Staff writer
A bulldozer started leveling Pleasant Valley Shops at Donaldson's Crossroads in Peters Township on Monday morning, making way for a Walgreens drugstore at the intersection.
"They're tearing down our store today," said Jean Mace of McMurray, who, with her husband, Bill, was an owner of Video Showcase rentals from 1988 to 1998.
One of Jean Mace's fondest memories of their business dealt with, of all things, the Blizzard of 1993, a mid-March Saturday that brought one of the heaviest accumulations of the 20th Century.
The Maces made a 5-mile trip along Route 19 in the blinding snow and found the parking lot full of what they thought were abandoned cars.
As they unlocked the door to Video Showcase, the doors of the cars popped open and whole families emerged.
"People were just streaming in to rent videos so they'd have something to do during the storm," she said.
Among the other tenants were clothing stores, a dry cleaner, jeweler and dollhouse furniture store.
A former area resident said part of the quaint, gray, stone complex was, in the early 1970s, a private home with a detached kennel. A gasoline station once stood at the corner, which Jean Mace recalls as Wilson's Mobile.
"It's the highest traffic area in the township," said Ed Zuk, Peters Township planning director.
The corner, across from a CVS drugstore, will be the home of a second pharmacy in late winter or early spring.
"Their building permit application is ready to go," Zuk said of Walgreens. "The site plan is complete and they are waiting for a highway occupancy permit, which is very close, according to PennDOT."
Anchor Properties Inc. of Covington, Ky., acquired two lots at the end of last year, purchasing one parcel along East McMurray from Marjorie Werner for $2.3 million and a second one along Route 19 from Ford Mortgage Investment LLC for $650,000.
"We got them to do a more colonial-style building with red brick and a cupola. It'll be, in our opinion, a more aesthetically pleasing Walgreens than is typically built here in Western Pennsylvania," Zuk said.
Nate Stark, project manager for Anchor Properties Inc., said the lot will have parking for 70 vehicles.