The Garden Theater has one appeal left.

Advocates of the adult movie house at 12 W. North Ave., which has been under legal fire on the North Side for seven years, could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review its First Amendment fight against eminent domain.

	John Heller, Post-Gazette The Garden Theater is the lone hold-out in a 47-property revitalization effort. Click photo for larger image.

But the neighborhood isn't waiting for that decision before it begins a redevelopment project. It had already started working around the lone hold-out in a 47-property revitalization effort when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed a lower court Wednesday.

The court ruled that the URA's effort to seize the property did not violate the theater's state or federal First Amendment rights.

The URA and North Side neighborhood groups have been working for more than 10 years on plans to transform the blight of three contiguous blocks that include the Garden -- the three that join at Federal Street and North Avenue.

"The philosophy used to be that we can't do anything until this case is solved," said Claudia Keys, president of the board of the Central Northside Neighborhood Council. "But now we're saying, 'let's develop regardless.' "

"Forget about the Garden, let's get it started," said Sen. Jim Ferlo, D-Highland Park, treasurer of the board of the Urban Redevelopment Authority.

Some projects already have begun.

The Carnegie Library has committed to building a new library on Federal, and construction of a community of townhouses has begun just up the street. Former Steelers star Franco Harris is working with an architect on final drawings for a restaurant in a corner property that has been boarded up for years.

Mr. Harris's real estate agent, Lynne Bingham, said that plans call for the restaurant to open late in the spring of next year. "He is very interested in further development in the area," she added.

The neighborhood council has a list of interested developers for the URA properties, said Ms. Keys. No specific plans have been assigned to the buildings.

The court's decision gave ballast to the full-steam-ahead attitude in the neighborhood, said Joel Aaronson, the URA's attorney in the case. "If they [New Garden Realty Corp., the legal name of the appellant in the case] take this further, it would simply punish the community, which is uncalled for."

Mr. Aaronson said the Pennsylvania Constitution "has generally been considered more protective of free speech rights than the U.S. Constitution, so it's hard to imagine" the U.S. court would hear the case.

Peter Georgiades, the local attorney for the Garden property owner, George Androtsakis, of New York, could not be reached for comment about his client's intentions.

Mr. Aaronson said the Garden, as one of 47 properties the URA wanted, "was not singled out. That property would have been acquired under any circumstances. The reason this became muddied was because the URA wanted to try to preserve the buildings."

In fact, one of the Garden's arguments was that the URA's plan to keep it and use it as an entertainment venue made it clear the URA only wanted to eliminate the adult movies shown there. That would violate the theater owner's First Amendment rights, he said.

A dissenting opinion in the decision issued Wednesday supported this thinking, asserting that the URA's action to take the property "in order to alter the type of entertainment provided there, burdened protected expression."

But the court ruled 4-2 that the URA's motives were "content neutral" and rejected the free-expression argument. Commonwealth Court affirmed the lower court's decision five years later, in April 2002.

"It's a good day for the Central Northside, and we're excited about going forward," said Ms. Keys.

The struggle between the Garden's owner and the city has its roots in a January 1989 city report asking that properties at Federal-North be certified as blighted so that public money could be used for redevelopment. The planning commission and City Council approved and for six years, a task force of community advocates, planners and URA staff hammered out a plan to purchase all properties in three contiguous blocks.

City Council approved the plan and the URA began assembling properties. Between 1995 and 1997, it bought 46. The owner of the Garden, the lone hold-out, refused to sell and the URA filed a "declaration of taking" to take ownership of the property.