NEW CASTLE Efforts to save houses dropped

City officials are still working on plans to develop a section of Grant Street.
By LAURE CIOFFI
VINDICATOR NEW CASTLE BUREAU
NEW CASTLE, Pa. -- Four historical homes that once had a reprieve from demolition will likely end up being leveled.
The homes had been slated to be moved about one block to a new business cul-de-sac on Grant Street, but city officials have decided that the cost of moving the homes is too great.
"After we analyzed it and we put together the cost of moving the homes, it just didn't make sense economically," said John DiMuccio, city business administrator.
The Greater New Castle Development Corp., a nonprofit economic development group, informed the city school district last week that plans to move the homes have been dropped.
Tax credits rejected: DiMuccio said the state rejected the CDC's request for historical tax credits for the homes. The CDC had planned to sell those tax credits to area banks to recoup some of the money spent on moving the homes.
The homes have also lost some of their historical value after being broken into sometime in the last few months, DiMuccio said.
Mantels and woodwork were taken from the houses sometime after the city took possession last summer, according to the city administrator.
"The people who looked at it said it would be too much renovation without the mantels and woodwork," he added.
The homes, on Lincoln Avenue and East Street, are large Victorian-style homes that were built in the 1800s.
Effort to save houses: School officials had planned to raze the homes, along with 10 others, to make room for a new city high school, but agreed to make them available to anyone who could move them before construction on the new school started.
The CDC bought the four homes for $1 each and had planned to move them by April.
Schools Superintendent Joseph Martin said he now expects school board members to raze the homes in the near future.
"I think we have [exhausted] every possible way of saving the homes. Our philosophy has been to do the project that is least destructive to the community. The plan we took was the least destructive," he said.
A total of 14 homes were taken by district officials and two were demolished recently after they were mostly destroyed by arson.
Martin said there were no other viable offers to move the large homes.
However, the business development on Grant Street that would have been created by the historical homes may still happen, DiMuccio said.
City officials are still negotiating with property owners on that section of Grant Street, and the CDC is considering building new structures on the land for a business development, he said.
DiMuccio said they should know if that plan will work sometime in the near future.