Pirates want clean site by March 31

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Pirates want clean site by March 31

Tuesday, June 23, 1998

By Tom Barnes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The Pirates want to break ground for their new baseball stadium by April 1 so the park can be ready for play starting April 1, 2001, team Vice President Steve Greenberg said yesterday.

Fans and businesses likely to be tapped for more

To meet those deadlines, the team wants the city to provide, by the end of March, "a clean site" -- one cleared of existing buildings and ready for new construction -- at the northern end of the Sixth Street Bridge, he said.

Meeting that deadline will be "very difficult," Mayor Murphy said, but he thinks it can be done if a number of things fall just right.

Preparing the site for the new ballpark will mean moving 100 senior citizens who live in a six-story high-rise just off Federal Street, finding new housing for a dozen occupants of a small rowhouse development beside the high-rise, relocating several small stores on the west side of Federal Street and relocating the North Shore headquarters of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Murphy said the city had in mind two ways of relocating the senior citizens from the high-rise.

The city will build a new high-rise at the old farmers market just across the street from Allegheny Center Mall, a site that is a few hundred yards north of the present high-rise. Seniors who decide to live elsewhere will be given a cash settlement to enable them to move, he said.

"It's going to be tough to deliver that site to the Pirates, but it's doable," he said. The IBEW has a new site in mind for its office building, but Murphy wouldn't say exactly where.

The city's existing river rescue center, now on the Allegheny River just west of the Sixth Street Bridge, must also be demolished or moved. Murphy said he was considering putting the whole building on a barge and floating it to a new riverfront location, which hasn't been identified yet.

The price tag for the Pirates park is now estimated at from $203 million to $209 million, up from the original $184 million estimate made in March. Site preparation and demolition will add another $40 million to the project.

Greenberg is heading to Kansas City, Mo., tomorrow to meet with HOK architects, a nationally known firm that will design the baseball park along with help from the local firm of L.D. Astorino & Associates.

Greenberg hopes to have a precise cost of the new ballpark when he returns. The Pirates have agreed to cover cost overruns beyond whatever the final figure comes in at, which he expects to be from $203 million to $209 million.

Steelers Vice President Art Rooney said yesterday that he hoped the site for the new $210 million football stadium could also be cleared and ready for construction to begin next spring. The Steelers want to be playing in their new stadium by August or September 2001.

One issue that still must be settled, however, is whether the new football stadium will conflict with expansion plans of the Carnegie Science Center. As now proposed, the Steelers' preferred location will require demolition of the old Miller Printing building (now used for Science Center offices) and part of the center's western parking lot.

Both teams have agreed to play in their new stadiums at least until 2031.

Now that the contributions from the Steelers and Pirates for the stadiums have been settled, the next major step is a vote by the Regional Asset District on $13.4 million of county sales-tax revenues going to the project for 30 years.

That will happen in the first two weeks of July, board Chairman David Matter said yesterday.

"We are awaiting written responses to questions we posed, which the city, county and teams should be in a position to answer now that they have completed negotiations on Plan B," he said.

The board wrote to city and county officials in May, asking detailed questions on the financing of Plan B.

Matter said the seven members of the RAD board hadn't made up their minds yet on how they will vote. At least six of the seven members must approve the Plan B financing plan in order for it to be approved.

"I think all board members are approaching this diligently and in good faith," Matter said. "They want to see what the essential terms of the deal are and review the answers to all the questions."