North Side land grab

30 years ago plans were being made by City Hall for a new taxpayer subsidized baseball park for the Pirates. As usual, there would be innocent victims. As usual, I sided with them.

Jun 28, 2026

The obvious spin I somehow got away with on this newsy feature from June 26, 1996, would have made a $10-million-a year Pirates left-hander proud. It was part of a large multi-part Page 1 package the Post-Gazette did on the proposed location of what five years later would become PNC Park. The PG, like all the other local print and electronic news media, was a big fan of the proposed replacement for Three Rivers Stadium, the hideous multi-use beast built in 1970 that was a lousy venue for both football and baseball. Subsidizing profit-making pro sports teams by building them new stadia with taxpayer money was at its peak in the late 1990s. As boosters without principles who believed the economic nonsense that sports stadiums helped the local economy, the local media in virtually every major league city were all for it. Not me, though.

The doomed North Side residents booed the city’s plans

Robin Rombach/Post-Gazette Audrey Boyle would lose both a job and a home to a new stadium. She works at a cleaning and tailoring shop on East General Robinson, about 100 feet from where she lives in the Court. Some left field residents aren't fans of stadium site By Bill Steigerwald Post-Gazette Staff Writer Excuse them, sports fans, but there are some folks on the North Side who are sincerely rooting against Kevin McClatchy. They hope the Pirates' young owner and his new friends in high city, county and state government places won't be able to scrape up the $200 million or so they need to build a baseball stadium in their neighborhood. The worst wishes of Pittsburghers like Richard Kuntz, Georgia Castellanos and Kathleen Hart are perfectly understandable. They are the people who live or work on Ground Zero - the tidily landscaped, prosperous but doomed chunk of floodplain on the North Side that is bounded by Federal Street, East General Robinson Street, River Avenue and the Allegheny River. Building the park would involve the acquisition of 20 to 25 parcels of land, including two industrial warehouses, several residential buildings, and 12 businesses with an estimated fair market value of $12.5 to $16.3 million. As a result, the people of Ground Zero fear that their jobs, their businesses, their property, and even their homes are likely to be sacrificed for The Stadium That Will Save Major League Baseball in Pittsburgh. Naturally, they don't like it. Kuntz, who has operated the IPP print shop for 26 years in rented space on Federal Street, is amazed by the whole idea. He can't understand why the city would want to tear down perfectly solid things like the gleaming new headquarters of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 5 or the Three Rivers Plaza apartment building to put up a ballpark he thinks should be built at the old Greater Pittsburgh International Airport terminal site. The business manager at Exercise Equipment Inc. didn't want her name in the paper, but that didn't stop her from giving her opinion. flood, she said, but that was nothing new. "I think it's a ridiculous idea. We have a base- "The city doesn't even know we exist, except ball stadium already. It's right over there, and for taxes," she said without any bitterness. "The we can't fill that up now." city don't care. That's why they're going to take Anyway, she said, when and if it's built, "tax- this. It only means something to us.' payers shouldn't have to pay for it. Kevin That the Court still exists bulldozerMcClatchy should pay for it himself." ravaged near North Side is a miracle. For more At Castellano's Deli at the choice corner of than 100 years, it's survived everything Mother Federal and East General Robinson, owner Nature and Urban Renewal Man have thrown at Georgia Castellano and her son, Sam, are all for it. progress as long as they end up being part of Its row houses were submerged to their roofit. tops during the great flood of 1936 and were up The Castellanos have been feeding their to their second floors in Allegheny River water neighborhood for 45 years, and they've weath- in In 1972. the late 1960s, the Court barely escaped beered all the many changes. Sam's biggest concern is that "Big Business is going to buy this all ing torn down when Three Rivers Stadium and out, and we aren't going to be allowed to be a its parking lots were built. And 279's it wide escaped rivers demo- of player." lition again when Interstate Of the hundreds of potential ex-Pirates fans concrete came perilously close. who work or live on Ground Zero, Audrey Boyle But Boyle and her granddaughters, Kathleen be the only one who will lose both a job and Hart and Pam Carmona, know their home Court home to new stadium. isn't going to survive Pittsburgh's craving for may a a a Boyle, though 80, works five five-hour days a baseball park. week at Al Montuoro's cleaning and tailoring "What do we need it for?" Boyle said yestershop on East General Robinson. Her job is about day afternoon, standing shows in a left spot where stands at least will 100 feet from what locals call the Court, a group one artist's map the field of small row houses where she's lived for 37 be someday. "I was born and raised here," said Carmona, years. The which is well hidden behind the 35, as her son, Vito, 5, raced by. "It'd darn near Court, Martin Building in the shadow of the Three Riv- kill me to move." Plaza building, is made up of 16 two-story "There's no use in fighting City Hall," said ers houses built in the late 1800s for work- their neighbor, Vivian Bazy, a Court resident of brick row ers at a B&0 railroad facility. 46 years. are actually on Bur- * 'Cause you can't win," said Carmona. dock Though Way and Alcor Street, the houses face each Boyle, however, is not so willing to give their addresses up other in a cozy, dead-end courtyard of small and let progress roll over a her. She has proposibrick patios, low cyclone fences and paired plas- tion for McClatchy and his associates. tic garbage cans. Boyle said she'd sell them her two-bedroom For a while, the Court wasn't even on city row house and all of its fine memories for $50 said, leaning on her fence as sever- million, which will still leave them $150 million maps, workmen still toiled in neighbor's home to for their ball field. Boyle al a from January's flood. "I know what the value of my house is, even if The city forgot all about them during the they don't," she said sweetly. repair damage

By Bill Steigerwald Post-Gazette Staff Writer Excuse them, sports fans, but there are some folks on the North Side who are sincerely rooting against Kevin McClatchy. They hope the Pirates' young owner and his new friends in high city, county and state government places won't be able to scrape up the $200 million or so they need to build a baseball stadium in their neighborhood. The worst wishes of Pittsburghers like Richard Kuntz, Georgia Castellanos and Kathleen Hart are perfectly understandable. They are the people who live or work on Ground Zero - the tidily landscaped, prosperous but doomed chunk of floodplain on the North Side that is bounded by Federal Street, East General Robinson Street, River Avenue and the Allegheny River. Building the park would involve the acquisition of 20 to 25 parcels of land, including two industrial warehouses, several residential buildings, and 12 businesses with an estimated fair market value of $12.5 to $16.3 million. As a result, the people of Ground Zero fear that their jobs, their businesses, their property, and even their homes are likely to be sacrificed for The Stadium That Will Save Major League Baseball in Pittsburgh. Naturally, they don't like it. Kuntz, who has operated the IPP print shop for 26 years in rented space on Federal Street, is amazed by the whole idea. He can't understand why the city would want to tear down perfectly solid things like the gleaming new headquarters of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 5 or the Three Rivers Plaza apartment building to put up a ballpark he thinks should be built at the old Greater Pittsburgh International Airport terminal site. The business manager at Exercise Equipment Inc. didn't want her name in the paper, but

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