Now in its sixth year, McKeesport Regional History & Heritage Center’s Living History Tour features live actors recounting some of our area’s memorable figures and events.
The tour takes place this weekend at McKeesport & Versailles Cemetery, just off Fifth Avenue near UPMC McKeesport hospital. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, tickets are timed and should be purchased in advance.
Dave Moore, museum manager for the center, said this year’s tour is designed to entice the community with interesting and “really juicy stories” from McKeesport’s past. “Everyone is into true crime right now.”
COVID-19 continues to disproportionately affect Black residents, according to statistics from the Allegheny County Health Department.
And bars and restaurants remain the number one location visited by people who have tested positive for COVID-19, the health department said in a report released Wednesday. Weddings, funerals and parties also are among the events that sufferers reported attending before their diagnoses.
Although only 14 percent of county residents are Black, they represent 25 percent of all COVID-19 cases in Allegheny County, the latest health department statistics indicate.
A drive-through COVID-19 testing center will open in the city next week, the Allegheny County Health Department announced Wednesday.
Build-out of the site, located in the Industrial Center of McKeesport, began Tuesday, said Amie Downs, county spokeswoman.
Tests will be free but appointments will be required, she said. Funding for the site is being provided by the federal coronavirus stimulus program and the money has been allocated by state officials, Downs said.
The site will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, beginning Sept. 15.
The cornerstone of a now-demolished McKeesport church has made its way to a new home in Cleveland, Ohio.
After months of persistence, Cleveland resident and historian Nicholas Boros secured the cornerstone of the former St. Stephen’s Roman Catholic Church on Beacon Street and moved it to his own church, St. Elizabeth of Hungary.
“It was all very last minute,” said Boros, who had assumed his efforts to preserve the cornerstone had been unsuccessful. “I didn’t know I was getting it until three days before leaving for Cleveland.”
St. Stephen’s closed in 2002 following the death of its longtime pastor, the Rev. Stephen Kato.
This is one of the injection-molding machines from Magic Creations Inc. that’s being sold, according to a Connecticut-based auctioneer. (Photo courtesy The Branford Group)
A Connecticut-based auctioneer is selling off plastic-molding equipment from a Christy Park company that manufactures ice-cube trays, food storage bins, laundry baskets, trash cans and other items.
More than 250 molds and eight plastic injection-molding machines used by Magic Creations Inc. are being sold to the highest bidder beginning this week by The Branford Group, according to Ali Wade, marketing director for the auctioneer.
Magic Creations is located in the former G.C. Murphy Co. and Ames Department Stores distribution center between 28th and 31st avenues.
Although the equipment is being auctioned, the company is not going out of business, said an employee at the office who would not give his name or any other information to a reporter.
James J. Blatnik, AFL-CIO community services liaison for the Allegheny-Fayette Central Labor Council, paints park bench metal frames before the wood is replaced on the bench. (Tube City Almanac photo by Vickie Babyak)
McKeesport city officials, the Allegheny-Fayette Central Labor Council, local union members and their families worked together on Saturday morning to participate in a beautification day at Renziehausen Park.
Because the annual Pittsburgh Labor Day Parade, picnics and other celebrations were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, union members instead organized “Labor’s Weekend of Service” at several locations in the Pittsburgh area.
Darrin Kelly, a Pittsburgh firefighter and president of the labor council, said it was an opportunity to highlight the commitment of union members to serving the communities where they live.
“We are embracing this opportunity to honor the frontline workers who are helping usget through this pandemic and to show what organized labor is all about,” Kelly said. “We are all in this together, and it’s never been more important that we all take care of one another.”
A pump failure at the McKeesport water treatment plant caused a lengthy outage on Friday night, a spokesman for the Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County said.
But it wasn’t just a lack of water that had some city residents frustrated — they said a lack of information from the water authority also left them high and dry.
Authority spokesman Matthew Junker told Tube City Almanac an electric motor that drives one of the pumps at the plant failed at about 7:30 p.m.
Crews had difficulty getting a second pump into operation, which caused water pressure to fall, he said.
A.J. Tedesco, McKeesport community development director, McKeesport Mayor Michael Cherepko, HUD Pittsburgh Office Field Director Michael Horvath and HUD Region III Administrator Joe DeFelice talk following a visit to the vacant Penn-McKee Hotel, Downtown. (Tube City Almanac photo)
Less than a month after visiting McKeesport to encourage the city to take advantage of the Financial Opportunity Zone program, a federal official returned with two colleagues to help him make his case.
McKeesport needs a team of “cheerleaders” to sell the city’s advantages to prospective investors, said Joseph J. DeFelice, Region III administrator for the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development.
“You have proximity” to Pittsburgh, DeFelice said during a roundtable discussion Thursday morning with business owners, elected officials and community leaders at the Palisades Ballroom, Downtown.
K&K Roadside Service has received the city’s permission, with conditions attached, to continue operating along Patterson Avenue. (Tube City Almanac photo)
City council has granted an occupancy permit — with conditions attached — to a Patterson Avenue car repair shop that neighbors have claimed looked more like a junkyard.
At Wednesday’s meeting, McKeesport council by 4-2 vote approved a conditional use application for K&K Roadside Service, LLC, to continue operating in the 2200 block, near the entrance to Myer Park.
Councilmen Jim Barry Jr. and Keith Soles voted no, and Council President Richard Dellapenna Jr. was absent due to a professional obligation.
Although the neighborhood is zoned for residential use, an auto-repair shop has been located on the site for decades. But since K&K moved onto the property from Braddock, neighbors have complained repeatedly to McKeesport Mayor Michael Cherepko and several members of council.
This massive door in the former bank vault at the People’s Building weighs an estimated 15 tons, says owner Jonathan Stark. (Emily Pidgeon photo for Tube City Almanac)
Jane Jacobs, the writer and journalist who in the 1960s helped popularize the idea of preserving city architecture, once said, “New ideas often need old buildings.”
The Peoples Union Bank Building, with its high vaulted ceilings and old fashioned charm, has been a fixture in McKeesport’s skyline since 1906. Owner Jonathan Stark has ideas, and bringing commerce back to this old building is an important duty he holds dear to his heart.
Purchased by Stark in the late summer of 2019, the People’s Building has had a bit of a facelift and cleanup as well as some more serious construction in the past year. That included repairs to a section of the brick veneer that had pulled away from the exterior, with the potential to cause damage to cars and people below.
Stark was able to repair the damage before any major issues occurred and restored the brick without a hiccup.
