After occupying the building for nearly four decades, and after almost ayear and a half of negotiations and bureaucracy, Sweetwater Center for the Arts will soon officially own its longtime home, the Old Sewickley Post Office.
Established in 1975, Sweetwater Center for the Arts moved into the Old Sewickley Post Office in 1988. Since the early 1980s, the building has been owned by the Old Sewickley Post Office Corporation (OSPOC), and then it was leased to two occupants, Sweetwater (which takes up about 85% of the building’s space) and the Sewickley Valley Historical Society (which fills the other 15%).
After the ownership transfer, the Historical Society will remain in its space in the building and will have a long-term lease agreement with Sweetwater, according to board president Marty O’Brien.
“We’re excited that Sweetwater is making a big investment in the Sewickley community with taking over the building and we’re hoping for all the best,” O’Brien said.
“The Old Sewickley Post Office Corporation was created in the early ’80s to basically save the building from being demolished, and they fundraised to not only purchase the building but renovate it for adaptive reuse,” said Christine Brondyke, executive director of Sweetwater Center for the Arts.
After the building was updated and Sweetwater moved in, OSPOC retained ownership.
OSPOC board president Susan Sour, who has been involved with the organization since 2001, said that their main goal was preservation of the building.
“It’s a National Historic Landmark, so maintaining that historic nature and architectural style in a community like Sewickley that values history seemed like the best thing,” she said.
Brondyke, who comes from a development background, began at Sweetwater in her current position four years ago. She has made it a goal to revitalize Sweetwater and reconnect it with the Sewickley community. The center provides arts education to members of the community of all ages, from pre-kindergarten to senior citizens.
Because Sweetwater did not own the building, seeking funding or grants was a complicated prospect.
For a number of reasons, Sour approached Brondyke in October 2023 to discuss the possibility of OSPOC dissolving and gifting the building to Sweetwater.
“We’ve worked closely with Sweetwater over the years on variety grant proposals and other kinds of foundation requests looking for funding sources to do renovations and to improve accessibility in the building for the citizens of the community who come to the programs there,” Sour said. “When you’re involved in grant funding, even if Sweetwater were to be the initiator of the grant, I would have to sign off for our board on any kind of fundraising like that.”
On the other hand, OSPOC had trouble with capital campaigns because they don’t have any programming. Their purview was maintenance of the historic building.
Take, for example, the long-term campaign to raise funds funds for the installation of an elevator in the two-story building.
“The elevator was a big project for Sweetwater and for the Historical Society because not only do we serve an aging population but we also serve our commitment to the community,” Brondyke said.
The move to transfer ownership of the building will allow a streamlining of fundraising efforts and allow Sweetwater to aggressively pursue grants from government and private sources that neither Sweetwater of OSPOC would be able to easily access separately.
It also allows them to raise funds — and their profile — in the Sewickley area.
“Most of the community believes that we own the building in the first place. … So the messaging was muddled,” Brondyke said.
Owning the building would also allow Sweetwater to leverage the personnel and expertise at their disposal to more successfully raise funds for both programming and maintenance of the building.
“They would basically go out and say, ‘We are a historic building that needs ADA upgrades.’ What Sweetwater can do is is say the same thing, but we can say, ‘There are X amount of programs that are being produced in the building. This is why accessibility matters.’ ”
In 2023, Brondyke was able to secure some state funding for the elevator project, with assistance from Rep. Valerie Gaydos (R-Allegheny). OSPOC hadn’t been granted state funding for capital improvements in many years, and it was this, Brondyke said, that started to build confidence and trust between the board and Sweetwater. In addition, Sweetwater launched a successful capital campaign and endowment campaign that fall.
“It seemed as if it was time, at this point, to consolidate, so to speak. Which means that, since Sweetwater was already operating as the entity that that was seeking this kind of funding that they should simply do it. … It seemed like it was time to pass the baton,” Sour said.
The process of dissolving OSPOC began towards the beginning of 2025, and according to Sour, it took about 15 months to get to the point where both OSPOC and Sweetwater’s boards would get to approve the deed transfer and the gift agreement of funds from OSPOC to Sweetwater.
There were also negotiations that needed to be hashed out between the two entities, mostly about the gift agreement and its terms.
Most of the disputes were over the timeline on which the gifted money from OSPOC could be used by Sweetwater. The gift agreement was approved by both boards in November.
“The did a fantastic thing for the community. So they went in really hard and we went in really hard and it took over a year for us to come together and meet in the middle. I give a lot of credit to Susan for that,” Brondyke said.
Then OSPOC had to deal with hurdles from the state in order to dissolve, and federal red tape to ensure that the building would continue to be owned by a nonprofit as part of the National Registrar of Historic Places.
Sour emphasized that she doesn’t deserve sole credit for the success of the initiative for OSPOC to dissolve and for Sweetwater to take over the building.
“I am grateful for the volunteer service of our devoted board members through the years, and especially for the commitment made by our steering committee — Larry Rice, Margie Gilfillan, Joe Zemba and Alice Snyder — during this extensive transitional process.”
Brondyke expects everything to be finalized by mid-May. As a part of the Allegheny Regional Asset District, Sweetwater will be holding a RAD Pass Open House on April 19 where they intend to launch their next chapter — which will include a three-phase master plan to renovate and improve the building while preserving it.
“We’re going to announce it with schematic designs in the foyer … for everyone to see,” Brondyke said.
Along with the updates to the building, Sweetwater will also be updating their look with a full rebrand.
“We knew that we had to create a brand that embodied basically our strategic plan and what we want to do for the next 50 years,” Brondyke said.
They have engaged with a design an marketing firm to ensure this new brand will be as accessible, inclusive and community-oriented as possible.
“We reach so many different constituencies, from kindergarten readiness all the way up to the aging population and professional artists. So we had to come up with a brand that exemplified that,” Brondyke said.
O’Brien said that they may temporarily have lectures and other programming impacted by updates and renovations to the space.
“Our feeling is that this should be, in the long run, good,” he said.
As Sweetwater assumes the deed to the Old Sewickley Library and begins their next phase, Sour is sure that they are in good hands.
“We commend Christine Brondyke in her work as the executive director of Sweetwater. She’s doing a remarkable job in terms of moving Sweetwater and its programs forward, and we believe that she will continue to do the same in the best interests of the historic building,” she said.