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Blair County Planning Commission members positively review projects

Blair County Planning Commission members Thursday gave a positive review to two development projects. The commission approved Mouseion LLC’s plans to turn the former Altoona YMCA into an art museum. In February, an Australia native who lives in London announced he had purchased the 900 Lexington Ave. building so he can turn it into the Eidolon Museum of Fantasy and Imaginative Art, using his own 15,000-piece collection to form the core of the museum’s holdings. In addition to the conversion renovation of the building, the applicant is proposing to construct an approximately ...

Area: New inmate care provider starting

HOLLIDAYSBURG The Florida-based company selected to take over inmate medical care at the Blair County Prison is scheduled to start Saturday, commissioners Dave Kessling and Laura Burke said Thursday. Commissioners voted July 9 in favor of awarding a three-year contract to Armor Health at the first-year price of $3.73 million. Armor was selected to succeed PrimeCare Medical, a Harrisburg-based company that started providing the prison’s medical care in 2005. Kessling and Burke said they understood that the efforts to make the transition from PrimeCare to Armor had progressed, but ...

Blair County Planning Commission approves budget

Blair County Planning Commission members Thursday approved their budget for 2026-27, retroactive to July 1. The budget calls for revenues and expenditures of $628,754. It calls for a 3% pay raise for each of the commission’s four full-time employees and includes a 12% increase in healthcare coverage. No change was made to the development review fees. Commission members also approved letters of support for four projects, all of which are seeking assistance from the Pennsylvania DCED Multimodal Transportation Fund. The City of Altoona is seeking $960,227.86 for the Seventh Street ...

Out with the old: Altoona planning to remove parking meters downtown

The Altoona Parking Authority plans to remove the city’s parking meters once signs indicating the designated enforcement for specific areas are available to be posted. The proposal to yank the meters came from parking operations manager Dave Curtis during Tuesday’s authority board ...

Down but not out: Camp Anderson seeks help after tornado damage

TYRONE — If you drive by Camp Anderson in Snyder Township, you wouldn’t immediately realize the camp was hit by a low-category tornado a couple weeks ago. There’s about 30 youth and close to 20 adults occupying the camp this week, with the kids having fun and completing various ...

UPMC assault suspect found guilty

HOLLIDAYSBURG — The Tyrone man who left a UPMC Altoona ER technician with a fractured skull and brain bleed was convicted on all charges following the conclusion of his two-day trial Wednesday morning. A jury of four women and seven men deliberated about 20 minutes before finding Bradley ...