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Multifamily development receives preliminary approval in Mt. Lebanon

By Harry Funk staff Writer hfunk@thealmanac.Net 3 min read
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A proposed multifamily development off Dorchester Avenue has received preliminary approval from the Mt. Lebanon Planning Board.

The 51-unit Castlegate Green project must return to the board for recommendation of final approval, which in turn goes to the Mt. Lebanon Commission for a vote.

Seeking to build on 5.58 acres of the former site of the former DePaul Institute and Bradley Center is The Community Builders Inc., a Boston-based nonprofit developer of mixed-income housing.

Plans call for construction of four rowhouse buildings, two garden apartment buildings, a triplex and a management office. The single point of entry and exit for the site will be at Dorchester and Castlegate avenues.

In conjunction with the development, Dorchester Avenue, which serves as the municipal line for Mt. Lebanon and Pittsburgh’s Brookline neighborhood, is being widened. That aspect of the project includes extra space for on-street parking.

“Those parking spaces are not required for our parking counts,” Vanessa Murphy, Community Builders senior project manager, said during the planning board’s March meeting. “They were intended to be public parking for existing residents of the neighborhood, or for our residents.”

Brookline resident Meredith Little of Castlegate Avenue wrote to Mt. Lebanon expressing concerns about the project, including a crosswalk to be installed across Dorchester at the access/egress intersection.

“As a resident witnessing this intersection for my entire life,” she wrote, “I can attest that this is somewhat of a blind corner in which cars cannot safely pass each other if two cars are at the intersection, one on Castlegate, the other on Dorchester.”

Along with the street widening, a new sidewalk is to be built along Dorchester from Midland Street southeast to the access road for the Salvation Army’s Pittsburgh Temple Corps.

Inside the development, the streets have been planned in coordination with Mt. Lebanon Fire Department recommendations.

“That’s why there are some of those fairly generous radiuses shown on many of the streets, to accommodate the 44-foot, 11-inch radius that the fire department said they needed for their ladder truck,” said professional engineer Bernard Lamm of Common Ground, the civil engineering firm for the project.

He said all sidewalks and crossings within Castlegate Green meet federal Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 standards.

Also working with Community Builders on the project are co-developer Three Rivers Communities Inc., general contractor SOTA Construction and Tai+Lee Architects.

Community Builders leases the property from the Allegheny County Housing Authority under an agreement that calls for “an upfront ground lease payment equal to $600,000.”

The housing authority, which has the stated mission of providing “decent, safe and sanitary housing for eligible low-income families and senior citizens” of the county, manages properties including the Dorchester of Mt. Lebanon apartments for residents ages 62 and older, located next to the Castlegate Green site.

Both are part of property, with the address of 2904 Castlegate Ave., that was granted a two-parcel subdivision by Mt. Lebanon in 2017 at the request of then-owner Residential Resources Inc.

According to information provided through the Allegheny County Real Estate Portal, the housing authority purchased the 5.58-acre parcel now leased to Community Builders for a sale price and listed at $400,000 and Dec. 30, 2020, respectively. The property also is listed as having a “taxable market value” of $269,000.

In August, the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency announced the Castlegate Green project’s eligibility for a federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit of $1.21 million. The development also is the recipient of a $1.19 million award from the National Housing Trust Fund, which was established in 2008 to provide resources to develop, preserve and rehabilitate housing for low-income households.

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