Former Donora personal care home could house international students
DONORA – Donora Planning Commission is considering allowing Kenric Manor, a former personal care home, to house international students for local colleges, such as Penn State Fayette and Westmoreland County Community College.
The planning commission is expected to make a recommendation at a meeting at 6 p.m. Friday – the third meeting on the matter. A meeting Tuesday was recessed until Friday to allow time to consider the proposal of Future iService LLC, which is based in New York.
Future iService purchased the facility from a subsidiary of Mon Valley Hospital at a private auction in August.
“Our client is in the business of housing aid-assisted, post-secondary education students,” explained attorney Todd Pappasergi, who is representing Future iService. “(The client) wants to be able to house international students in the area once renovations are complete at the former Kenric Manor.”
The planning commission serves as a recommendation agency to council. Council would have to give final approval to the request to use the property for student housing.
“We’re still deliberating,” said Dennis Gutierrez, chairman of the Donora Planning Commission. “We’re trying to analyze and do our due diligence.”
The area is zoned residential, but Kenric Manor was grandfathered in for use as a nursing home at that location.
“One of the permissible conditional uses is if a facility is an educational property which is going to be used for housing of students,” Pappasergi said. “My client needs to receive conditional use permission from planning commission and borough council to achieve what he wants with the property.”
That would be to have 30-35 students living at the property, the maximum allowed under the current zoning code. An agreement is already in place with Penn State Fayette and WCCC.
The borough’s zoning code also calls for a facility such as Kenric Manor to have 100 parking spaces.
Gutierrez admitted that parking in the area has been a major concern raised by residents.
“It’s a close neighborhood. Parking is somewhat limited and that’s a large concern with residents nearby the old Kenric Manor,” Gutierrez said.
Pappasergi does not see that it will be much of a concern since the students probably won’t have their own vehicles.
“The residents coming in will be international. They’re not going to have vehicles,” he said. “They’re going to be using a bus or van to go to the institutions they will be attending. We think the parking footprint will be very minimal.”
Pappasergi further explained that Future iService plans to invest $140,000 in the property in two $70,000 phases.
“Phase one would involve getting the property ready for 10 students to be able to live there,” he said. “Once that is successful, there would be another $70,000 invested for the full complement of 30 to 35 students.”
The building has been vacant since 2018, when it was shut down due to various health code violations.
In August 2018, the personal care home, known as Miller’s Corner Cottage at the time, was evacuated after it appeared the owner had abandoned the business. Only 13 residents remained at the home at the time, down from 66 just six months earlier. Also, employees of the facility at that time had reported that their paychecks had bounced.
This was a month after the home was notified by the State Department of Human Services that it needed to correct 55 violations that had been noted in an inspection earlier that year.
Pappasergi said there are many positives to getting the facility back on the tax rolls.
“To get an infusion of about 35 people going to school to get a higher education, getting youth into the community could be very beneficial to Donora,” Pappasergi said. “Donora doesn’t have a bank. It doesn’t have a grocery store. It needs population to bring those services back to the community. To be able to take a building that is in disrepair and get it back on the tax rolls and infuse that money back into the school district and the borough and bring educated and youthful students back into town, to me it’s a win-win for everybody. We hope the planning commission and council sees it the same way.”
Gutierrez said the matter will be given a thorough review.
“It would be good to see the building being used,” he said. “It seems like a good cause from the information we have thus far. We have a critical decision to make, especially council. We all want to do the right thing for Donora.”