CMU to pay $5 million for diocesan property
May 11, 2012 10:22 am
By Marylynne Pitz / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/...ty-635378/?p=1
The Cardinal Dearden Center, left, is on Fifth Avenue in Oakland.
Carnegie Mellon University plans to pay the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh more than $5 million for a three-story building on a half-acre on Fifth Avenue. The Cardinal Dearden Center is one of five parcels totaling nearly 1 1/2 acres at the site that the diocese hopes to sell to CMU, substantially expanding the university's holdings in the heart of Oakland.
Sale of the Dearden Center, now home to six retired priests, marks another step in Bishop David Zubik's plan to centralize diocesan operations at St. Paul Seminary in Crafton. The Rev. Ron Lengwin, diocese spokesman, said the diocese hopes to complete the transaction by the end of June. CMU officials declined to discuss the purchase or what they planned to do with the land.
"We defer any comment to the diocese until an agreement is finalized," said Teresa Thomas, a CMU spokeswoman.
The Dearden Center property includes a carriage house and a large two-story structure that are used to store archives and surplus religious articles, such as statues and crucifixes from closed parishes. Three of the other four diocesan-owned parcels are next to the Dearden Center at Clyde Street and Fifth. The largest, at 4723 Fifth Ave., is a garden that faces Fifth and another is a surface parking lot.
The diocese also hopes to sell the Roselia Center, a three-story building at 624 Clyde St. owned by Catholic Charities. The Roselia Center, which contains administrative offices, is contiguous to and behind the Dearden Center. Separating it from the other three diocesan properties is a one-third acre parcel occupied by a four-story apartment building at 630 Clyde St.
Residential zoning for the Dearden Center parcels would allow CMU to build a structure that is nine stories high.