Mellon family descendent will buy North East's Granite Ridge, create facility for veterans
NORTH EAST — A descendant of Thomas Mellon and an heir to the Mellon family fortune, will buy the bulk of the historic Granite Ridge campus and convert it into a veterans' wellness and outreach center.
M. Richard Mellon, a former Erie resident, and his wife Melanie, who continue to own a home on Columbia Circle in Erie, have put a $2 million down payment on the campus's historic buildings and newer facilities. Mellon, speaking from his home in Naples, Fla. Thursday, said the total sales price in more than $3.3 million.
Erie News Now first reported that the couple were buying the property through the Mellon Heritage Foundation, which is based in Naples.
On Sunday, the Erie Times-News first reported that Brick & Mortar Property Management had purchased the townhomes and apartments on the property for $4 million. Brick & Mortar Property Management is owned by North East native Jason Pero and his wife, Nadia Shabanza-Pero.
If all goes as planned and Mellon closes on the purchase of the remainder of the property, it will mark the end of the brief ownership of the property by Ehrenfeld Cos. of Baltimore, which had bought the former satellite college campus of Mercyhurst North East in January 2022 for $4.5 million.
Mellon, 77, has already reached out to Erie County Department of Veterans Affairs Director Joe Benacci, state Reps. Ryan Bizzarro and Jake Banta, state Sen. Dan Laughlin, U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly and the office of U.S. Sen. John Fetterman to advise them of his plans.
Mellon said he's trying to fulfill a longtime dream to honor his father, Capt. Edward Mellon, and father-in-law, Pvt. William H. Knight.
Edward Mellon was a World War II pilot with what was then known as the Army Air Corps.
"He flew the 'Hump,' as it was called, taking supplies over to India to various war zones," Mellon said. "He then came back to the United States. He became a flight instructor. He instructed beginning pilots. My father taught me how to fly at the age of 14."
Mellon followed in his father's footsteps and enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. He served three-and-a-half years before receiving an honorable discharge with the rank of 1st Lieutenant.
Mellon, a Pittsburgh native who lived in Erie for a time, said he wants to work hand-in-hand with the Erie Veterans Affairs Medical Center to provide programs and services for local veterans.
"I want our veterans coming home who aren't afforded the proper opportunity to rehabilitate, to meet with other veterans on friendly grounds, to carry on the tradition that my father taught me to carry on. I get emotional, excuse me," Mellon said before pausing to cry briefly. "That's mainly why I'm doing it. My wife's father was in the World War II veteran. He was in the Army, and he got hit by a sniper. He was very badly disabled for the rest of his life. The way he approached life after his disability shows you that that generation was incredible. They were Americans."
'Our dream is coming true'
Mellon hopes to close on the sale in the next 30 days. He plans to tour the property at the end of the month. An Erie friend, Gary Miles, told Mellon the property was for sale.
"When my wife and I found out that they were accepting our offer, both of us were in shock," he said. "Our dream is coming true."
Mellon will seek input from local VA officials and other officials as he develops his plan for the wellness and outreach center."What a wonderful opportunity for the VA to have another facility at no cost to them," he said. "I'm not asking for any money either, by the way.
"All I'm asking for is the ability to help veterans. I want that to happen. I want the veterans to have a place where they can congregate, have meetings."
He plans to solicit help from area pastors of all religious denominations to offer prayer and other religious services at the historic chapel.
"I want veterans to come to a place where their dedication to our country is paramount," he said. "I want my father and my mother to look down from wherever they are and say thank you.
"God has been incredibly good to me, and with my parents' help and with conservative approaches, my wife and I are able to sustain this," he said. "For $3.3 million, I'm buying a dream and I'm buying a memorial to my dad and to my mom. You can't put a price tag on that."
No stranger to Erie
In 1977, Mellon, moved to Erie and joined the law firm of Chase, Bifulco, Waidley and Mellon. He lived on Seminole Drive in the Frontier Park neighborhood.
He raised two of his five children here, including his daughter Hallie, who he took directly from Hamot Hospital after her birth onto Lake Erie in his boat.
"Hallie broke every record at the Erie Yacht Club," he joked.
In Erie, Mellon was a faculty member and lecturer at Gannon and Mercyhurst colleges.
He left Erie and returned to Pittsburgh to care for his aging parents. There, he continued to practice law. Mellon and his wife retired in Naples in the '90s.
A 2016 profile of Mellon in his hometown paper, the Naples Daily News, described him as living a modest lifestyle despite being among 200 descendants to inherit the Mellon family fortune, which in 2020 was valued at $11.5 billion by Forbes.
In the same profile, Mellon said he planned to donate at least $20 million to charity, but that he "isn’t telling his children how much he’s leaving them, believing that oversized trust funds rob future generations of motivation."
“My father was a reluctant millionaire,” Mellon told the Naples Daily News at the time. “So am I.”
Mellon is the CEO of Mellon Philanthropic and the Mellon Heritage Foundation. He's involved in several civic groups in Naples.
In 2017, Mellon received the prestigious Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award from the Federal Aviation Administration, according to the publication, which is part of the USA TODAY Network. The award recognized Mellon's more than 50 years of flying.
Matthew Rink can be reached at mrink@timesnews.com.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Buyer to transform North East's Granite Ridge into facility for veterans
