Lawyer buys former Steelers player's estate where retreat center had been planned

A 133-acre Ligonier Township estate owned by a former Pittsburgh Steelers player who wanted to operate a retreat center for clergy and pastors was sold to a former Pittsburgh attorney who said this week he plans to use it as a personal home.

Antonio “Tony” and Amy Dias of Miami purchased the property on Hidden Meadows Lane from Vance and Kendi McDonald’s corporation, VanKen Management LLC of Baytown, Texas, for $3.76 million in November, according to the documents filed with the Westmoreland County Recorder of Deeds. VanKen Management provided a $3.2 million mortgage to the buyer, which is to be repaid with interest over 30 years, according to the mortgage document.

“We spent a little time there over the holidays and loved it. Ligonier is a great town” with great people, said Tony Dias, a Wilkinsburg native who is practicing law in Miami.

Dias said he had learned about the property being for sale from an online advertisement while traveling with his youngest son to Pittsburgh for a golf tournament. They drove to the site off Austraw Road, about 3.5 miles north of the Idlewild amusement park.

“It’s a beautiful piece of property,” Dias said.

McDonald, a tight end who joined the Steelers in the 2017 season and retired after the 2020 season, purchased the property through his management company in 2019 for $2.32 million, according to county records. The family had lived in the three-level 17,000-square-foot mansion with five bedrooms, multiple living and dining room spaces, a library, theater and gymnasium.

McDonald, through his Vance McDonald Foundation, had planned to operate a retreat center for clergy and pastors, but that did not happen. He had the property listed on the market in February 2023, initially for $5.5 million. The McDonalds had returned to Oklahoma, where Kendi McDonald had grown up, according to a February 2023 TribLive article.

McDonald had an agreement last year with the Pittsburgh Retreat, an organization that wanted to use the property as a center for people who want to recover from addiction. The sales agreement was contingent upon being able to change the property’s zoning to permit the center, Pittsburgh Retreat representatives said.

Last year, Dr. Karen Plavan, a member of the Pittsburgh Retreat leadership steering committee, told the township planning commission that the organization had raised about $1 million toward the purchase of the property and it was seeking investors. They envisioned treating 10 to 20 people at a time, with a maximum stay of 90 days.

The plans hit a snag because Ligonier Township was revising its zoning ordinance and had not developed a definition for a “retreat center,” where it was permitted and the conditions under which it could operate. Unable to get the zoning changed on the Hidden Meadows Lane property, the Pittsburgh Retreat said last summer its sales agreement had expired.

Several residents in that section of Ligonier Township raised objection to an increase in traffic and potential impact on the water supply in that area.

Ligonier Township has yet to finalize the new zoning ordinance, but Michael Strelic, township manager, said the retreat centers are proposed to be a permitted use on land that is zoned for highway commercial use or rural residential. The former McDonald property is zoned for agricultural use, Strelic said. Anyone wanting to operate in an area zoned for agriculture would need a variance or a zoning change.