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The owner of Di's Kornerstone Diner vows to fight any attempt to evict her from the building she's rented for more than seven years.

"I think it's terrible what they're doing," Diane Elias said. "Here's McKeesport, which has hardly any businesses left, and they want to throw me out."

But city officials said they've tried to find Elias another location for her East End restaurant, a popular spot for breakfast and lunch. Elias didn't like any of the options, they said.

City council this week approved a request from Enon, Ohio-based Speedway LLC to build a 24-hour gasoline station and convenience store at the corner of East Fifth Avenue and Elm Street in the East End.

Speedway operates nearly 1,500 locations in Ohio, the Midwest and southern United States, including a station on Route 30 in Irwin. According to reports in Convenience Store News and the Tribune-Review, the chain is expanding its presence in Pennsylvania and in addition to McKeesport, is also considering new locations in Delmont Borough and Hempfield and Unity townships in Westmoreland County.

A division of Marathon Petroleum Corp., Speedway is the fourth-largest U.S. convenience store chain, according to the company's annual report.

Building the McKeesport store will require the demolition of the former Pizza Hut building that houses Elias' restaurant. She rents the property from Harry Stewart Jr. of Dayton, Armstrong County.

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"I was never a day late paying the rent," said Elias, who added that she paid for any improvements to the building herself. But Elias never had a long-term lease on the property. She said she tried to buy the property from Stewart, but her offer was turned down.

An attempt by the Almanac to reach Stewart by phone was not successful.

"The perception is that the city is doing this to her, and the city had nothing to do with it," Mayor Mike Cherepko said. "The owner worked out a deal to sell the property, and decided to sell."

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City officials, including Community Development Director Bethany Bauer, have taken Elias around McKeesport to look at other vacant properties, including the former Chiaverini's Restaurant in Christy Park and the old Ball Park Restaurant near McKeesport Area High School, Cherepko said.

Elias rejected all of their suggestions, he said. "It's unfortunate that she's losing this location," Cherepko said. "We don't want her business to be hindered."

Elias said the locations that city officials showed her would require too much investment or would take too long to improve. She's currently looking at a storefront on Lincoln Way in White Oak.

The pending sale of the property has already hurt her business, Elias said. Engineers hired by Speedway recently came and conducted core-sample drillings in the parking lot, within feet of the restaurant's door, disrupting her business, she said. "They're not very nice people," Elias said.

Cherepko said the city asked Speedway to limit work such as drilling to hours when Elias' diner isn't open to customers.

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The land where the proposed gas station will be built is at a red-light controlled intersection, in a commercial zoning district, and near a car wash and a Pennzoil quick lube.

Speedway's conditional use application was unanimously approved by the city planning commission on Oct. 22 and needed only ratification from council. Councilmen Rich Dellapenna Jr. and A.J. Tedesco Jr. voted against ratifying the planning commission's decision.

The city had no legal justification for rejecting the request, Cherepko said. "If we would have denied the conditional use request, we were opening ourselves up to legal action," he said. "All they would have done is appealed the decision, and they would have won."

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Before Di's Kornerstone Diner opened in 2004, several other independent restaurants had tried unsuccessfully to make a go of the former Pizza Hut. Elias was a waitress for one of the previous operators.

For Elias, a city resident who has decorated the inside of the restaurant with historic photos of McKeesport from the '50s and '60s, the pending loss of the business she's created is a bitter blow.

Speedway has told her they want her to vacate the property within two months and that they intend to break ground for the new store in March.

"I've got a lawyer, and I'm not going," she said. "I'm going to fight."

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