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City to buy LTV site in Hazelwood for project
Tuesday, June 15, 1999 By Timothy McNulty, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
The city plans to buy the sprawling Hazelwood coke works site from LTV Corp. and turn it into another riverfront redevelopment project, Mayor Murphy announced yesterday.
The mayor envisions building commercial and industrial facilities there similar to those at the Pittsburgh Technology Center next door on Second Avenue. But he said housing could be built on some parts of it, as well as heavy manufacturing facilities.
Murphy guessed the site would cost $75,000 per acre -- the same price the city paid for the 130-acre LTV Steel site on the South Side -- which would put the price tag at about $12.7 million. Talks with LTV are ongoing.
If the sale goes through, it would be the fifth-largest brownfield, or former industrial site, purchased by the city and the Urban Redevelopment Authority in the last several years. The technology center, the South Side LTV Steel site and Nine Mile Run, a former slag dump, are all along the Monongahela River, as is the coke works. Herrs Island in the Allegheny River is the site of Washington's Landing, a mixed housing and commercial development.
Murphy said the other sites are filling up and the city needs to begin preparing another one for future development. Buying, cleaning up and readying the entire Hazelwood site could take years, he said, and he wants to get a head start.
"We were becoming concerned as to where the next generation of development is going to happen in Pittsburgh. What we didn't want to face is companies wanting to build here and have no locations for them," Murphy said.
"We're trying to stay ahead of ourselves. It's next year by the time we get on the site, potentially another year or two to do infrastructure, so we're really looking two to three years before you see a building going up out there."
The riverfront site, which extends from the Pittsburgh Technology Center to the Glenwood Bridge between Second Avenue and the Monongahela, would be the second largest brownfield purchased by the city. The largest, purchased in 1995 for $3.8 million, is 238-acre Nine Mile Run, which is being turned into a housing development called Summerset at Frick Park.
Murphy's decision to buy the Hazelwood site follows a failed initiative by Sun Co. to buy it and build another coke and electricity co-generation plant there. Murphy pushed for that deal, but it crumbled under the criticism of community activists who didn't want another coke plant there.
The coke works, which closed last year, is being demolished and cleaned up by LTV. Fully remediating the site and removing the pollutants left by years of coke making could cost the company $30 million to $50 million, Murphy estimated.
Murphy planned to meet with Hazelwood residents last night and tell them the city would pay $10,000 to hire a remediation expert to monitor the company's cleanup work. He also pledged to start a master planning process for the site involving community input and to provide residents with riverfront access at the development.
Mary Lewin, spokeswoman for Citizens Helping Our Community, the group that led the drive against the Sun coke plant, welcomed Murphy's offer of community input but demanded community uses of the site, such as parks and housing.
"He needs to involve residents in a meaningful way," she said. "We don't want the decision to be based on the bottom-line corporate interests of developers."
LTV spokesman Mark Tomasch confirmed talks were going on with the city.
He wouldn't comment on the price of the site or the cost of the company's remediation work.
City Councilman Bob O'Connor, who represents Hazelwood, sponsored a council resolution passed in April directing the city to come up with a redevelopment plan for the site. He was not in the office yesterday.
Buying the site would end the city's longtime relationship with LTV, Murphy noted, which at one time employed 30,000 residents, including his father.
"We are proceeding to acquire the last remaining parcel of what was a very powerful Pittsburgh legacy," he said.
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