow for a full-service supermarket on the Hill," he said.

If the board approves, the authority would pay the church $12,000 plus costs for 505 Kirkpatrick St., add it to the properties it owns at 2165-2177 Centre Ave., 2170-2174 Wylie Ave. and 517 Kirkpatrick and sell them all to the Carnegie Library for $1.

The site totals 19,815 square feet. Three vacant commercial structures on it will be demolished.

One of the properties was a former service station, for which the URA will seek a $37,500 state grant toward the $50,000 it will cost to remove underground gasoline storage tanks.

Another property, on Wylie, used to be Eddie's Restaurant, which playwright August Wilson frequented both as a budding writer and later on visits back to the neighborhood.

Carnegie Library spokesman Suzanne Thinnes said the new library is estimated to cost about $3.5 million. Gov. Ed Rendell already has authorized the release of $250,000 in state capital funds to help in the construction, according to the URA.

It will be the first new construction of a Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh since 1980, when the Sheraden branch was built. The Martin Luther King Jr. Reading Center was built in 1988, but the Carnegie is leaving the operation of that center in the Upper Hill on Feb. 19; the city is expected to lease it to the Friends of the Reading Center.

The Carnegie Library's main presence in the Hill now -- at Centre and Dinwiddie Street -- is crammed into the downstairs of a 1970s era shopping center shared with, among others, a post office and a bank. It has been on that site since 1982 and will operate until the new library is ready to open.