North Huntingdon Township battling squatters parked on old restaurant property
After a three-year, drawn-out court battle to get the Rivertowne Pub in North Huntingdon condemned and demolished, the township is now dealing with apparent squatters living in a camper on the property.
According to neighbors, the camper trailer has been parked on the lot since before the old Rivertowne Pub along Route 30 was condemned and demolished last year.
KDKA-TV spoke via phone with Eric Gass, who is the township commissioner for Ward 7, where this blighted strip of land sits. He says this property has been a headache for years and the camper squatters are just the latest issues they have had.
"So we have issued a violation notice, we have given them 20 days to resolve everything," Gass said. "Those 20 days started about two or three days ago. And after that, we are going to issue a citation as we plan to abate or have them removed from the property."
Gass says the property is currently owned by an LLC that is largely absent from what has been going on, so dealing with this lot has fallen to the township.
He says the two big issues are public health and public safety.
These squatters are discarding tons of trash, and that trash attracts rodents and disease. And there is reason to believe that some of that trash may be being burned.
"You are only allowed to burn certain things on certain times on certain days in the township. There is an ordinance on that," said Gass. "So yeah, there is concern. And if we were going through a dry season, of course you'd be concerned about spillage of that fire, because it is very wooded and that could find itself to the businesses to the left, to the right, as well as the Dusty Rhodes trailer park."
The township hopes that this land will be cleared soon and the company that owns it will redevelop it.
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