At right, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers welder Jim Connelly and maintenance worker Lee Barnhart remove concrete around one of the turnbuckles at the Braddock Locks and Dam.
The Corps temporarily closed the main lock chamber at the Braddock dam on May 30 after inspection crews discovered a crack in part of a hinge on the main gate.
A smaller lock remained open while repairs were made. The work was completed last Sunday.
Located 11 miles south of Pittsburgh, the Braddock Locks and Dam ensures year-round commercial shipping on the Monongahela River by maintaining the pool through McKeesport down to the locks and dam at Elizabeth.
The Braddock facility was constructed from 1902-06 and reconstructed in the 1950s. More than 6,200 boats, including 3,800 coal tugs and other commercial boats, pass through the lock each year. A replacement dam is currently being constructed.
. . .
Midtown Tunnel Coming Down: The final remnants of the Midtown Plaza tunnel over Fifth Avenue will be demolished this week.
City Public Works Director Nick Shermenti said Fifth Avenue between Locust and Sinclair streets will be closed until at least Friday --- and possibly until next week --- while several concrete arches are torn down.
The arches once supported a parking deck that crossed Fifth Avenue. Each arch will be cut into five pieces and lowered to the ground, Shermenti said.
The sections each weigh an average of 100 tons, he said.
Removal of the arches will enable the city to begin the long-awaited reconstruction of Fifth Avenue, which will include restoring Downtown's main commercial street to two-way traffic.
In an unrelated story, Shermenti told city council that a contractor this week will start replacing the roof on the former municipal building at 201 Lysle Blvd.
Though the city's administrative offices have moved to the old McKeesport National Bank at Fifth and Sinclair, the 201 Lysle building is still used by the police and fire departments.
City officials say that several organizations have expressed an interest in renting space at 201 Lysle, including the Twin Rivers Council of Governments and the Regional Chamber Alliance, but the poor condition of the roof has been a roadblock to leasing the structure.
. . .
News From Penn State: Two honor students at Penn State's campus in the city --- Erick Froede Jr., an engineering major from Budd Lake, N.J., and Anthony Palocaren Sr., an engineering major from West Mifflin --- are trying to determine how much energy is being lost through the windows of one of the classroom buildings.
Using a thermal camera, the students and engineering instructor Eric Lipsky are measuring heat loss at the Frable Building.
The students hope to provide the university with a cost-benefit analysis of replacing the windows versus continuing to pay the existing heating and cooling bills.
Details are available at Penn State's website.
In other news, the G.C. Murphy Co. Foundation has donated an additional $50,000 to a scholarship fund at the McKeesport-based Greater Allegheny Campus.
The scholarship assists Penn State students who are the descendants of G.C. Murphy Co. employees or who live in communities where the retailer once had stores.
"Thanks to this generous grant, the number of scholarship awards will increase in future," said Pat Quinn Winter, director of development, in a prepared statement. "We're very grateful to the foundation for recognizing the needs of our students."
Finally: Penn State will hold "Kids' College" on the McKeesport campus from July 7 through 18 for local pupils in grades four through eight.
The one-week camps offer activities in areas like robotics, cooking, criminal justice, math, photography and music.
For more information, call (412) 675-9040 or download the brochure (PDF) from the campus' website.
The parent company of the Tribune-Review and a string of suburban papers could build a $75 million printing plant in the city.
Several informed sources have told the Almanac that executives from the Tribune-Review Publishing Co., which last year purchased the Daily News, have been scouting locations for a new printing facility.
Both the city and sites near Monroeville have reportedly been under consideration, those sources said.
The proposed plant would replace the presses at the McKeesport paper as well as those at the Valley Independent in Monessen and the Monroeville-based Gateway Newspapers, which include the Norwin Star and Woodland Area Progress.
According to reports, Mayor Jim Brewster also recently gave the Trib's publisher, businessman/philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife, a tour of the city.
Tim Schooley of the Pittsburgh Business Times has confirmed the rumors and put both the Trib and the city on the record.
Trib CEO Ralph Martin tells Schooley the company has maxed out its printing operations and has been forced to turn down commercial printing jobs.
Besides its own newspapers, the company also prints USA Today, the Pittsburgh Catholic, the New Pittsburgh Courier and other publications under contract.
The new facility would consolidate four older plants. No layoffs are expected, Schooley writes; instead, press workers would transfer to the new plant.
Bids from vendors are expected by July, according to the PBT.
Martin tells the Business Times that McKeesport is under consideration because it isn't obstructed by tunnels, and because space is available in the Regional Industrial Development Corp. business park on the former U.S. Steel National Works site.
The Trib's 10-year-old NewsWorks facility, which prints the Pittsburgh edition of the Tribune-Review as well as other publications, is already located in an RIDC industrial park in Marshall Township.
. . .
In Other News: One of the two radio stations licensed to McKeesport is for sale.
Tom Taylor of Radio-Info.com reported this week that WEDO (810) has been listed with a Chicago-based broker, Media Services Group, for $1.75 million.
The station was placed into an irrevocable trust several years ago by its owner, Judith Baron of Florida, who inherited the station from her late husband, Ralph.
Ralph Baron and other investors purchased WEDO in the 1970s from city businessman Ed Hirshberg.
WEDO, which has studios in White Oak and a transmitter in North Versailles Township, is a 1,000-watt daytime-only AM station. It broadcasts a mix of ethnic and religious programs, paid infomercials and nostalgia shows.
The asking price of $1.75 million may be overly optimistic; WEDO has never appeared in the ratings in recent memory.
And as Taylor notes, Baron's decision to sell WEDO comes as the market for radio stations has bottomed out.
With radio audiences declining and fewer than two out of 10 listeners currently using the AM band, the most likely scenario would be for WEDO to be sold to a national religious broadcaster or one of several low-budget "networks" that run schedules of nothing but paid programming.
Such was the fate of the former WLOA (1550), which is licensed to Braddock. After a community development group and two entrepreneurs were unable to make the station a success, it was sold to Greenwich, Conn., based Lifestyle Talk Radio. The network's schedule is heavy with paid programming.
Another station with local ties was sold to an all-Catholic religious broadcasting network; Carnegie-based WZUM (1590), which has a studio on Buttermilk Hollow Road in West Mifflin, experimented with talk and oldies before being taken over by Wisconsin-based Relevant Radio.
The other radio station licensed to McKeesport --- WPTT (1360) --- is owned by Pittsburgh's Renda Broadcasting Corp.
Although it still has a nighttime transmitter site in Lincoln Borough, WPTT's studio is located in Green Tree and the station has a pending application to change its city of license to Mt. Lebanon.
(Editor's Note: Portions of the WEDO story were originally published at Pittsburgh Radio & TV Online.)
City officials are considering whether to become the lead plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against the region's largest provider of health insurance.
At last night's council meeting, Mayor Jim Brewster said he also was lobbying state and federal elected officials to investigate whether Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield was guilty of building a surplus far in excess of what non-profit corporations are typically allowed to hold.
"I want to challenge their non-profit status," he said. "I think these gentlemen should be paying taxes to the communities they represent."
The moves come as the city is struggling to cope with a nearly 84 percent increase in health insurance premiums for 80 city hall, public works and administrative employees covered under a collective bargaining agreement with Teamsters Local 205 in White Oak.
The rate hike, first reported in May by the Daily News and the Almanac, would cost the city an additional $620,000 each year.
McKeesport, which currently spends about $2.2 million each year on health insurance for 160 employees, was not the only community whose premiums increased by double-digit percentages. According to a story last week in the Post-Gazette, Highmark increased Brentwood Borough's premiums by 70 percent, or $262,000, and Glassport's by 65 percent.
Brewster, who has adamantly been against seeking assistance for the city under the state's Act 47, warned council that if the $620,000 premium increase is allowed to stand, it could be a "segue" into distressed status.
"You do not have the money to pay this," the mayor said. "You do not have the means to get the money. This is a major problem."
Highmark, which is planning to merge with Philadelphia's Independence Blue Cross, earlier this year reported that its surplus has reached an all-time record high of $3.5 billion.
"We have a non-profit organization that pays no taxes raising your premiums by 83 percent," Brewster said. "I want to challenge their non-profit status."
If the city has too many employees seeking expensive medical treatment, he said, it is open to negotiating with Highmark. "If we have utilization issues, then we deserve to have our premiums increased," Brewster said, "but usually those increases are in the range of five to 10 percent."
As of last night, the mayor claimed, the insurance carrier has refused to speak directly with city officials, choosing instead to deal only with a broker hired by Local 205.
The city has solicited proposals from competing health insurance providers, Brewster said, "but it's real tough to compete when those organizations already know what your bids are."
The mayor was interviewed Monday about the rate increase on KDKA (1020) radio by talk-show host Marty Griffin. A Highmark spokesman interviewed later by Griffin reportedly said that the problem was the result of fees charged by Local 205's insurance broker.
Employees in Brentwood and Glassport are also represented by Local 205.
Brewster disputed Highmark's argument. "There are non-205 communities that got the same kinds of increases," he said.
City officials want to have a less-expensive health care plan in place before they negotiate five other labor agreements that will soon be expiring, Brewster said.
Tuesday night's shooting on Evans Avenue is not a sign that the city is suffering an epidemic of gun violence, Mayor Jim Brewster said Wednesday.
According to published and broadcast reports, Leroy Hughes, 29, was shot as he attempted to break up a fight between his dog and one owned by a neighbor.
Police have obtained a warrant for the accused shooter, Thomas Davis Jr., 31, who witnesses said fired up to a dozen shots into Hughes.
Brewster called the homicide "tragic" but cautioned residents against assuming that a wave of gun violence, similar to the one that swept the city in the late 1990s and early 2000s, is underway.
There is no evidence to link Hughes' death to drugs or gang activity, the mayor said; it appears to be the result of a neighborhood argument gone terribly wrong.
"We had a tragic homicide last night," Brewster said. "It was the first of 2008. We had one in 2007. We had one in 2006. We had 10 in 2004.
"Despite last night's events, I think the prognosis is good," he said. "I think we've come a long way with the help of the McKeesport Ministerium and the various task forces, I think people realize their need for involvement as parents, and I think our detectives should be given a lot of credit because they have developed a rapport with our young people, and I can see the difference."
Brewster said that the investigation of the Hughes shooting proceeded swiftly as a result of "excellent cooperation from witnesses in the neighborhood, which has really helped."
The mayor says he personally patrols the neighborhood, which is near UPMC McKeesport hospital and the Carnegie Library of McKeesport, "every single night" to keep an eye out for suspicious activity and talk to parents about bringing their children in after the city's 10 p.m. curfew for juveniles.
Brewster declined comment on a lawsuit filed this week by the mother of Tanya Kach, the now 26-year-old woman who was held captive by a former school security guard for 10 years.
The suit filed in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh on behalf of Sherri Koehnke claims that former city Police Chief Tom Carter and Officer Michael Elias were negligent in their investigation of Kach's 1996 disappearance.
Kach is also suing the city and McKeesport Area School District.
However, the mayor said that the city will try to recover damages from people who file frivolous lawsuits, and that he's wearied of listening to commentators and attorneys attack McKeesport.
"I have directed our council that any more slanderous comments about my city, your city, and our police department will be met with a swift response," Brewster said.
According to pop culture, honorable men have used guns to settle disputes and right wrongs for many years.
Former Vice President Aaron Burr famously gunned down former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in a duel.
In the "Old West," legend has it that cowboys shot rustlers and scoundrels like mad dogs in the streets.
And just a few years ago, Bernie Goetz became a folk hero for shooting several toughs in a New York subway.
Yet there was nothing honorable about the two shootings this week in the Mon-Yough area. (I almost wrote "the two shootings so far this week," but I'll try not to be that pessimistic.)
. . .
In fact, it's not honorable that our culture refuses to ask any hard questions about gun ownership ... even questions as simple as, "How many guns are too many?"
The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making us the most heavily armed nation in the world. In second place is Yemen, where terrorists and warlords prowl the streets.
That's pretty embarrassing company to keep.
I'm not a gun-control freak. I think every adult member of my family (even the women) owns at least one gun --- a pistol, a rifle, a shotgun.
But no reasonable person should think that the current situation is healthy. There is something seriously wrong in our country when someone can reportedly get into an argument at Nigro's in North Versailles, and think it's a perfectly reasonable reaction to go out to his car, grab his pistol, return to the restaurant and start blasting away, putting five people into the hospital.
. . .
And now, last night, a man on Evans Avenue in the city shot his neighbor multiple times because their dogs were fighting. Witnesses are telling police and reporters that the man charged in connection with the shooting, Thomas Davis Jr., fired at least eight shots into Leroy Hughes, 29, as he tried to pull the dogs apart.
He's accused of executing his neighbor on a city street because their dogs were fighting.
. . .
We can parse the language of the Second Amendment all we want: Does it forbid government from placing any restrictions on gun ownership? Or does it just enable each state to create a "well-regulated militia"?
Having philosophical discussions about the Bill of Rights doesn't change the fact that if the shooter at Nigro's didn't have a gun on Sunday morning, the worst thing that would have happened was a fistfight.
And if the shooter on Evans Avenue didn't have a gun, he probably wouldn't be facing homicide charges, and Hughes would probably just have a shiner and a bloody nose.
. . .
There are people, especially in McKeesport's suburbs, who think they're immune to gun violence because they're white, or upper-middle class.
Ah, but it was a white college professor, Edward Constant, who shot two police officers in Mount Lebanon a few years ago during a domestic dispute.
It was a white law-school graduate, Richard Baumhammers, who went on a shooting rampage in the South Hills.
And it was the well-to-do son of two small business owners, Seung-Hui Cho, who shot 57 people on the rural campus of Virginia Tech (which is 72 percent white).
. . .
Gun violence is not a "black issue" or an "urban problem." It's an American problem.
By Pittsburgh standards, Nigro's is a painfully typical suburban restaurant. Until Sunday morning, it was best known for its weekly oldies car cruises. The loudest arguments concerned whether Ford's 302 small-block was as good as a Chevy 350.
Instead of facing this American problem, the United States has allowed itself to be held hostage by a small, but very vocal and well-funded, gun lobby. Barack Obama was attacked for pointing out something that should be obvious --- guns and religion have been used as wedge issues in American politics for far too long.
The gun lobby argues that Americans need guns for "protection."
Protection from what? Other people with guns, presumably. There's a nicely self-fulfilling prophesy --- protect yourself from the problem of too many guns by buying more guns.
. . .
Yes, you can buy a gun for protection. Or you can buy one to keep handy for when you're pissed off at your neighbor and want to pump eight shots into him in the middle of Evans Avenue.
Did you know that the NRA opposes programs where citizens voluntarily surrender old handguns in exchange for gift certificates or other inducements?
That's not defending the Second Amendment. That's having a gun fetish that borders on paranoia.
. . .
No, there's nothing honorable about the gun lobby, there's nothing honorable about American politicians who quake in fear at the initials "NRA," and there's nothing honorable in our own refusal as citizens to honestly question the role of guns in American society.
We need to decide whether we're going to be a nation of civilized people, or a nation of vigilantes and animals who only respect the survival of the fittest.
It's well past time for us to open the discussion, even if it's too late for the people at Nigro's on Sunday morning, or the people on Evans Avenue last night.
And it's the honorable thing to do.
For pure, unbridled Kennedy-era, "New Frontier" enthusiasm, it's hard to beat the 1963 book "This is Pittsburgh: We Live Here ... We Like It!" by the late Josie Carey and Marty Wolfson.
Long out of print, you can still get a copy at the Carnegie Free Library of McKeesport and on finer used-book websites everywhere.
I took a look at "This is Pittsburgh" for this week's installment of "Monday Morning Nostalgia Fix" at Pittsburgh Radio & TV Online.
Incidentally, "This is Pittsburgh" reports that all of Allegheny County's traffic problems will have disappeared by 1970 because of the fabulous new "expressways" being built, namely the Crosstown (I-279), the West Virginia-Erie Expressway (I-79), the Extension Expressway (Route 28) and the Penn-Lincoln Parkway (I-376).
(Or, the authors suggest, you can take "the Rapid Transit to Brentwood, the helicopter to the airport, or a train to anyplace you want to go!")
Since all of our traffic woes were solved by new highways in 1970, I guess I'm not sure why the Mon-Fayette Expressway is needed.
Ah, a cheap shot, I know, but I'm not sure that prognosticating --- particularly when we're talking about the improvements that highways will bring --- has improved that much in 45 years.
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