North Huntingdon grants extension to fireworks company

Without much debate or verbal fireworks, North Huntingdon officials this week granted a fireworks company a 90-day extension of its temporary occupancy permit so it could attach the kind of facade the company had originally proposed around the base of its building off Route 30.

The commissioners approved the request from Wholesale Fireworks of Hubbard, Ohio, which provided a revised site plan for the facade of the building on Gregg Drive to planning director Andrew Blenko.

Sean Gallagher, a Pittsburgh attorney representing Wholesale Fireworks, told the commissioners Wednesday the company received a quote from a contractor, who promised to start work within two months, and finish within 30 days of starting.

Last month, the township had granted Wholesale Fireworks a temporary permit so that it could be open in the weeks prior to and including July 4, a time when a company official said about 80% of its business is conducted.

The metal frame building was constructed without any of the split-rock facade that township officials said Wholesale Fireworks had promised when North Huntingdon approved the site plan in December.

The commissioners and Gallagher verbally sparred last week over the facade. Greg McCandless, a Wholesale Fireworks representative, said he had made a mistake in understanding the agreement and the construction of the building was too far along to cut into the facade to insert the stone.

Commissioners had complained that the sight of the metal frame building, adjacent to the Pennsylvania Turnpike’s entrance ramp bridge over Route 30, should be improved because it is along one of the gateways into the township.