Pittsburgh Post-Gazette the week in review
A BRIEF ROUNDUP OF THE NEWS OF THE WEEK
It used to be that if you saw a robot, you worried about the planet. (“Klaatu barada nikto.”)
Now, you see a robot, and it means your bagels and coffee have arrived.
The University of Pittsburgh notified students, faculty and staff on Monday that San Francisco-based Starship Technologies has moved from testing to full implementation of robot delivery service all around the Oakland campus. Staff writer Bill Schackner said to look for 30 autonomous robots delivering from four eateries: Common Grounds, Forbes Street Market, Taco Bell and the Sub Connection.
The robots, visible with help from an orange flag jutting upward, are able to interact by voice with customers. If they don’t have the orange flag, they are not the droids you’re looking for.
SEARCH: ROBOTS
Robot on Aisle Six
You’re walking through the aisles at Walmart, you see something and you think to yourself, “Now I’ve seen everything.”
And then you see a robot doing inventory.
Staff writer Lauren Rosenblatt reported that the massive retailer is expanding its partnership with San Francisco-based Bossa Nova Robotics, a technology company with offices in the Strip District that makes robots to work in retail stores.
The bots move autonomously around the store, scanning products and alerting employees of anything from low inventory to mispriced items. Unfortunately, they can’t point you to the nearest restroom.
Still, it’s good for Bossa Nova, a company that started as a spinoff from Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute in 2005 and employs more than 100 people in Pittsburgh. Look for the robots in 1,000 Walmart stores by the end of the year.
“The ultimate end goal is to map the retail world,” said co-founder and chief technology officer Sarjoun Skaff. “We want to tell retailers what’s happening within the four walls of their store. … And they would use that information to meet the demand of today’s shoppers, who expect to buy any product at any time, any way they want.”
SEARCH: WALMART
Splitting hairs
A sophomore at Central Catholic High School is putting his civic lessons to work.
Staff writer Andrew Goldstein, who covers education for us, reported last week that J.D. Younger, 15, has launched a Change.org petition calling for the school to change its policy regarding permitted hairstyles, saying it unfairly targets black students.
Central Catholic’s student/parent handbook states “shaved heads or hairstyles with designs, patterns, lines, weaves, spikes, braids, locks, twists or ponytails are not permitted.” There are other restrictions on color and length. And, of course, hair must be “neatly combed.”
“Students come to Central Catholic from more than 50 different school districts, creating a community of individuals of varying backgrounds,” Brother Tony Baginski, the school principal, said in a statement. “We value each student’s abilities and talents, but our strength is in holding the community above the individual, which is why we enforce uniform dress and grooming standards.”
SEARCH: HAIRSTYLES
Parting ways with schools
Pittsburgh Public Schools is seeking to cut a few more district properties from its inventory.
Fourth River Development LLC said it is requesting bids on five properties that range in price from $55,000 to $350,000. The four former school buildings up for bid are Arlington Elementary in Arlington, Bon Air Elementary School in Bon Air, Mann Elementary School in Marshall-Shadeland and Belmar Elementary School in Homewood. A 23-acre land parcel in New Homestead also was made available.
Pat Morosetti, principal and director of brokerage at Fourth River, said that while the sales would provide the district with “financial benefits,” it’s also important that they result in “high-quality development that complements adjacent properties and enhances the surrounding community.”
Proposals are due Feb. 14.
SEARCH: FOURTH RIVER
Smiling faces on board
By the time you get to be a senior citizen in America, you get fairly used to change. Port Authority officials told staff writer Ed Blazina, who covers transportation, that the new year’s transition requiring seniors to have photo ConnectCards for free rides has been pretty smooth. As a result of a change in state regulations, transit riders 65 and older can no longer use their Medicare card for a free ride on the bus or light rail system. Instead, they must use a new, free ConnectCard with their photo on it to prevent fraud from riders inappropriately sharing their Medicare card with someone under 65. It appears that seniors were well aware of the change because more than 27,000 had the photo cards by the middle of December. Still, another 1,412 applied for cards last week. In mid-February, the agency will send a postcard to every area resident who is 65 to remind them about the new requirement. Those who already have the card will be removed from the list.
SEARCH: CONNECTCARD
Mapping the future
One of the concerns about breathing new life into aging neighborhoods is the impact on longtime residents who suddenly can’t afford to stay.
PG reporter Rich Lord quoted Mayor Bill Peduto as saying he wants to ensure “that growth will never mean somebody is forced out of the community they call home.”
Enter Mr. Peduto’s new development team, a fourperson planning squad that will make sure construction vehicles don’t bulldoze the population. The group — including a yet-to-be-named planning director — also will address a backlog of city-owned property. That means turning 17,000 parcels into affordable, owner-occupied housing.
“That has been a focus of this administration, but we haven’t seen any traction,” Mr. Peduto said Wednesday. “That wasn’t happening. That’s going to be happening.”
To read Rich’s story introducing our new development leaders:
SEARCH: PLANNING
Drowning in red ink
Here we are, a city with three — count ’em, three! — rivers, and we don’t have a regatta anymore?
The regatta was a Pittsburgh staple every summer since 1978 until the 2019 event was canceled because of unpaid bills and the lack of a permit or liability insurance.
Legal minds are still trying to figure out what happened, but that’s hard to do when the attorney representing the regatta operator — the Ross-based LionHeart — failed to show up for Monday’s bankruptcy meeting.
Federal bankruptcy trustee Rosemary C. Crawford noted that it was “the second missed meeting before me” and that it came after a judge had explicitly rejected the attorney’s postponement request.
“I will be entering on the court docket a rule to show cause why this case should not be dismissed for the principal’s failure to prosecute,” said Ms. Crawford. That means LionHeart’s attorneys will need to lay out arguments for why the case should continue, or face dismissal.
Dismissal of the bankruptcy would open up LionHeart to collection efforts by the individual creditors.
SEARCH: REGATTA
Historic in the making
It’s not easy to earn the moniker “historic structure.” There has to be a public hearing, followed by tentative and final votes of the City Council.
But at the end of the process, which for the CityCounty Building began last week, the label means nobody can mess with you. Minor physical changes to the exterior must be approved by the city’s historic preservation planner, and major changes by the Historic Review Commission.
Still, with the mayor and Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald nominating it, you have to figure the Grant Street building, which is more than 100 years old and has all kinds of things going for it, is a shooin.
SEARCH: HISTORIC
Watch what you say
Not all discussions in the City-County Building go that smoothly. In fact, Councilman Ricky Burgess on Tuesday introduced legislation that would bar Pittsburgh officials and employees from “hateful activities” against other city employees.
The Rev. Burgess — elected to a fourth term in November and an unsuccessful contestant a week ago for the council presidency — said he introduced the bill because “one of the ways that racism is perpetrated is through hateful activity,” including online harassment.
Imagine, he said, that “a member of council staff decided to slander, defile, defame” an African American council member “through a whisper campaign.”
Rev. Burgess’ proposed legislation would amend the city’s Code of Conduct to bar city officials and employees from organizing or engaging “in person or in writing and/ or across various media platforms” including social media in “hateful activities.”
His proposal came eight days after a council presidency election in which Theresa Kail-Smith emerged as the compromise choice between Rev. Burgess and Councilman Corey O’Connor, neither of whom was able to line up the necessary five votes.
Ms. Kail-Smith acknowledged that she had “seen some things that are upsetting to members” on social media.
“I think there are two members that are very upset with the process and things that have taken place over the last two weeks, especially,” Ms. Kail-Smith said after the council meeting. “I think it’s going to take some time to heal these wounds and we have to take action to address this.”
SEARCH: BURGESS
Space available
Staff writer Mark Belko last week reported that the vacancy rate in premiere office spaces Downtown is suddenly swinging in the wrong direction. What was 4.9% in 2013 was 16.9% at the end of 2019.
Is it a worrisome trend or an aberration?
Gerard McLaughlin, Newmark Knight executive managing director, urged everyone to stay calm. Some Downtown firms are downsizing their space usage and other buildings are simply between tenants.
“I wouldn’t be too worried about the vacancy going up Downtown,” Mr. McLaughlin said. “It’s a normal ebb and flow of the market. Nothing goes up forever. Something comes down. You just rebuild it again.”
SEARCH: VACANCY
To everything (turn, turn, turn)
Anyone who knows anything about gardening knows that there are seasons of growth and seasons of ... no growth.
So it is with Garden Dreams Urban Farm and Nursery in Wilkinsburg, which closed last year. Turns out, the buds on the three-quarter-acre site will be blossoming again soon.
Staff writer Diana Nelson Jones reported Tuesday that Grow Pittsburgh is taking over the site on Holland Avenue, promising to bring back the urban farm. Seeds from the site will go to Grow Pittsburgh farms, as well as to the public and retail outlets, including the East End Food Co-op.
“We see the need to grow more seedlings and provide more education,” said Jake Seltman, executive director of Grow Pittsburgh. “We want to keep what everybody loves about Garden Dreams — including walking through the pollinator garden on Saturday morning — and we will hold open houses and workshops. We also want to start a young farmer training program.”
Mr. Seltman said there is no specific opening day set yet.
SEARCH: GARDEN
Prosecutors throw the book at them
As we wade deeper into the digital age, printed material becomes more and more rare. (Like newspapers.)
That’s why it was so hard to read staff writer Paula Reed Ward’s coverage of two men who between 1992 and 2017 took more than $8 million worth of rare books and parts of books from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and then sold them to collectors.
Greg Priore, 63, of Oakland, who was the sole archivist and manager of the the library’s rare book room, and John Schulman, 56, of Squirrel Hill, who owns Caliban Book Shop, pleaded guilty to their crimes on Monday. They will be sentenced by Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Alexander P. Bicket on April 17.
Advisory sentencing guidelines call for nine to 16 months incarceration in the standard range for a first-degree felony, although probation is recommended in the mitigating range.
Priore, who admitted in statements to police his role in the crime, pleaded guilty to theft and receiving stolen property — both first-degree felonies.
Schulman, who investigators said would receive the stolen items from Priore and then sell them to collectors through his store and online, pleaded guilty to receiving stolen property, theft by deception and forgery.
Suzanne Thinnes, a spokeswoman for the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, called the thefts “devastating.”
“The shock, the anger and the hurt we feel that individuals who were close to us, who were trusted by us, who were considered friends and colleagues to many of us at the library, would abuse the faith we had in them for personal gain will be with us for a very long time,” she said in a written statement. “We are hopeful that the sentences given to these two individuals will reflect the significant damage done not only to Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, but to the literary community near and far.”
SEARCH: CARNEGIE