a massive fire<\/a>\u00a0claimed the former Grandview United Presbyterian Church. Plumes of dark smoke billowed high above the skyline, signaling the tragic end of a historic neighborhood anchor.<\/p>\nDespite it sitting vacant for nearly four years, some Mount Washington residents like George Gich say it’s hard to accept.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Sad to see it go,” Gich said. “It’s been here as long as I’ve known, and I’m almost 70.”<\/p>\n
Gich wasn’t a member of the church, but he said he has fond memories of playing basketball in the basement.<\/p>\n
Since the fire in early July, there have been a lot of complaints about the eyesore and falling debris from the crumbling structure. It’s led to the closure of the Carnegie Library and part of Grandview Avenue.<\/p>\n
The building is expected to be demolished this week or next week during the day, according to Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O’Connor.<\/p>\n
After that, residents, including Gich, wonder what’s next.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I think you go through a community process and see what can even be done there, but again, you always have speculators,” O’Connor said. “So I think first is cleaning it out and then seeing what the best use would be for the community and what makes the most sense.”<\/p>\n
The Pittsburgh Presbytery owns the building and is paying for the demolition.<\/p>\n
The general minister told KDKA that the building is currently under contract for sale with the buyer seeking to build condos, but that isn’t certain.<\/p>\n
\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n
In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A piece of Pittsburgh’s history is expected to be demolished soon. Last month, a massive fire\u00a0claimed the former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[422,73,75,74],"class_list":["post-273045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-fire","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}