Category: News || By Jason Togyer

The old G.C. Murphy Co. store Downtown is being reinvented as a small-business incubator.

McKeesport Development Corp. purchased the building at 315-321 Fifth Ave. in January, according to county tax records. The building, which spans three separate lots, is assessed at $151,000. Included in the purchase was a parking lot that can be entered from Fifth Avenue.

Darryl Segina, city council president and chairman of the MDC, told the Almanac that officials are "in the talking stage" with one potential tenant. Space is available for both retail and office uses.

"We want to create an opportunity for an entrepreneur to come in at a low rent," Segina said. A municipal parking lot across the street on the former site of Cox's Department Store could also be used by potential tenants, he said.

The first floor of the Murphy store, located near the intersection of Fifth and Walnut, is divided into several offices and is ready for occupancy "immediately," Segina said. Potential start-up businesses could rent all or some of the building, he said.

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"The bottom floor is in very good condition, but the top two floors need a lot of work," Segina said. The building was used until recently as a blood-plasma donation center, but is currently vacant.

Once known as the "Neiman-Malloy Building," the building became a G.C. Murphy Co. variety store in 1930, and continued until 1985, when the McKeesport-based retailer was taken over by Ames Department Stores of Connecticut. Ames closed the store, reopened it as a dollar store, and closed it again.

Neither the second nor third floor appear to have been used since the Murphy store closed, Segina said.

The incubator will be McKeesport's second attempt to establish a business incubator in the Downtown area, and the previous also was located in a property formerly used by G.C. Murphy Co. In the 1980s and '90s, the city took over an old Montgomery Ward location at 539 Fifth Ave. that had served as the real estate department for the Murphy company.

The old incubator had six to eight business at one time, Segina said. According to county tax records, that building was divested by the city in 2000. Currently vacant, it is owned by the same investors behind TruVu Entertainment, a proposed Internet TV company.

Editor's Note: McKeesport Development Corp. may be reached at (412) 664-7000.