North Huntingdon officials nix $30M sports complex that would have hosted Pittsburgh Riverhounds

A $30 million sports complex that was to include an indoor field operated by the Pittsburgh Riverhounds soccer team won’t be built on municipal property in North Huntingdon.

The township commissioners Thursday quashed the possibility of another round of talks on lease with developers NHT Investment Partners LLC, formed by township residents Josh Zugai and David Ponsonby.

Commissioners Fran Bevan, Tom Hempel, Rich Gray and Zachary Haigis voted to end the talks with the developers, while Jason Atwood and Ron Zona opposed the move.

The resolution also prevents any future discussions on the disposition of public property without a prior public vote by the commissioners.

The decision was met with applause from an audience of about 50 people, several of whom again voiced their objections to the project because of concerns about traffic and noise in their neighborhood.

Neither Ponsonby nor Zugai attended the meeting. They could not be reached for comment. Matt Grubba, spokesman for the Riverhounds, declined to comment.

The resolution prevents a repeat of the situation in which Zugai and Ponsonby talked with some of the commissioners about using roughly 40 acres of public works property off Route 30 for the sports complex. The plans for the sports complex with the Pittsburgh Riverhounds’s soccer academy were revealed to the public in May.

The developers discussed the project in an executive session with the commissioners after Shane Larkin, owner of a North Huntingdon youth sports league franchise, presented plans last year for a $10 million athletic complex at the same site.

The commissioners were scheduled to discuss a request by the developers to give them a 90-day period of exclusivity for negotiating a lease. The developers’ initial 120-day period granting them exclusive negotiation rights expired Sept. 15.

The commissioners previously planned to vote on the lease next week.

The resolution commissioners passed Thursday halts those plans.

“It’s unfortunate we can’t negotiate. We had to kill it before they (developers) had a chance to address those concerns” raised by the public, Atwood said. He doubted they would return to pursue their plans for the sports complex at that site.

The developers were considering putting a ban on building access roads to adjacent lands into the proposed lease, Zugai said last week.

Opponents living near the public works land wanted that assurance in writing.

Among the other objections to the tentative lease was the developers’ desire for a 29-year hold on the township land for just $1 a year, plus three 29-year options, also at $1 a year.

In theory, the developers and successors could have control of the property until 2140. The demand for a long-term lease remained in second and third versions of the document.

By canceling any negotiations on another version of the lease, Zona said the four-hour meeting last week to gather public input was a waste of time.

Gray, who pushed to end the negotiations, said the whole process was flawed. The developers approached them with a lease they wrote on their own terms.

North Huntingdon never voted to advertise that the land was available, Gray added.

“I think the process was backwards from the get-go,” Haigis said.

Commissioner Eric Gass, who missed the vote, said he would have opposed shutting off negotiations before the developers had a chance to present their latest version of the lease. If the township and developers could not come to an agreement with that new version, Gass said he would have supported ending the talks.

“We absolutely need it,” Gass said of a sports complex.

Until Thursday, Bevan declined to reveal whether she supported the proposed sports complex.

“It was a bad contract for the township,” Bevan said after the meeting.

Hempel maintained his position that the township should not be leasing public property to a private enterprise.

Related:

• Some opposed to proposed North Huntingdon sports complex
• North Huntingdon sports complex developers must revise lease
• Complaints mount against proposed North Huntingdon $30 million complex that would host Pittsburgh Riverhounds