Paul Guggenheimer stories, Page 46
New cafe and learning space proposed for Hill District
A vacant plaza may be the site of a new café and learning space in the Hill District. The Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh is ready to begin lease negotiations with the Cares CommuniTEA Café for a space in the vacant Centre Heldman plaza on Centre Avenue. The beginning phase...
Answering The Call: Meet the expert helping UPMC employees work remotelyVideo
During the covid-19 pandemic, many people are working remotely, including tens of thousands of UPMC employees. The person largely responsible for making this happen is UPMC systems engineer Crystal Morgan, an online security expert and former songwriter from Los Angeles. In this edition of Answering the Call, Morgan discusses working...
KISS concert in Burgettstown finally rescheduled for 2021
There it was, still on the KISS website by mid-Wednesday afternoon. The iconic hard rock group’s Aug. 28 concert at S&T Bank Music Park in Burgettstown was still scheduled. Obviously, this show could not possibly happen because of the pandemic. Not with Gov. Wolf’s order restricting gatherings of more than...
City Theatre reimagines 2020-21 season
Drive-in movies are universally known. Well, how about a drive-in stage play? It’s one way Pittsburgh’s City Theatre is reimagining its 2020-21 season. The updated schedule includes a live drive-in experience as well as virtual content. Without this shift in planning, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to...
412 Food Rescue plans second distribution at Fallingwater
One of the industries hardest hit by the covid-19 pandemic has been the tourism industry. This is especially true for the Laurel Highlands, where tourism supports about 15,000 jobs, according to some estimates. With this in mind, 412 Food Rescue has scheduled another food distribution for Wednesday from 11 a.m....
Pittsburgh airport checkpoint detects 2nd gun in 3 days
A Westmoreland County man was caught with a loaded 9mm handgun in his carry-on bag at Pittsburgh International Airport on Friday, officials said. It was the second gun detected by Transportation Security Administration officers in Pittsburgh in a three-day period. On Aug. 4, they stopped a Fayette County man from...
Resident artists to take on leading roles for Pittsburgh Opera
The coronavirus pandemic has been particularly hard on performing artists, wiping out gigs for thousands of singers, actors, dancers and musicians. There is one group of singers who will benefit however — this year’s resident artists for the Pittsburgh Opera. Often relegated to supporting roles, the 2020-21 resident artists will...
Chef Kevin Sousa makes house calls with fancy meals
Many people slogging through the pandemic deeply miss going out to a fancy restaurant. While some are open at reduced capacity, the fine-dining establishment Superior Motors in Braddock is among those closed for the foreseeable future. So Superior Motors’ chef Kevin Sousa has decided if people can’t come to the...
Answering the Call: Adrean Allen brightens days for UPMC patients with his voiceVideo
Adrean Allen, born in the Jamaican city of Spanish Town, is employed in the housekeeping department at UPMC Mercy Hospital. He works hard to support his family, which includes two young daughters. A musician, Allen has a recording studio in his home where he produces songs that he writes and...
Caliente Pizza & Draft House offers taste of camping with S’mores pizza
Pittsburghers who associate S’mores with camping, but haven’t been able to sit around the campfire this summer, can still get their S’mores fix at a local pizza restaurant. Caliente Pizza & Draft House, with locations in Aspinwall, Bloomfield, Hampton, Monroeville and Mt. Lebanon, has invented a gourmet S’mores pizza. While...
75 years after atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima, area vets believe U.S. did right thing
They are called the “hibakusha,” the survivors of the atomic bombs that fell on Hiroshima 75 years ago today and on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. Their stories are hard to hear. One survivor visiting Boston in 1985 for Hiroshima’s 40th anniversary reduced a group of reporters to tears. The...
412 Food Rescue holding more distributions Friday and Saturday as need increases
With no end in sight to the pandemic, there seems to be no forseeable end to food insecurity induced by covid-19. Layoffs, particularly in the service industry, combined with the end of the $600 a week federal boost to unemployment on July 31, mean one box of food can make...
Pittsburgh Black business leaders create ‘Executive Action & Response Network’
Pittsburgh is often touted as one of America’s most livable cities as well as an economic market on the rise. But recent studies have shown that Pittsburgh does not present the same livability and economic opportunities to its Black citizens. While African-Americans make up one-quarter of the city’s population and...
Garden club honors suffrage movement with appropriately colored flowers
This month marks the 100th anniversary of the day the 19th Amendment became law in the United States. On Aug. 26, 1920, following a battle seven decades long, American women were granted the right to vote. Not everyone is aware that suffragists adopted purple, white and yellow as the colors...
Pittsburgh Opera hosting live, reduced audiences for 2020-21 season
Any opera buff would agree that watching a performance of “Cosi fan tutte” on a screen is nothing like hearing it live. As of Monday, fans of the Pittsburgh Opera will have a choice. The organization announced, in response to ongoing covid-19 uncertainty and concerns, four operas will be performed...
Specialty Luggage going out of business after 76 years
The year was 1944 and victory in World War II was in sight for the Allies. With the war a year away from winding down, life in the U.S. was changing. The economy was on the upswing and city-dwelling Americans would soon be on the move. And as they traveled,...
City of Pittsburgh awarded over $4.6 million in grants in 2020
With a projected deficit of over $115 million looming in 2020 city budgets, the City of Pittsburgh is acknowledging that $4.6 million will come in handy. That’s the amount in grants from federal and state agencies and national and local foundations the city has been awarded so far in 2020....
Worst economic quarter impacts Western Pa. professionals
No one has seen numbers as bad as these. Shoulders slumped in America on Thursday as news broke that the U.S. economy shrank at a disastrous 33% annual rate during the April-June quarter, the worst quarterly drop in history. The previous worst quarterly plunge was a 10% drop in 1958....
Wilkinsburg School District to open with online classes in August
The Wilkinsburg School Board voted unanimously to begin the new school year with a full distance, online learning curriculum on August 31. The vote was 9-0. The decision was made based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data regarding the coronavirus pandemic, guidance from the Pennsylvania Department of Health...
Pa. to provide $3 million for preschool early intervention pandemic-related supplies
With the start of the first full school year of the covid-19 era getting closer and concerns about safety increasing, Gov. Tom Wolf is taking preemptive measures to keep Early Intervention preschoolers safe. The governor announced he is setting aside about $3 million for Preschool Early Intervention Programs serving children...
Pitt’s School of Public Health welcomes students with opera about obstetrician who championed hand-washing
With uncertainty hanging over the campus during the pandemic, the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health was kicking around socially distanced ideas of how to welcome students back. That’s when the school hit upon the notion that a screening of a modern opera about the “father of sanitation...
Strangest Pirates home opener everVideo
If a Pirates home opener were played in the Twilight Zone, this is probably what it would look like. Ninety minutes before the first pitch with the Milwaukee Brewers, the normally teeming streets and sidewalks around PNC Park were practically empty. There were no pedestrians marching to the ballpark across...
New AHN Cancer Institute-Allegheny General opens Monday
Allegheny Health Network plans to open its new 90,000-square foot AHN Cancer Institute-Allegheny General on Monday morning. It’s the centerpiece of Highmark and AHN’s $300 million expansion of cancer care throughout Western Pennsylvania, according to an AHN statement. The institute will serve as a hub for Allegheny Health Network’s community...
Pittsburgh native and former U.S. attorney Harry Litman rising in the podcast world with ‘Talking Feds’
In the crowded world of podcasting, Pittsburgh native Harry Litman is getting attention with “Talking Feds,” a weekly examination of legal and political topics with working experts in the field. Litman’s bona fides are in order: He served as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania (1998-2001) after nearly...
Police: Speed a factor in Gilpin man’s fatal crash
Speed was a probable cause of a fatal crash that killed a 26-year-old Gilpin Township man Tuesday night, police said. Christian Joshua Cuffia died after losing control of his car on Ice Pond Road, near Shearer Road around 7:30 p.m. The car traveled about 80 feet off the road before...
