Local officials should act 鈥� now
Debby Miller can’t shake one horrible memory.
Miller, 68, told me the other day that when she was pregnant and living near the city school building on Connellsville Street in Uniontown, a youngster was struck by a car.
The little boy died.
“It was so tragic,” Miller said. “I cried for weeks. I get teared me up just thinking about it.”
It’s one of the reasons Miller is fighting hard against the possibility of a Dollar General store being placed next to Uniontown’s venerable Benjamin Franklin Elementary-Middle School on Morgantown Street.
She said she would never forgive herself if a similar tragedy took place amid the congestion that swirls around the school.
Schoolchildren are on the the sidewalks and streets in the neighborhood at the start and close of each schoolday.
There is the added complication of the twice-a-day ritual of parents dropping their kids off at school in the morning and picking them up following the final bell of the day.
Vehicles are literally bumper-to-bumper. Place a Dollar General in the mix and you have the elements of a tragedy in the making. At least that’s how Miller sees things.
The whole thing causes Miller to shudder. I could hear the catch in her voice as she spoke to me on the telephone.
Miller lives with her husband on North Emerson Street, behind and somewhat catty-cornered to the school building. Their home is close to Craig Mansion, which was built in the national centennial year of 1876. There’s been talk that a Dollar General might be built on the property. In that event, the mansion would be razed.
Or, it might be left standing, in which case DG’s squat aspect of a building and parking lot would be constructed in front of the mansion, a lovely three-story Queen Anne-style residence, now converted to apartments.
Either prospect makes Miller shudder anew. Many other people, too. A neighborhood native now living in Short Hills, N.J., attached a comment to an online petition Miller posted. The comment reads: “(The mansion) is on my list whenever I visit Uniontown. Uniontown has many problems now, and losing a landmark is unacceptable.”
Another person noted, “I just drove by the Craig Mansion today and was thinking how lucky our community is to have it.”
Miller and supporters have collected an estimated 4,000 signatures. This includes neighbors and a whole bunch of the parents and grandparents who line their cars up each morning and then in the afternoon waiting for the dismissal of school.
Miller said she expects any day now to forward the petitions to Dollar General headquarters in Goodletsville, Tenn. Others who can expect to have the petitions show up in their mailboxes are the state Department of Transportation District 12’s chief William Kovach and Ted Donald, president and CEO of Penntex Ventures in Pittsburgh.
According to Miller, Penntex handles construction matters for Dollar General in this part of the country.
Miller said she has heard good things about Penntex. She’s been led to believe that the company is family-owned and has “scruples.”
She is also under the impression that Dollar General follows Penntex’s lead. She says if Penntex says it’s not such a good idea to build next to the school, it probably won’t happen.
One item Miller could mention to Dollar General is that the company has a store less than a mile away from Craig Mansion.
Then, again, the company probably already knows this. Dollar General is growing its brand with mad abandon. The company produces stores like rabbits produce offspring. They are everywhere.
You can hardly turn a corner without seeing one. There are five or six in the Uniontown area alone.
Miller vows eternal vigilance. She’s not trusting anything to chance. She feels she’s been burnt at least once, maybe twice, over the ownership of the property and its zoning status. She’s not budging. She loves her home and her neighborhood. And she worries about the safety of the schoolchildren.
Of course, there’s a way to allay her concerns. Elected officials and zoning board members and others engaged in local governance could take the initiative to declare the Craig Mansion property off-limits to Dollar General.
The public has pretty well spoken out loud and clear on this one. It’s never too early to do the right thing.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.