Preparations are underway to demolish the former Royer’s department store building on Main Street in Greensburg.
The three-story building has been vacant for decades. Over the past 10 years, its condition has significantly worsened, making it impossible to rehabilitate, according to officials.
The Westmoreland County Land Bank purchased the building for $1,294 in 2024. First opened in 1923, the store remained in business until it closed its doors in downtown Greensburg in 1979.
The redevelopment authority will meet Tuesday with potential contractors with an eye toward awarding a contract to demolish the 40,000-square-foot building this year. Greensburg Mayor Robb Bell said the demolition is expected to spur continued economic development in the city.
“It opens the city for future development, and we’ve already had a couple of developers ask about that lot,” Bell said. He added that the county’s demolition program has been a major benefit for the city. “It’s been wonderful, and a lot of real problem buildings for us have been torn down.”
The demolition of the former Advance Furniture store at the south end of Main Street was completed in 2023.
Milestone demolition
When the walls of a Knox Avenue home in Monessen tumbled down earlier this year, it marked a milestone: the 300th structure demolished as part of the county’s five-year project to remove blight throughout Westmoreland County.
In 2022, commissioners initially allocated $10.4 million from the county’s federal covid-19 relief funds to pay for the program. Officials designed the initiative to clear dilapidated and unusable structures in Arnold, Greensburg, Jeannette, Monessen, New Kensington, Penn Borough and Vandergrift.
The original plan identified as many as 500 blighted properties with a goal of demolishing at least half. That target number later increased to about 750; however, late last year, the figure was revised downward after commissioners withdrew $1.6 million from the program and reallocated that money to help offset a budgetary deficit.
Redevelopment Authority Executive Director Brian Lawrence said the program has just less than $1.9 million to spend over the next two years but still expects the total number of demolitions to top 500.
“Our biggest challenge is getting consent for this work,” Lawrence said. “People who live among these ruins deserve to have these properties addressed now. We will still exceed our original expectations.”
As of this week, the program has removed 305 structures, with about 200 more planned over the next two years. Over the last three years, 20 structures were demolished in Arnold, six in Greensburg, 38 in Jeannette, 165 in Monessen, 61 in New Kensington, seven in Penn Borough and eight in Vandergrift.
Monessen Mayor Ron Mozer said the program has been a boon for his community.
“When you have a city like Monessen that saw its steel mills close 50 to 60 years ago, four out of every five houses we had here were deserted,” Mozer said. “Projects like this set us up to redevelop those properties. This has allowed us to make a huge investment in Monessen.”