The historic nomination of a shuttered gay bar in Polish Hill is headed to Pittsburgh City Council after a public hearing Thursday.
If council approves, Donny's Place would become Western Pennsylvania's first official LGBTQ historic site.
However, the designation faces an uphill battle. Opponents — including the estate of the property's late owner — dominated Thursday's hearing, the latest round in what's been a contentious process. And historic nominations opposed by a property owner can be approved only by a supermajority of six out of nine councilors.
The bar, which operated on Herron Avenue from 1973 to 2022, was nominated for historic status in October by two neighborhood residents who said it was a key site of local LGBTQ culture.
Opponents contend nominators are primarily interested in halting a proposed housing development on the site and some 30 adjacent parcels. And they argue the building is not worthy of historic designation in any case.
"It's not representative of the [LGBTQ] community," said Martin Healey, executive director of the PERSAD Center. "I think when you look around at Donny's Place it represents one piece of the community at best. And it's blighted. I don't think as a gay man, who's been supportive of the community for the many years that I have been, I want Donny's place to be what represents our community for the history books."
Longtime activist Billy Hileman said in the context of other prominent and long-running gay nightspots, Donny's was not remarkable enough to be considered historic.
"There's nothing outstanding about Donny's Place that would set it aside or above the others," he said.
Of the 15 speakers who addressed the hearing either in person or via video link, 12 opposed the nomination. Supporters included Lizzie Anderson, who filed the nomination along with Matt Cotter. But even Anderson said, "We are not pushing for this nomination to succeed today" but rather said she was emphasizing the importance of preserving queer history in Pittsburgh in general.
Melissa McSwigan, of Preservation Pittsburgh, a group that was an early supporter of the nomination, acknowledged the process is "complicated" because of the owner's opposition. But McSwigan called for council to move to save sites of local LGBTQ history "before all is lost and forgotten." She suggested that portions of the Donny's building, such as its façade, might be preserved as a monument.
The meeting was attended by just two city councilors, Deb Gross, whose district includes the Donny's site, and Bob Charland.
Other speakers opposing the nomination included Thomas Yargo, the executor of Thinnes' estate; Jonathan Kamin, a prominent real-estate attorney who represents both Thinnes' estate and Laurel Communities, the developer behind the housing proposal; Scott Noxon, who managed Donny's during its final years; Chuck Honse, a former co-owner of multiple LGBTQ bars; and Amy Zaiss of the group Pro-Housing Pittsburgh.
The nomination process has already proved an unusual one, with the city's Historic Review Commission issuing a rare (and possibly unprecedented) "no decision" vote, and the Planning Commission recommending against designation.
As they had at those meetings, many opponents of designation mentioned the poor condition of the building, which suffered a damaging interior fire about two months after its nomination.
But a building's physical condition is, by law, not a factor in historic designation. And other prominent buildings in poor shape have been designated historic by the city, including Homewood's National Negro Opera House, in 2008, and Uptown's Tito House, in 2022.
Rather to be designated historic, a structure must meet one of 10 criteria enumerated in the city code. In the case of Donny's, the nominators have not cited things like its architectural significance but rather "identification with a person or persons who significantly contributed to the cultural, historic, architectural, archaeological, or related aspect of the development" of the city or region, or "[i]ts association with important cultural or social aspects or events in the history" of the city or region.
At Thursday's hearing, several opponents, including Hileman, asserted that Donny's did not meet any of the 10 criteria.
But nominators said Thinnes' community-building work in an era when much gay life was pushed underground made him historically significant. And at the hearing, even Hileman said, "Donny Thinnes has a place in that community that is unique because of who he was and what he did." Thinnes, he added, "made a place for other people to have a safe place."
But Hileman, like other opponents, said the historic-nomination process — which has temporarily halted plans to demolish the building — stole the wealth of Thinnes' estate.
Several speakers, in fact, said that Thinnes died "penniless." Some of them conflated delays caused by the nomination with prior neighborhood efforts to stop the development.
In the 2010s, Thinnes had signed an agreement with Laurel Communities to build 30 townhouses on three acres above the Herron Avenue busway stop he had painstakingly acquired over the years. The plan, announced in 2019, drew immediate community opposition, and was the subject of a lawsuit filed by the Polish Hill Civic Association against Laurel Communities and the city's Zoning Board. Neighbors have objected to Laurel Communities' proposal over concerns including gentrification, infrastructure and the safety of the steep hillsides on the property.
Those efforts did delay the project, which was later revised to include just 19 townhouses — one fewer than the number at which the developer would be required to make 10% of the units affordable. But Thinnes died in January 2024, nine months before the historic nomination was filed.
At hearing's end Thursday, Councilor Gross said she planned to add consideration of the nomination to next week's city council agenda.
Gross, who has previously spoken in support of the nomination, did not express her opinion Thursday. But Councilor Charland said he would oppose the nomination because the estate did.
"I see this as a weaponization of the Historic Review Commission," he said.
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