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7/28/2019 Possibility in McKeesport Revised
1/15
Possibility in McKeesport
Ryan Van Dinter and Sean Plunkett
McKeesport is viewed as down and out. Blighted properties line the citys streets and the
5th Avenue business district is now a dark corridor of concrete monsters. Then there are swathes
of vacant industrial properties where National Tube Works once beat steel into tubes and
pumped life into the city.
The pulse has slowed at the industrial site, owned by the Regional Industrial
Development Corporation, and redevelopment has been difficult as railroad tracks once clogged
all of the main entrances. However, the flyover ramp from Lysle Blvd. to the RIDC site may add
a dose of adrenaline to redevelopment efforts. The ramp was completed just over a year and a
half ago at a cost of $10.9 million, according to an article by Jason Togyer. Mayor Cherepko and
Tim White, Vice President of Development at the RIDC, state that building the flyover ramp was
an extremely critical component to developing the RIDC site. Mayor Cherepko goes on:
Some people dont quite understand the true significance of what that ramp brought to the city.
Some say its a bridge to nowhere. But, when you have your large companies, manufacturing or
industrial, and when they come in and they do their studies...they figure in what, well what will it
cost them in production, in manpower if youre waiting for trains. Additionally, former Mayor
and now state Senator Jim Brewster was quoted by Patrick Cloonan as saying, The flyover ramp
is the final step in reclaiming the former mill site for economic development.
More companies have expressed interest in the industrial park since the flyover ramps
installation. Mr. White indicated that Duquesne Light has made a commitment to relocate to the
old mill site. In an article by Jennifer R. Vertullo, hopes are high that this and other future
possibilities will help in revitalizing the downtown business district. Activity on the RIDC mill
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site will spur additional activity, both on the site and within the downtown district, states
Community Development Director Bethany Bauer in Vertullos article.
The steel industry sparked McKeesport to life. McKeesport was a hamlet of only
twenty-five hundred people in 1872, writes Hoerr, when Boston industrialist John H.
Flagler...founded the National Tube Works. With the increased use of natural gas and need for
steel tube, McKeesports population boomed from 2,500 people in 1870 to 20,751 people in
1890 and more than doubled again to 55,355 by 1940.
This population growth was due in large part to a large supply of Eastern Europeans in
Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other countries. Steel companies
sought them out for the dangerous, dirty, and extremely hot work in steel mills. As evidenced in
HoerrsAnd The Wolf Finally Came and romanticized in Thomas Bells Out of This Furnace, the
original steel workers suffered a harsh existence of 12-hour shifts, a 24-hour turn, and only one
day off a month. Although their lives were on the line every day, one thing is certain: they came
to this country with the hope of a better future and existence for themselves and their families.
A Google aerial map of RIDCs industrial park in McKeesport, PA. Access points circled in red.
http://goo.gl/maps/tfQsI
7/28/2019 Possibility in McKeesport Revised
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Jason Togyers, journalist and producer ofTube City Online is closely tied to
McKeesport and the region through his ancestors work in the mills. My grandfather came over
in about 1910 from Hungary, said Togyer. On his fathers side his great-grandfather and
grandfather came over when he was about 15 years old, maybe younger than that. His dad was
going to work in the steel mill in McKeesport, to send some money back to Hungary [to] bring
the rest of the family over. His great-grandfather never returned from Hungary, possibly due to
World War 1, leaving Togyers grandfather alone in McKeesport to fend for himself. Togyers
story is intriguing, yet one of many stories that depict the beginnings of McKeesport.
Dr. Evan Stoddard uses the poem from the 1916 Duquesne Jubilee to describe the effect
the steel industry had on mill towns like McKeesport:
Like the meteor the town of Duquesne has darted out of space and cut a horizon. Unlike
the meteor it remains in the horizon, more lustrous than ever, and constantly growing in
intensity of beauty and attractiveness.
Today, McKeesport is a distressed city. According to Hoerr, during World War II, the US
produced 54.1 percent of the worlds raw steel. A great share of this came was produced and
finished in the Mon Valley mills and works. During the steel boom, rapid increases in population
and industry left city planning by the wayside, in an area surrounded by cliffs and rivers, creating
a city difficult to access by roads or public transportation.
Additionally, McKeesport held itself separate from Pittsburgh and other areas, and the
Mon Valley region is known for its rivalries. Earlier mayors feared that metropolitanism would
decrease the autonomy of the city. Finally, there was a lack of diversification in the economy
with city budgets based on taxes of the steel mills production projections. This seems to
contradict the towns autonomy, but in reality, it works out perfectly. The citys identity and
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social fabric was born on the backs of low-class, European immigrants and Blacks that had
migrated from the South after the Civil War.
The steel towns were geographically separated by the cliffs and rivers cutting through the
valley. Although these towns shared a common trait of being involved in creating steel and steel
products, geographic separation allowed for the growth of regionalism and strong senses of
identity tied to their towns. Were very proud of our neighborhoods and sense of community,
states Jason Togyer, but it holds us back.
One challenge is financial. As population declines, municipalities struggle with creating,
finding, and maintaining revenue streams. The most pressing challenges in the city, first and
foremost, is what I think all municipalities and boroughs at this time, when you see your state
government, and your federal, comes to money, says Mayor Cherepko. The bottom line is your
expenditures continue to increase every year, and your revenues are decreasing for that matter.
They are not even staying the same, as McKeesports population ages and becomes increasingly
transient. Almost half of the 19,771 people living in McKeesport do not generate taxes or lives
on fixed income from social security, making tax increases difficult. When you have a
financially distressed population like ours we need to be careful, says Cherepko. Its amazing
how hard a small [tax] increase can hit the pocketbooks, of seniors especially.
For interactive data go to
https://www.thinglink.com/scene/379492805799575
554#tlsite
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McKeesport is also losing grant and aid money from state and local governments. There
has been a systematic effort in this country going back to the Reagan administration of
disinvestment in these older urban communities, says Togyer, discussing the elimination and
cutbacks to the Model Cities Program, Community Block Grants, and redevelopment programs.
With effects from the sequester still looming, it is likely that grant and aid money will diminish
further. Simply put, the money is not there and the city needs creative financing solutions, says
Cherepko.
A second problem facing the city is its blight. The number of vacant buildings in
McKeesport is astonishing. There are currently 10,088 houses in the city, of which 1,735 of these
houses are vacant. The highest concentration of vacant houses is behind a largely empty 5th
avenue, where redevelopment in the 1970s created a monstrosity of a shopping mall that is now
boarded up. All too often, people do not understand how expensive it is to tear down a house,
says the Mayor. We contract those out for $8,000 to $10,000 per home. If you have 500
homes in the city that need torn down, that would cost $5 million. We budget maybe $50,000
to $100,000 to tear down houses. Most of the time its closer to $50,000.
Ryan Van Dinter 2013 Jonathan Denson 20112
http://www.jonathondenson.com/2011/11/mckeespor
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Togyer believes that fighting blight puts the city in a defensive stance. You dont get a
chance to innovate, and thats what is holding McKeesport back. In the long run, its not building
for the future, its holding on to what you have. However, he also understands the implications
of the current financial situation and a defensive stance may be the only viable option. A 2011
report from the University of PittsburghsPittsburgh Economic Quarterly shows that there are a
total of 3,105 tax delinquent parcels in McKeesport, costing the city $182,592 in lost taxes,
annually. Collecting these taxes would allow the city to demolish ten blighted properties every
year, without needing to purchase expensive equipment or outsource to contractors.
Clean up at the former steel site in McKeesport was a process riddled with financial and
regulatory obstacles. The early days of environmental regulation focused on limiting new
pollution. This changed with Love Canal in the late 1970s. Love Canal was a small town near
Niagara Falls built on a toxic dump site. The residents of this area experienced illnesses,
miscarriages, and deformations at birth. The Superfund Act came in its wake to address soil
contamination at heavily polluted sites.
The RIDC purchased McKeesports industrial zone from USX to move the city forward.
To do this, RIDC had to release the company of its environmental liability. Essentially, all of the
soil at the site had to be remediated and removed. However, competing regulations between the
Environmental Protection Agency and Pennsylvanias Department of Environmental Protection,
as well as the Superfund Act, made this process incredibly expensive and time consuming.
In 1989, the RIDC attempted to develop McKeesports waterfront to bring in businesses
and get people back to work. The process was riddled with obstacles, especially because it was
one of the earliest brownfield redevelopment sites. Environmental costs in cleaning up the
former USX site in McKeesport were projected to reach $335 million. Since cleanup, Tim
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White, Vice President of Development at the RIDC says RIDC has spent $55 million in
outfitting, roofing, and chopping up old foundations to prepare the site for tenanting.
However, cleaning the site was not enough. Challenges still remain. One challenge from
the older generation is expectations for steels return. Unfortunately, new technology in steel
making requires a fraction of the manpower that it used to. A second challenge is that people no
longer need to leave near the factory. Dr. Stoddard quotes Mike Dawida that the people
working [at these mills] live in other places, because they have the mobility and the money to
live elsewhere, and so the communities around them died before the mill left. 1
This leaves the question of what is possible on the former site where a once massive
National Tube Works blocked an entire population from the banks of the Monongahela. Until
recently, certain companies were not considering the site because of access issues. Several
railroads block access to the site from Lysle Boulevard, one of the citys main thoroughfare.
While the site was being rehabilitated, hours were lost each day waiting for trains at a single
crossing to the site. Further, time spent waiting for trains is a major consideration that inhibited
companies from tenanting the site.
The city of McKeesport and the RIDC have been criticized for lacking innovative ideas
for redevelopment and revitalization. In a 1998 the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of
Public and International produced a capstone report calledA Second Chance: Brownfields
Redevelopment in Pittsburgh. In the report, the authors claim that there is an inconsistency of
vision in the old steel towns of the Mon Valley where creative and innovative ideas for the use
of the land are dismissed. Creative ideas are not what people are used to, and there is no plan for
a defined future within which such ideas may fit.
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To an extent, Mr. Togyer agrees. McKeesport has done a very bad job of marketing
itself as a bedroom community to Pittsburgh, he explains. Theres a resistance to say that
McKeesport is a suburb of Pittsburgh and should be treated like that. This resistance is tightly
tied to McKeesports history. Hoerr quotes the advantage of McKeesports location on the
Monongahela as being 12 miles closer to Philadelphia than Pittsburgh. Further, an industry
study by Edward K. Muller, Morton Coleman, and David Houston on creating a regional
transportation called Skybus claims that in 1963, McKeesports mayor was opposed to building
the system fearing a loss of autonomy and metropolitanism.
However, Togyer believes the movement of people back to urban settings and
neighborhoods can work in McKeesports favor. First, it has the ambience of a city built around
wealth generated during the Industrial Revolution and World War II. Although 1970s urban
renewal partially scarred the downtown, the Peoples Building and other historical sites still
exist, offering both grandeur and quaintness of a small city. Further, Togyer explains,
McKeesport lies at the confluence of two rivers. Neither the urban landscape nor natural scenery
can be duplicated anywhere else. Togyer believes that much of what is happening in
Lawrenceville can be transplanted in McKeesport. He contends that people want a cheap, urban
living experience and that you can live like a Russian oligarch in the Mon Valley on $50
thousand a year.
For the industrial site, not much creativity is allowed. Tim White explains that various
factors limit what can be done in the park. The first factor is that the site is an Act 2 Superfund
site. Therefore, nothing edible can be grown on the property, although a warehouse distributing
prepackaged dry foods would be allowed. The second factor is that when RIDC purchased the
property the signed deed had a covenant attached stating that the property could not be used for
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residential purposes. Third, McKeesport is often criticized for not doing what Homestead did
with retail. However, White claims that the actual town of Homestead is not much better off than
before its own Waterfront became a retail and office center. The RIDC focuses on bringing in
high tech manufacturing and industry that will bring better jobs and wages to the area. if you
put a Wal-Mart on our site, White says, it will kill off a little business on Main Street. With
an expanding retail corridor in McKeesports Christy Park, large retail outlets would do just that.
Current economic factors in the Allegheny region provide a ray of sunshine for
McKeesport. Stoddard claims that Pittsburgh did well during the latest economic downturn,
maintaining a stable population level. Stoddard goes further saying that the high tech industry in
Pittsburgh is expanding and in about 20 years these companies will need to expand into readily
available shop space. White bolsters this claim stating, The overall industrial market in the
Pittsburgh region has definitely improved in the last 18 months, faster than the national
economy.
McKeesport is at its lowest population level since it first exploded in its early days. The
city is underserved by three limited bus lines and lacks access to a major highway. For now,
entertaining the idea that it can be a garden suburb to Pittsburgh is difficult, especially in the
absence of quality jobs. However, obtaining a few solid employers can drastically change the
fortune of the city.
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White has noticed a resurgence to increase domestic [manufacturing] opportunities. In
Mr. China Goes to America, an article in The Atlantic, James Fallow claims, A convergence
of trends make operations in America more attractive and feasible, just as the cost and friction of
operating in China are increasing. Charles Fishman, theInsourcing Boom, follows a new trend,
and old idea, where manufacturing companies are becoming more efficient by using shop floor
input when designing new products and building these products in the US. Worker input can
only accomplish when the workers and engineers share a common language and work in close
proximity to each other. Second, shipping goods from China has become cost prohibitive as oil
prices and gas prices continue to increase. Finally, GEs Appliance Park can get the their water
heaters and dishwashers from the warehouse to Home Depot in 30 minutes rather than two to
three weeks if it was shipped from China.
McKeesport is ideally situated to meet the demands of new manufacturing for space,
time, and access. The flyover ramp and $17 million in road improvements eliminated access
obstacles. Although McKeesport is not ideally located on an expressway, it is not too far away
either, situated only 6.5 miles from the Mon Valley Expressway and 10 miles from I-376.
Additionally, the industrial park also offers access to multiple railroad lines and river transit if
A view of RIDC industrial park in McKeesport. Ryan Van Dinter 2013
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necessary. Energy is also a boon to McKeesport. The city is located on the largest known shale-
gas reservoir in the world. Energy is abundant and cheap in the region, making relocation and
expansion feasible for companies looking to save money.
Finally, White points out, McKeesport has dedicated certain sites as Keystone
Opportunity Zones. TheKeystone Opportunity Zone Program Guidelines states, This unique
program develops a communitys abandoned, unused, underutilized land and buildings into
business districts and residential areas that present a well-rounded and well-balanced approach to
community revitalization. Relocating companies benefit as credits, waivers and broad-based
tax abatements, local and state taxes on economic activity in Keystone Opportunity Zones are
significantly reduced. White claims, there are businesses looking to grow and expand in the
region. They have real estate agents and consultants search and analyze for them. Being a KOZ
could be a selling point for one of these expanding regional businesses.
And the city is desperate to regrow. I think that we should not close any door or window
on any opportunity, says Cherepko, I will fight hard for anything that wants to come in down
there that might really move the development a little more quickly. Development could be a
mix of retail and industrial, but, according to White, retail just is not feasible and could
negatively impact the community. However, the door is not closed, and if the opportunity
presented itself, the city could grant a zoning variance to include retail, or rezone for certain
mixed use purposes. There is nothing stopping someone from saying I want to open up a
microbrewery, explains White, they would just have to get a variance, and I am pretty sure that
the city would [grant it].
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A lot of hard work will still remain in McKeesport even after new companies move into
the industrial park. There is a clear disparity between neighborhoods near 5th avenue and
Renzihausen Park. The census tract around Renzihausen contains the largest share of
homeowners and the lowest percentage of African Americans. Likewise, the census tract
containing Christy Park has a population of 3,017, of which 2,545 are white and 341 are African
American. The largest majority of African Americans appear to live in the census tracts behind
5th avenue, where new development is largely stagnant. There are only 82 vacant houses in
Renzihausen. Numbers of vacant houses in the remaining census tracts range from about 116 to
383. These houses are often blighted and in need of demolition or repair.
Even if jobs do come to the industrial park, McKeesport may still have to wait for years
for its tax base to grow, and will thus continue to face increasing financial difficulties. According
to Hoerr, McKeesport lost $517,000 in annual revenue by 1990. In 2003, USXs obligation to
pay about $350,000 in property taxes to the city ended. Mayor Cherepko said that taxes have not
been raised in the city since he was a councilman, and it is unknown when the last tax increase
occurred.
Map of vacant housing in McKeesport. Follow link for more demographic data based on the US
2010 census. https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=ml
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Those who do end up moving into the Mon Valley for work will likely commute from
White Oak, Port Vue, or another nearby borough. This can be in part due to a slow removal of
blight, or perceptions of safety. Further, if no extensions are approved, taxes may not be realized
from companies entering the KOZ for nearly a decade.
Despite all this, retail follows employment, according to White. If you get a business
and they hire a bunch of people, then they need to get lunch somewhere, buy gas somewhere,
and live somewhere. So all that stuff ripples and it build your for your retail demand and
residential demand. When the time comes, hopefully McKeesport will be able to house, service,
and market to a new population of young, hip, tech savvy adults with the ability to work in high
tech manufacturing or remotely as prototypers, and desire to live in a low cost, urban
environment.
Another obstacle for McKeesport is in the nature of the area as a whole. Allegheny
County has about 130 independent municipalities, ranging from tiny boroughs to Class III cities
like McKeesport and Pittsburgh itself, which is a Class II city. In these 130 independent
municipalities, sharing through regional committees is both geographically and socially difficult,
according to Togyer.
All 130 of the municipalities in the County have their own governments, complete with a
mayor and city council, a police department, a fire department, and ambulance services. These
For interactive data go to
https://www.thinglink.com/scene/379492805799575
554#tlsite
7/28/2019 Possibility in McKeesport Revised
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functions are expensive to maintain, and the municipalities are often loathe sharing resources
with one another. McKeesport does contract out police and fire services to neighboring
townships, but its rare to see in the region as a whole.
There are also rivalries among these townships that go back as long ago as a century,
Togyer says. Hoerr writes, For the old-time fans of high school football, the idea of making one
town out of Clairton and Duquesne is tantamount to merging Iran and Iraq. The rivalries are a
result of how the big steel manufacturers divided the area. Communities formed from ethnic
enclaves, and each enclave had its own church. If someone was Hungarian, they lived in the
Hungarian enclave and went to the Hungarian church; they would never have gone to the Italian
or Polish churches.
Aside from race or nationality, class was also a dividing factor, although class and
nationality often went hand-in-hand. The companies made housing for the management, which
consisted largely of the Scots-Irish and English, separate from housing for the workers by design.
They wanted to limit the interaction between the laborers and the management. This was the case
in virtually every steel town. According to Glenn Katrancha, a retired steel worker from
Johnstown, there was a definite division between the workers and the managers. The managers
lived on the hill, separate from the workers, both physically and economically.
McKeesport is not down and out. Rather, it may have bottomed out and is ready to take
the next turn. Construction of the flyover ramp makes the industrial park a viable option.
Completion of the Greater Allegheny Passage Trail will increase exposure to the city as day
tripping Pittsburghers and adventuring tourists meander down the path or cycle to Washington,
D.C. Theres very positive wind blowing in our direction, claims White, and McKeesport is
likely to get picked up by the wind.
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End Notes
1Footnoted in Transformed: Reinventing Pittsburghs Industrial Sites for a New Century, 1975-1995. Mike Dawida, whoserved as both a state representative and senator from the Mon Valley and later as a county commissioner, observed: A lotof these communities had begun to fail even before the steel mills left. Braddock, for example, is considered one of the worst
communities in Allegheny County and still a failed community in many ways, and the mill still operates there. But the milloperates with a technological expertise that requires one-tenth of the people that it did twenty years ago. So fewer people,the people working there live in other places, because they have the mobility and the money to live elsewhere, and so thecommunities around them died before the mill left. So you had this mixture of older people who had worked in the mills,thinking it would come back; they couldnt comprehend that even if the mills came back the communities were in a failure tobegin with.
2http://www.jonathondenson.com/2011/11/mckeesport-long-abandoned-ruins-of.html