City Planners Converge Next Week Downtown

Public invited to walking tour, community forum Thursday

By Staff Reports
The Tube City Almanac
October 30, 2025
Posted in: McKeesport and Region News

(Tube City Almanac file photo)

A nationally known group of economic development specialists will be in the city for three days next week to develop a proposal for reinvigorating McKeesport’s moribund Downtown business district.

The Young Preservationists Association of Pittsburgh has contracted with The Collaborative, a Boston-based network of city planners, designers and engineers, to tour the Downtown area and meet with residents, said Matthew Craig, executive director of YPA.

The Collaborative, YPA and Mayor Michael Cherepko will host a walking tour from 3 to 5 p.m. Thursday (Nov. 6) beginning at the Palisades Ballroom and heading up Fifth Avenue. 

Then, at 7 p.m., the mayor’s office, YPA and the Collaborative will hold a community forum at the Palisades. Refreshments and child care will be provided.

“We are excited by what this project will mean for our downtown, riverfront and city’s future,” Cherepko said in a release. “We thank the Collaborative for proposing it, and those residents of McKeesport who have stepped forward to open their homes in support of the future of the city.”

Residents will be asked to share ideas for utilizing the city’s riverfront, identifying core needs and bringing businesses to the Downtown area, the mayor’s office said.

“We really wanted to bring in a fresh set of very talented eyes to look at McKeesport in a new way,” Craig said. “We had discovered their work at Bartram’s Gardens in Philadelphia, and we were very impressed with what they had done.”

Bartram’s Garden is a 50-acre public park that is believed to be the oldest botanical preserve in the United States. It also was a setting for one of the Outlander novels by Diana Gabaldon.

Craig said The Collaborative also had been recommended to YPA as a possible development partner.

“I have been very impressed with how they are launching themsleves into this work,” he said.

In addition to the Thursday events, which are open to the public, the group will be having private meetings with business owners and residents on Wednesday and Friday.

According to a press release, the McKeesport team includes the Collaborative’s two principals, Ed Shoucair and Joe Brevard, who have prepared development plans for Boston, Atlanta, Savannah, Ga., and other communities.

Also included are Ignacio Bunster-Ossa, a lecturer at Harvard Graduate School of Design and former faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania, a designer whose work includes creating the SteelStacks Arts and Cultural Campus in Bethlehem, Pa., and Courthouse Square in Nashville, Tenn.; Kaye Lynn Johnson, the firm’s senior vice president for design, who has served on the faculty of the Rhode Island School of Design and Rutgers University; former Savannah City Manager Michael Brown; and Vice President of Communications Donald James, was former assistant administrator of education for NASA.

Funding for the work is being provided to YPA by a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Brownfields Assessment program.

“The idea is that McKeesport needs a plan to move forward, and YPA, of course, is heavily focused on the historic assets, so those will ben included in this plan,” Craig said.

YPA wants to build on Cherepko’s motto of “McKeesport Rising” and “work towards bringing that to fruition,” Craig said.

For more information, call (412) 675-5020, ext. 605, or email jen.vertullo@mckeesport-pa.gov.

Originally published October 30, 2025.

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