Heinz History Center acquires room to expand
An expansion is in the works for the Senator John Heinz History Center, a regional repository and showcase for Western Pennsylvania artifacts.
The Strip District museum is spending $1.35 million to acquire a nine-story building in the 1200 block of Penn Avenue, where it plans to house an artifacts storage facility, a conservation center and a new feature for the public. A detailed announcement is expected today.
"The only way the center could expand is to acquire the buildings behind it on Penn Avenue," museum spokesman Ned Schano told the Tribune-Review. "The new building is all about Western Pennsylvania history. It's complementary to our mission."
Andy Masich, president and CEO of the history center, said in August that a $2.4 million renovation was planned that would include building a bridge over Mulberry Street to join the nine-story building with the center. Masich said then that the museum's big vision was to restore not only its own artifacts, but also family heirlooms for the public on a retail basis.
Masich was not available for comment on Monday, but Schano confirmed those plans and said the newly acquired building will allow the Smithsonian Institution affiliate to move its stored collection from an off-site location. At any given time, about 20 percent of the center's artifacts are on display in the facility, a former 275,000-square-foot ice house on Smallman Street that opened as a museum in 1996.
The history center drew 255,000 visitors last year -- the most ever -- largely through an exhibit that featured Vatican art treasures. That was up from 157,080 in 2007.
"We've been increasing attendance every year," Schano said.
Renovations will take about a year to complete, he said. Improvements will include light and humidity control. Although real estate paperwork indicates the center is buying two buildings on Penn Avenue, Schano said it is one structure.
"It's going to take some time to retrofit the building and get it up to Smithsonian standards," Schano said.
A group of local investors in 2008 announced plans to turn the building into the Hardware Lofts, which was to feature about 30 luxury condominiums and a first-floor restaurant in the former American Equipment Co. warehouse built in the 1920s. Those plans never materialized.
The Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, which owns the history center, is buying the building from Rex I, a limited liability company in Minneapolis.
The Redevelopment Authority of Allegheny County in August awarded a $250,000 grant toward the purchase through the Community Infrastructure and Tourism Fund.
The history center operates on an $8 million budget, but posted deficits of $226,816 in fiscal 2010 and $73,958 in fiscal 2011 as money from the state dropped from $755,000 in fiscal 2008 to $265,500 last fiscal year and zero this year.
The museum hopes to generate revenue by renegotiating its contract for Marcellus shale gas at its 275-acre Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Historic Village, the oldest known site of human habitation in North America. The center plans to make $125,000 a year by harvesting timber at Meadowcroft in Avella, the site of a former strip mine.
Center officials are asking the Allegheny Regional Asset District for a hefty increase in 2012 funding from its current $500,000 grant to $695,000. RAD supports libraries, parks, stadiums and cultural groups with half of the proceeds of an additional 1 percent county sales tax.
