Pittsburgh council grants Tito House historic designation

Pittsburgh City Council on Tuesday voted to grant historic designation to the Tito House in the city’s Uptown neighborhood.

“We are extremely excited,” said Sabreena Miller, real estate and development manager with Uptown Partners. “We’ve worked very hard to see that this property be cared for, protected and an asset to the community. We saw so much value in the history.”

Built in 1884, the home was owned by Joe Tito, a prominent Prohibition-era bootlegger who later became the owner of Latrobe Brewing Co.

The Tito Garage, located behind the house on Colwell Street, was included in the historic designation. It became the brewing company’s first Pittsburgh beer distributor and was the first known place where Rolling Rock beer was sold, starting in 1935.

Tito — along with friend and business partner Gus Greenlee — contributed to the success of the Pittsburgh Crawfords, a Negro League baseball team that played at the former Greenlee Field in the city’s Hill District.

The future of the Tito House was hotly debated, as Dallas-based Fountain Residential Partners wanted to purchase and redevelop the Fifth Avenue property. Fountain’s plan was to demolish the structure and build an $87 million mixed-use development with about 11,000 square feet of commercial space and 280 apartments for student housing.

The nonprofit Uptown Partners, however, nominated the site for historic designation, which will complicate any efforts to level the building or develop the site. The group has also filed for a conservatorship, which is still pending, in an effort to preserve the property.

Councilman R. Daniel Lavelle told council members last week he was hopeful that attorneys representing Uptown Partners, Fountain Residential Partners and the property owners — who did not want the site to be designated historic — would reach an agreement before council had to vote on the measure.

When that did not happen, City Council was forced to vote Tuesday. They were not able to pause the measure any longer, as they serve in a “quasi-judicial role, and the law requires a vote today,” City Council Solicitor Dan Friedson said.

“I’ve struggled with this particular vote,” Lavelle said. “I personally don’t view it as historic.”

He did, however, vote in favor of the historic designation because he felt a “vast majority” of his constituents supported the measure.

City Council in April heard debate on the future of the structures from members of the community, as well as people representing Uptown Partners and Fountain Residential Partners. The owners of the property — who inherited it and do not live in the area — explained at that time that they wanted to sell the site to a developer who could revitalize a property they couldn’t care for.

A representative of Fountain Residential Partners did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Miller, with Uptown Partners, said conversations with the potential developer are still in progress.

What will happen with the house now also remains unclear. Lavelle has noted that Uptown Partners does not currently have the finances to revitalize it.

“We do clearly understand that this is the first step in a journey we are absolutely prepared for,” Miller said. “We are in the process of exploring funding streams and garnering support around the redevelopment plans we have.”

If the group is granted control of the site through its pending conservatorship case, she said, they hope to “bring it back into productive reuse in an economic way.”

City Council members were divided in their vote for the historic designation, with Lavelle joining Deb Gross, Bruce Kraus, Corey O’Connor and Bobby Wilson in supporting the measure. Councilmen Anthony Coghill and Ricky Burgess voted against the designation.

Council President Theresa Kail-Smith was not present for the vote.

Coghill and Burgess said they take issue with the idea that a person or group can nominate a site as historic without the property owner’s consent, something they see as stripping owners of their rights to use property as they see fit.

Coghill — who lives in a home built just after the Civil War — said he understands the cost and difficulty of restoring historic homes. He said he felt is was “an infringement on people’s rights” to bestow historic designation on a property when the owners were opposed.

He and Burgess said they didn’t like that the measure could keep the property owners from cashing in on their plans to sell the land to a developer.

“If you don’t have the money to match that fair market value that person is asking for, then you don’t have a seat at the table,” Coghill said.

Burgess said he will soon introduce legislation that would require the city to offer fair market value for sites that receive historic designation.

“This is absolutely a bad process, that we allow individuals with no interests, no money, no investment in property, to unilaterally steal the property rights of the owner,” he said. “It is absolutely an immoral process.”

Gross, however, defended the process, as the city has land use authority.

“Historic preservation is what we want to include in our city, what we want to protect,” she said. “When we repeatedly erase important parts of our city’s identity, we are actually disrespecting ourselves and our residents.”