Pittsburgh police responded around 11:30 a.m. Thursday to Heinz Lofts in Troy Hill after the building's management reported possible criminal trespass or forcible entry at a maintenance room. Dispatchers described evidence that people had come underground from a neighboring abandoned building.
Friday's account from CBS Pittsburgh set that call against a worry residents had already been describing. Public Safety officials told WPXI the person or persons were attempting to steal electricity. The city says the private owner had not secured the vacant building and was filing a criminal complaint with a magistrate.
The Grate and the Cords
A 911 dispatcher referred to the incident as tunneling from the neighboring building. CBS Pittsburgh reported that dispatchers described extension cords connected with the alleged tunneling, and that people appeared to be running electricity from the maintenance room into the abandoned building. The reported route was a boiler grate, lifted so the maintenance room could be reached from underground.
Public Safety officials told WPXI the same physical move and attached a purpose to it: an attempt to steal electricity. A week or two earlier, an area worker told KDKA he had seen men stealing copper wire from electrical panels, an account CBS Pittsburgh also carried. That was a different day and a different claim. Wire leaving a panel is not the same thing as a cord run out of a maintenance room.
What Residents Had Been Hearing
Sarah Scruppi has lived at Heinz Lofts nearly seven years. She told CBS Pittsburgh that children, graffiti artists, and homeless people enter and leave the abandoned building. Over the summer she heard banging on pipes and sounds of explosions or fireworks coming from it. Residents, she said, do not want to live in a complex that is unsafe or unsecured, especially in the evenings.
Maura Milligan put the pattern to WPXI in one line. "It's been a pretty frequent problem with people getting in and out there," she said. She found the situation unnerving.
Clay Bovalina has lived at the lofts about three months. He said the situation was concerning and that he hoped it would be stopped. He also said he did not know what people entering the building intended. Public Safety's account of Thursday is narrower than that. It describes an attempt to take electricity, not a motive for everyone Scruppi has watched come and go.
Third Notice, Then a Magistrate
Pittsburgh's Department of Permits, Licenses, and Inspections condemned the neighboring building in August. Occupants are not allowed in. A city spokesperson told CBS Pittsburgh the owner had not secured the property anyway, and that it had received its third and final violation notice. The city was filing a criminal complaint against that owner with a magistrate.
By Thursday the condemnation was three months old. The spokesperson's account was that the building still had not been secured. A private owner holds it. The complaint the city described runs against that owner, not against a named person from Thursday's call.
Each Day After Notice
The clock is part of the rule in Pittsburgh's adopted property-maintenance code. Each day a violation continues after due notice is served is a separate offense. Failure to comply with a notice of violation may be treated as a summary offense.
For a property already on notice, leaving the problem in place does not freeze it as one old ticket. The days can stack. A third and final notice is what the city said this building had already been given, and a magistrate is where the city said the complaint was headed.
A Little Overblown
Heinz Lofts declined to press charges, according to police in the CBS Pittsburgh report. Management told WPXI it had no comment and called the issue "a little overblown."
The residents' timeline runs past one Thursday morning. Scruppi described summer noise from the vacant building, after nearly seven years next to it. Milligan called the traffic frequent. Bovalina, three months in, already wanted it stopped. Management can wave off the maintenance-room report. The city's description of the building beside the lofts was blunter: condemned in August, noticed for a third and final time, and still not secured.
The step the city named is that criminal complaint before a magistrate, against the private owner. Residents are still next to the building the notice was about.
