It has been seven years since McKees Rocks announced a mixed-use plan for 52 acres of a former Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad site. The site was targeted in 2003 as a focus of the borough’s strategic economic revitalization.
The McKees Rocks Community Development Corp. and borough council had worked out a plan for its reuse with Trinity Development, which contracted a design and a market study on which it based the funding it attracted.
The plan was to include two buildings for light industrial use that would provide more than 1,000 jobs. But the developer has stepped away from the plan, and its advocates now say that 15 years of economic development effort may be in jeopardy.
CSX’s $70 million investment in an Intermodal Terminal on roughly half of the former brownfield, in Stowe, left the other half, 52 acres in McKees Rocks, to be redeveloped.
“That land is some of the only developable land in McKees Rocks, and it needs to be the economic engine for the whole [borough],” said borough Councilwoman Elizabeth Delgado. “The idea was to take these 52 acres and create over a thousand jobs and increase the tax base.”
Trinity Development, which also does business as Greenville Commercial Properties, now seeks investments complementary to the CSX terminal, which opened last fall. Those uses include a Speedway gasoline station, for which land was recently rezoned by borough council.
Craig Rippole committed his company, Trinity Commercial Development, to the community plan in 2011. In a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article that year, he said the plan would mean more than 1,100 full-time jobs.
But he recently said CSX’s investment changed the entire scenario.
“When CSX decided to come, the highest and best use for that property changed. If they are to attract businesses that want to be near them, a Speedway sits in that supply chain, a commercial fueling station at the point of origin,” he said. “You want synergy. You can’t wait 15 years to hope for the perfect user.”
Mr. Rippole said the Speedway primarily would be a service to the trucks that onload cargo from trains. The gas station would use a few acres, leaving about 40 for other uses.
Ms. Delgado said Mr. Rippole is disingenuous to claim that CSX changed the equation because CSX’s intentions were already in the mix when the original plans were made.
CSX publicly announced its intention to locate the terminal in 2013, according to a Carnegie Mellon University brownfields study.
Ms. Delgado and McKees Rocks CDC’s executive director, Taris Vrcek, said they are concerned that, for the other uses, the developer is asking three and four times what land goes for in McKees Rocks, making it unaffordable to the kind of businesses the plan was built to attract.
Five Generation Bakers, which was renting from Trinity, was interested in buying, Scott Baker, president of Five Generation Bakers, told borough council in May. He said Trinity “offered us two acres under the bridge for more than $260,000 an acre.”
He said that “as a quality food manufacturer, we didn’t want to be under a bridge.” But the other sites Mr. Rippole had for sale were $300,000 per acre, he said.
The company chose instead to locate its production and retail business in a former Bottom Dollar on Chartiers Avenue.
“There were a lot of good things he [Mr. Rippole] did for my business,” Mr. Baker said. “He made the investment in the building to allow me to be a tenant for years, and when it didn’t work out at the CSX site, he helped me secure that [Bottom Dollar] building.”
Trinity has attracted more than $7 million in public grants and loans, much of it for brownfield remediation and installation of new traffic infrastructure, including new public roads, stormwater lines and environmental remediation, removal of old footers, foundations and old railroad buildings, Mr. Rippole said.
A $1.1 million grant from the state’s Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program is stipulated for construction of one of the buildings described in the original plan. That money will not be disbursed until it is completed, said J.J. Abbott, press secretary for Gov. Tom Wolf.
Mr. Rippole said CSX gives McKees Rocks and Stowe the opportunity to be a hub in a larger economic engine for the region, for export and import.
The CSX operation has generated fewer than 200 jobs, some 40 on site, according to the borough’s website.
Council is split evenly, with half its members backing the original plan, which was the basis of the grant to clean up the brownfield, Ms. Delgado said. Several current council members have been elected since the plan was hatched.
At a recent council meeting, Mr. Vrcek said Trinity “is trying to land a big fish. It’s no secret why they’re turning away smaller businesses.”
Trinity’s motivation to monopolize the 52 acres for CSX jeopardizes years of hard community development work, he said.
“This community trusted this developer with a precious resource,” he said. “If it is squandered for profits, what does that mean for the future of this community?”
Diana Nelson Jones: djones@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1626.
First Published: July 15, 2018, 4:38 p.m.