Construction will soon commence on a 31-home community in the Manchester neighborhood of the North Side. The Columbus Square development will see its first five homes completed sometime during the summer.

THE MANCHESTER TEAM —Front: Betty Jane, left, and Arthur Ralph. Standing, from left: Earl Coleman, Virginia Barnes, Linda Nelson, Brenda Moye, Stanley Lowe and Jerome Jackson.

“The conversion of a former Manchester industrial property to residential use is the result of a true public private partnership,” said Mark Schneider, a principal project developer for Fourth River Development. “Funding secured from the (Urban Redevelopment Authority), the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Allegheny County’s Community Infrastructure Tourism Fund and the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, together with PNC Bank’s financing of a model unity, enabled Columbus Square to move to the construction stage.”

The recent snowstorm has crippled the city, so we asked Pittsburghers their reactions to it and here’s what you had to say.

“A lot of people bashed the administration for not handling things. Hindsight is 20/20, but the reality is the last administration that had to deal with something like this probably was Tom Murphy. The fact that you actually see bulldozers helping out should say that we’re under staffed in that arena.”
Justin Strong
General manager
East Liberty

Justin Strong, Toni Polite, Chyna Bailey

When Eric Woodard read in the New Pittsburgh Courier about apprentice carpenter Alexandra Gilmore telling the crowd at a recent union trades job summit that she went to seven job sites and couldn’t get hired at any, he wasn’t surprised.

During times in his 30 years as a journeyman carpenter for Local 165, Woodard has had to leave the state to find work because for a number of reasons, Blacks are not getting enough of the available union work, he said.

PASSING IT ON—Carpenters’ Union Business Agent Harold “Mac” McDonald with first-year apprentice Tyrone McCray pose after McCray and classmates built and dismantled a house inside the Union’s new training facility on Ridge Road.

Baldwin, a partner in the Pittsburgh office of Philadelphia law firm Duane Morris LLP, will build a legal counsel’s office within Penn State. She is a member of Penn State’s board of trustees and previously served as its chairwoman.

Baldwin joined Duane Morris in early 2008 after retiring from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, where she served from 2006 to 2008. Prior to that, Baldwin was a judge in various divisions of the Allegheny County Common Pleas Court.

CYNTHIA BALDWIN