Meeting set for Giant Eagle liquor license

The Seven Fields council will hold a public meeting to discuss the prospect of Giant Eagle obtaining a liquor license to sell six-packs of beer and malt beverages from inside the supermarket. The chain has also applied for liquor licenses at six other locations around Pittsburgh. More from the Post-Gazette and KDKA.

Giant Eagle has entered into an agreement to purchase a liquor license, but Seven Fields is required to hold hearing to allow residents to voice their opinions on the issue.

The public hearing will be held at 6 p.m. July 13 in the Seven Fields borough building.

The Seven Fields' Giant Eagle currently has a wine and liquor store adjacent to the grocery store.

The Adams pole dancing incident

It's all over the national news now, but it's worth mentioning. Here's the details from this article, as well as the video that's currently front page news on CNN.

A woman has sued a town that refused to allow her to open a dance studio that featured pole-dancing exercise classes on the grounds it was a sexually oriented business.

Adams Township officials violated Stephanie Babines' right to free expression by denying her an occupancy permit, the American Civil Liberties Union claims in a federal lawsuit filed Thursday in Pittsburgh.

Although Babines' classes include pole-dancing, power lap dance, strip tease and "SeXXXercise," they are all taught and performed fully clothed, the lawsuit states. Men can't take the classes, and no spectators are allowed.

"This is not a strip joint or gentleman's club," Babines said in a statement.

Read more here on the studio's official website.

Super Suppers closing

Cranberry's Super Suppers location will be closing at the end of the month. The business sent out the following email to clients in the area. Super Suppers is a service that lets you prepare home-cooked meals ahead of time.

Due to circumstances beyond our Control, we will be closing our Cranberry Super Suppers Store on June 30.. This has been a very difficult decision--but one that had to be made!

My staff will be making a large variety of meals to use our canned goods and other ingredients so the Grab-n-Go Freezer will be full of delicious meals while supplies last!

June 17 thru 21 we will offer the monthly menu for pickup or make your own while supplies last for these items. - Noon til 6 PM. Saturday Noon til 4PM. Call if you wish to assemble your own meals so we are ready for you!

June 23 thru 30 - Grab N Go Only Noon til 4 pm or 6 PM while supplies last. Meals prices at $10 per Regular size. We may also have some kitchen tools and dry goods available to purchase during that week.

I have enjoyed working with each of you as customers and friends!

There are many other Super Supper Locations. Three close locations are Monroeville, Erie, and Boardman Ohio. In addition there is an Independent Meal Assembly business, Mary Lees Meals in Wexford by Soergel's that you can look into -- www.maryleesmeals.com

Beecher's burns down

Beecher's, the quaint gelato and coffee shop in downtown Zelienople, was a total loss after a massive fire last night. The Post-Gazette has more:

About a dozen fire departments from Allegheny, Beaver and Butler counties were called to the scene. But the fire, [Zelienople Police Chief Jim Miller] said, quickly spread next door to Beecher's Coffee Shop, a gourmet coffee shop whose owners had recently renovated the building top to bottom and added wireless Internet access for customers.

That building was destroyed, and the fire also caused smoke and water damage to the Hamilton law offices next door. Several firefighters also were trapped briefly when part of a roof collapsed.

The coffee shop, which served gelato and sandwiches and hosted live music, had been restored in the past three years to become "probably the best-looking place around," Chief Miller said.

A state police fire marshal was investigating. No damage estimates were available, but Chief Miller said the AAA building and the coffee shop were probably total losses.

Changes at local medical office

This information came from a Seven Fields' resident that wanted to get the word out on some changes with a local medical practice.

Just recently six doctors from Greater Pittsburgh Ob/Gyn at the 300 building of Northpointe Circle decided to break away from their affiliation with Mercy hospital and start their own practice affiliated with Western Pennsylvania Hospital. A large amount of the patients are also residents of Seven Fields and I'm concerned that people are not aware of the change. The doctors that are leaving are Dr. Christine Gallis, Dr. Christina Labella, Dr. Andrew Sword, Dr. Larry McNulty, Dr. John Mellinger, and Dr. Karen Roperti.

More to come, but for further information call 1-888-528-3824.

March 4 - Added information:
There's a temporary office until June at:
Two Landmark North
20397 Route 19
Cranberry Twp, PA 16066
(Next to Verizon Wireless Store)

After then, the permanent site will be:
Brush Creek Commons II
125 Emeryville Drive
Cranberry Twp, PA 16066
(Behind Bravo's and Kinko's)

The new office number is 724-772-5545.

Dick's Sporting Goods Sportsplex

Dick's Sporting Goods is going to put up $2.2 million for 11 years to put their name on new Cranberry park that will be built over the next two years.

More here (3rd item down):

The township hopes to begin building the park this spring and have the three football fields ready for the fall season, with baseball and soccer fields available in the spring of 2009.

Prizant's follow-up

Both the Post-Gazette and Tribune-Review have examined the Prizant's Flooring situation. The company suddenly closed its doors leaving many out in the cold who had paid down-payments for products they've yet to receive. Prizant's had a store in Cranberry.

Tribune-Review:

So far, 36 consumers from Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Indiana and Washington counties and East Liverpool, Ohio, have contacted the [attorney general], spokesman Nils Frederiksen said, adding the office doesn't discuss investigations unless criminal complaints are filed.

The Better Business Bureau, meanwhile, has logged 37 complaints in the last 10 days or so against the chain, President Warren T. King Jr. said. The bureau, which listed an "unsatisfactory" rating for Prizant's, now notes on its Web site that mail sent to Prizant's is being returned, and the bureau can't reach the company by phone.

Post-Gazette:

Molyneaux flooring, another Pittsburgh chain, has offered former Prizant's customers discounts if they made a deposit but never received carpeting, so long as they have proof such as a canceled check or deposit receipt. That offer expires Jan. 15, said owner Pat Molyneaux.

But those discounts, up to one-third of the full Prizant's order, still won't satisfy the customers who paid more than one-third; these customers want to know Prizant's next move. (Neither Prizant's nor Sweetwater Investors has filed for federal bankruptcy protection, according to court filings, and it's unclear if they intend to do so. )

Mr. Scioscia called the Post-Gazette to say Prizant's would be making an announcement this week regarding how customers could get their money back, but so far, none has been forthcoming.

One hundred customers have contacted Molyneaux since Christmas. As many as two hundred former customers of Prizant's may have been affected. Prizant's website has been shut down.

Prizant's Carpet Shuts Down

The western PA carpet chain that had 10 locations in the region has suddenly closed its doors. This includes the location in Cranberry along Rt. 19. From the Tribune-Review:

Calls to the company's Penn Hills headquarters Monday weren't returned, and phones at most stores weren't answered.

Brian Paul, ex-manager of the Pleasant Hills store, said company representatives told him at 4 p.m. Thursday to close immediately, and that the remaining Prizant's sites were ceasing business.

"It totally caught us by surprise," Paul, reached at home, said yesterday.

Stores in Butler, Cranberry, Lower Burrell, Penn Hills and Peters closed 2 1/2 weeks ago, he said, but, "We were under the assumption that they were going to try to run with five stores and cut costs," possibly with smaller spaces.

As of today, Prizant's website is still up.

Snap Fitness

The Pittsburgh Business Times has some info about Snap Fitness, a new gym that will be coming in Cranberry soon.

Snap Fitness, a 24-hour fitness franchise, has committed to its first locations in the region.

After opening its first location in Harrison in Westmoreland County two months ago, Snap has signed agreements to open three more.

Jared Imperatore, a retail manager for Grant Street Associates who represents Snap, said franchisees have signed on to open locations in Greensburg, Verona and Cranberry. He estimated the health clubs would open within 60 days of reaching final lease agreements.

Open 24 hours with key-card access, Snap Fitness offers a no-frills, lower-priced health club with free weights, weight machines, a cardio center and elliptical equipment. Snap doesn't have swimming pools, basketball or racquetball courts, child care, juice bars or aerobics classes.

A single membership will be less than $35 a month and family memberships will cost $48.95 a month with no contract, Imperatore said.

According to their website, the new Snap Fitness location in Cranberry will be at the intersection of Rt. 19 and Freedom Road.

Allegheny's Drink Tax

Earlier this week, Allegheny County passed its new budget that included, among other things, a new 10% poured alcohol drink tax. The restaurateurs pledge to fight it, and it didn't take long for its impact to be projected. The Tribune-Review today noted some of the possible effects of this tax.

The populations of towns near the border of Allegheny County -- communities like Cranberry in Butler County or Peters in Washington County -- have surged in recent years as businesses sprawl farther from Downtown.

A partner in the P.F. Chang's China Bistro at The Waterfront told officials he likely wouldn't consider a new location in the county. Another business owner compared the county's population -- which Census figures show has dropped 8.5 percent since 1990 -- to Cranberry's, which nearly doubled during the same period.

"Why?" asked John Graf, who owns The Priory, a North Side hotel. "Lower taxes, easier to deal with government, easier to start a business -- simple as that."

Westinghouse's new site just got bigger

Even though Westinghouse isn't planning to move into their new Cranberry offices until 2009, they've already expanded. Business is growing, and with it is an increase in staff. Some highlights from two articles today:

Post-Gazette:

The nuclear power plant company recently made the decision to add 140,000 square feet to the three-building complex now under construction inside an office park near the intersection of Interstate 79 and Route 288. An extra floor will be built atop two of the three structures.

"Adding the additional floors gives us flexibility for the future," Westinghouse spokesman Vaughn Gilbert said in an e-mail. "Also, hiring is accelerating."

The addition of two floors bumps the size of the new campus above 920,000 square feet. To put that in perspective, the Westinghouse square footage now will be larger than all but four of Downtown's biggest office towers (the U.S. Steel Tower, One Mellon Center, One Oxford Centre and 525 William Penn Place).

Tribune-Review:

We will move about 2,400 to 2,600 people from our current headquarters in Monroeville and our facilities in Churchill and then expect to hire a minimum of 1,000 people at that facility," Gilbert said.

That's in contrast to about 2,000 existing employees and an additional 1,000 when Westinghouse announced its choice of the Cranberry site in March.

"There's a potential for even more (hiring) down the road if business continues to grow at the speed it is," Gilbert said. "We also have an option to build a fourth building out there."

As reported by the Tribune-Review last month, the company already hired 850 employees in the fiscal year ended March 31, and projected it may hire another 1,300 in the current year.

Armstrong Cable expands HD listings

For those of you with Armstrong Cable's HD service, you may have noticed like I did that there's a few more channels. In addition to the ones listed on their website, they've since added the following channels:

• 124 The Discovery Channel HD


• 126 The Learning Channel HD


• 127 The Science Channel HD


• 128 Animal Planet HD


• 130 History Channel HD

Besides the History Channel, the others are all part of the Discovery networks. It's nice to see them expand the basic HD lineup and try to catch up with other services (like DirecTV) that offer a much larger selection of HD channels. Armstrong also recently added ESPN2 HD to its "Advantage" block.

I'm curious why Armstrong doesn't publicize their HD channel additions. I haven't seen any mention of these channels and they still aren't on their channel lineup. For people like me that are considering switching services, some advance notice of these types of lineup changes could sway me one way or another.

Stone Pepper's Grill

Identified a while back as some sort of mystery store in the Shoppes at Adams Ridge was something called Stone Peppers. The mystery has been solved. Stone Pepper's Grill is a new restaurant that will be opening Winter 2008, according to their new website. The site includes this description:

The concept will be based on quality food at affordable prices, utilizing distinct dining and bar areas as well as outdoor seating. StonePepper’s Grill’s primary food platform will be premium pizza and pasta, gourmet burgers, and unique high quality salads. We will incorporate a brick oven and exhibition steam kettles into our cooking style.

We look forward to providing more exciting information as we get closer to the anticipated opening dates in Winter of 2008.

Our two new locations are Rt 19 South, Upper St. Clair, PA and SR 228 & Adams Ridge, Adams Township, PA

Geeks arrive

1-800-905-GEEK has opened its first of 15 franchises in the area. From Pop City:

Formerly known as Geeks on Call, the company recently changed the name to its phone number to help it emerge from “a sea of sameness,” other technicians using the "geek" word to bring in business, explains Matt Nelson, spokesperson for the corporate office in Norfolk, Virginia.

Pittsburgh native Gary Motor, a 27-year computer industry veteran, purchased five of the 15 franchises available in the Pittsburgh area and has hired two technicians, a client service rep and a territory manager to start. He hopes to expand, adding more franchises in time.

The Pittsburgh operation will provide IT support to Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas, including Evans City, Zelienople, Cranberry Township, Mars, Seven Fields, Renfrew, Wexford, Warrendale, Bradfordwoods, Harmony, Mt. Oliver, Castle Shannon, Upper St. Clair, Baldwin, Mt. Lebanon, Dormont, Bethel, Scott and Bridgeville.