Kokolatte’s Coffee Tea & Eatery is becoming a favorite East Liberty café. Located in the Medical Center East, the café specializes in balancing its culinary offerings between healthy fare and heartier favorites.

The focus at Kokolatte’s is fresh food and personalized service. All of the food is made to order. The café offers breakfast sandwiches, salads, cold sandwiches, paninis, wraps, snack foods and more.  Kokolatte’s is not afraid to take a risk adding something new and exciting to the menu. For this reason, Kokolatte is currently offering delicious barbeque from their patio grill. Customers love the beef hot dogs, Kielbasa, burgers and especially the jumbo wings!

The café also offers sweet treats, like jumbo chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies, pumpkin roll and banana-walnut bread (cold or grilled with vanilla ice cream and a caramel drizzle).

The café wouldn’t be a fan favorite without its signature drinks! They serve locally roasted coffee, espresso, cappuccino, lattes, fruit smoothies, iced coffee drinks and blended crèmes. Once customers come off the beaten path and try Kokolatte’s, they come back again and again.

The city finally has hit the bull’s-eye: Target is officially on its way to East Liberty.

Some seven years in the making, the city and developer Mosites Co. have closed on the financing for Target’s proposed East Liberty store, virtually guaranteeing its construction.

The retailer is expected to break ground on the 143,000-square-foot store — one of only a few Targets in the country with two levels — next month.

Construction will take about a year, with the opening scheduled for July 2011. A formal announcement is expected today.

Target will join Home Depot and Whole Foods Market as anchors in a bustling East Liberty commercial corridor that not too long ago was a poster child for inner city blight. Together, they “will change the shopping patterns of many city residents,” said Steven Mosites Jr., Mosites Co. president.

Rob Stephany, city Urban Redevelopment Authority executive director, sees the development as part of the “re-regionalizing” of East Liberty, once one of the largest commercial centers in the state.

“Home Depot, Whole Foods, the restaurants, they are already regional attractors and I think Target will amplify that posture even more,” he said.

Key components of the financing for the $46.8 million project include a $20 million loan from M&T Bank and $12.6 million equity investment by PNC facilitated by new markets tax credits.

Mark Minnerly, Mosites’ director of real estate development and a partner in the project, described the PNC investment as a “gap filler” that enabled the store to proceed.

The URA supplied $14.1 million for site development, including a $10 million U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development loan and a $2 million HUD grant.

Under the arrangement with Target, Mosites was responsible for securing the financing for the store. Target will be liable for the repayments through a 29-year lease.

The fact the developer was able to secure financing for a retail store in a challenging credit environment is a tribute both to Target and East Liberty, Mr. Mosites said. “All in all, I think [lenders] felt really good about Target’s credit and the location,” he said.

Completion of the financing marks a milestone in a journey that began 10 years ago when a master plan designated the five-acre site bordering Penn Avenue, Penn Circle and Broad Street for a department store.

Target became the “focus” of those efforts about seven years ago, Mr. Mosites said. He described the courting as “herculean” given the recession and the decision by Target to re-evaluate all new store openings.

“Getting Target to invest in East Liberty was an intense strategic effort that could not have happened without so many valuable partners who believe in the economic transformation of our city and of East Liberty,” Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said in a statement.

For the rest of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette Article click on the link:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10166/1065616-53.stm#ixzz0r3GDmCX7

 Please Join Councilman Bill Peduto  for a Community Meeting  on a New Mellon Park Master Plan

                     June 14th at 6:30pm
    Third Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh
                         5701 5th Avenue

The Community Technical Assistance Center (CTAC) is holding a free blockwatch training as a part of their Issues Series. The event is open to those currently involved in a blockwatch or other neighborhood safety organizations, as well as those interested in starting one.

The training will be held on Wednesday, June 9th from 6pm to 8pm at Saint John Vianney Parish, located at 823 Climax Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15210. For questions, please call CTAC at 412-231-2822.

The City of Pittsburgh Bureau of Police has developed a new tool for communicating with the public about safety issues. Using the Community Safety website, http://communitysafety.pittsburghpa.gov, police and City public safety officials are able to quickly and efficiently share information and announcements. Users can see contact information for the each of the city’ police zones, view zone maps and a list of block watch groups, and quickly navigate to zone-specific alerts. Individuals can subscribe to receive Community Safety Alerts specific to a police zone by visiting the website. Businesses can also sign up to receive alerts whenever there is a community safety issue that directly affects businesses in the city. Block watch groups can register on the site and receive alerts as well. Other site features include the weekly police blotter and a form for citizens to submit tips to police of potential crimes or safety concerns.

This summer, the Family Resources building on Commerce Street, across Centre Avenue from Whole Foods, will become the site of a new mural sponsored by Sprout Public Art. Local artist Brian Brown will paint the mural on the blank wall facing Penn Circle and you can be part of it.

Join Family Resources from 10:30 AM until noon on Saturday, June 12, 2010, to pose for a photograph. The artist will reference these images and will paint as many actual community members into the mural as he can. Participants will be required to sign a release. Family Resources will never release your name, and you will not be identified on the mural.

Portrait photographs will be taken in front of the Waffle Shop, at the corner of Baum Boulevard and South Highland Avenue in East Liberty. In the event of rain, photography will be taken inside the building.

For more information, call Andi Fischhoff, development director at Family Resources, 412-363-1702, ext. 1168.