Bridge closure accelerates Donora’s decline
DONORA – This once-booming steel town nestled in the heart of the Mon Valley had been struggling long before the state closed the Donora-Webster Bridge nearly six years ago, but business owners and locals are adamant that the loss of the aging span over the Monongahela River accelerated the downtown’s economic collapse.
The bridge had just celebrated its 100th anniversary in late 2008 when the state Department of Transportation determined a few months later it could no longer handle the rigors of daily traffic.
Not long after the historic span closed in July 2009, shops trying to stay afloat in the borough’s already declining downtown business district amid the country’s crippling recession began falling like dominoes.
“I don’t want to say it’s a death knell,” Mayor Donnie Pavelko said of the bridge’s closure and impending implosion, “but how do you attract business when you basically don’t have to come through town?”
The three banks in town shut their doors within a year of each other – the last one closed in early 2013 – pushing potential customers living in the quaint village of Webster directly across the river and in the growing Rostraver Township community away from Donora to other Mon Valley towns for business, dining and pleasure. In all, at least a dozen shops closed, leaving the McKean Avenue business district with empty storefronts and vacant lots that resemble a ghost town.
Anthony DiDonato and his wife, Theresa, watched the decline from their restaurant, Anthony’s Italiano, which has been a borough staple for more than 37 years.
“It was a slow process,” Anthony DiDonato said while making a pizza during lunch hour last week. “The bridge closed, and you’d see one or two businesses close. Then all three banks went out in a year. Then, you’d really see it collapse.”
DiDonato said business has “slowed down, definitely” without people coming to cash their paychecks or welfare checks. Lunch hour used to be bustling, he said, although they still get takeout orders from regular customers and workers at a nearby industrial park.
“It was like a domino effect, but we’re trying to look at the glass half-full because we’re still here,” Theresa DiDonato said. “And we’re still here because we have so many loyal customers.”
Although motorists haven’t been able to use the bridge for several years, the finality of the situation is beginning to set in as the demolition date fast approaches.
“It’s been horrendous, and now reality is actually setting in,” Pavelko said. “There had been hope something might be done, and now it’s slim pickings because it sounds like it’s a done deal.”
Crews earlier this month began demolishing the ramp on the Webster side of the bridge as they prepare the site for the implosion in late spring or summer. That prep work concerned state Rep. Peter Daley, D-California, who is still waiting to hear back from a letter he wrote to Gov. Tom Wolf Jan. 20 pleading for him to intervene by either pushing to rehabilitate the bridge or build a replacement alongside it.
An online petition drive started by a borough resident in January received 1,170 electronic signatures, which Daley thinks prompted PennDOT to “fast-track (the demolition) because the public reared its head.” Daley is still awaiting a response from the governor.
“They could’ve waited,” Daley said of the prep work. “Once it’s down, it’s down. Look at what it’s done to (businesses) downtown. It was struggling, but that was the final blow.”
But PennDOT spokeswoman Valerie Petersen said the bridge is considered too dangerous to be left standing, and it is estimated to cost more than $25 million to replace the span. Workers have made routine inspections only to find chunks of metal falling into the river or onto the banks, she said.
“We definitely understand the deeply held sentiments the region has held for the bridge, but we have studied the circumstances extensively and the bridge cannot be preserved and has to be demolished,” Petersen said. “Although this is not the outcome some have wanted, that is the determination we have made.”
The department has conducted numerous traffic studies, she said, and found that the Monongahela Bridge to the north and Stan Musial Bridge to the south can adequately service the region.
“They might as well be a thousand miles away,” Anthony DiDonato said of how those bridges funnel traffic away from Donora. “It has isolated our town, and we were very isolated as it was anyway.”
Motorists can circumvent the borough, with the Monongahela River surrounding it like a peninsula, by taking quicker routes, such as the Mon-Fayette Expressway and Route 88 to connect with other towns in the valley. The newly renovated Stan Musial Bridge just outside the borough provides shoppers from Carroll and Monongahela with a direct route to the big-box stores and banks in Rostraver.
“We’re basically cut off from the world,” the mayor said.
Anthony DiDonato is under no delusions that the state will ever rehab or rebuild a bridge to once again connect Donora with Webster after he wrote numerous letters to then-governor Tom Corbett and went to many of the planning meetings after the closure. He figures the $25 million estimated to construct a new span is a nonstarter even for a state now awash in new transportation funding.
That sentiment was echoed by the governor’s spokesman, JJ Abbott, who said the decisions to close the bridge and prepare for its demolition happened years before Wolf was elected last November. He did not say whether the state would revisit earlier requests to build a new bridge in the same vicinity.
“The administration will work with local leaders to determine how best to help the community moving forward,” Abbott said.
That hasn’t stopped Harry Marchewka, who has owned Donora Union Pharmacy on McKean Avenue since 1978, from hoping against the odds that a replacement will be built one day. He thinks he’s still in business today because his pharmacy offers free deliveries, although he’s lost a substantial number of customers living in Webster and Rostraver.
The closure of the PNC Bank, however, has afforded him a new opportunity after he bought that building a block away and plans to move his pharmacy there in the near future. Still, he sighed about what the future holds for his pharmacy and whether the business district can survive without a closer connection point to Webster.
“That’s the only hope we have,” Marchewka said.
Pavelko, who was appointed mayor in October, isn’t ready to give up on the town yet. He pointed to Homestead as an example of a dying mill town that was rejuvenated by The Waterfront restaurant and retail development. He thinks the booming Marcellus Shale industry has the potential to bleed over into Donora by bringing new industries and workers who could one day patronize the business district.
“We’re moving forward,” Pavelko said. “We’re going to have to bring something in that people want. What it is at this point? I can’t say and don’t know.
“It’s very devastating, but Donora is still alive.”