Spread The Word

From the current BikeAllentown Blog;

This is a wonderful opportunity for all of our organization's and our community, and we
would like to see everyone involved. Please inform your organization's members and
see how many would be interested in attending. All BikeAllentown members will be in
attendance that evening as well as providing refreshments for the event.

Your presence and support is also needed as we expect representation from factions who
are opposed to this plan.

Sort of reminds me of this past summer, Mrs. Pawlowski's letter to get supporters to City Council to support their Cedar Park Plans. Two full church congregations, totally ignorant of the issues, showed up in response. Outside pickets held signs against Racism and For Inclusion.

I must assume that many respondents to the Greenway survey were members of various Bike Clubs, networking from perhaps even out of state. I can tell you that most Allentonians know nothing of this plan. Some were informed in the last two days by the Morning Call letters by both Mr. Walker and myself. My assumption that most people saw the newsletter in their water bill was incorrect. Several had told me they never received such notice, others threw it away unread.

I think it's safe to say that this plan would be expensive to implement, have no economic benefit to the City and cater to a very small group of people. Although this has been the definition of most plans in Allentown, the time has come to end this absurdity. This plan has reached the point of being an insult to the legacy of the Allentown Park System.


Please join me this evening in wishing the Greenway Consultants a safe return to North Carolina, they have been well paid for their time.

The photo chosen here is courtesy of Send In The Clowns Blog, who also opines on this subject

Speak No Evil

The newsletter for the Trail Network Study, distributed with Allentown water bills, invited the public to provide input this Wednesday evening at the library. The insert says that we can talk with neighbors and project staff. An updated announcement in Sunday's paper says that the public will be able to view displays, hear a presentation and fill out comment forms. Todays paper features an editorial letter by Fritz Walker, founder of BikeAllentown, promoting the plan. Fritz claims that by paving all the existing trails, and adding 18 miles of more paved trails, we will; Improve life in Allentown, stimulate tourism and help restore economic vitality.

He writes, "Critics complain the city has spent money developing this plan. They would have us do nothing to invest in one of the city's greatest resources. If we listen to those voices, the result inevitable- the sluggish, dreary, unremitting decline of this city."

Fritz thinks that our park system is the foundation from which something truly special can be built.

Fritz, our park system is something truly special. We need to invest in maintaining those irreplaceable features, such as the WPA structures and the lakes, ponds and waterways. The last thing we need is more paved trails. Our park system was intended as a natural retreat for its citizens, not as an extended path for your bike.

See you this Wednesday, Jan. 13, 7:00pm, Allentown Public Library

Allentown's Business Barrio

I believe I attended my first Gateway meeting at St. Lukes Church in 1990. I know I was there in 1994, because I dragged someone along, and she has yet to forgive me. Gateway was a slogan Allentown City Planners gave 7th St. I must say in the early 90's, it certainly could use a coat of lipstick. I can't tell you how many $millions the City spent. First they put in new sidewalks, then tore them up to make part of the sidewalk brick. Then they tore that out and reconfigured the brick and cement. They planted and replanted numerous types of tree's. They commissioned architectural renderings, showing block by block, how the Gateway should look from Hamilton to Liberty Street. When I attended in 2005, the meeting was still identical to the previous ones, even moderated by the same city personnel.

Meanwhile, totally unconnected to this planning and spending, a Hispanic business district started developing further out in the 500, 600, and 700 blocks of Seventh Street. This occurred because rents were more reasonable, and parking more available than on Hamilton Street. Despite the 15 year planning failure by the City, the succeeding dynamic in place was the growing Hispanic Community, cultivating their own merchants. The City Planners were now anxious to "help" this area, which had helped itself. Fortunately, instead they started a Main Street Program and eventually hired the right person.



Peter Lewnes has been doing an excellent job of filling in the gaps on 7th Street, and applying facade grants in a seemingly appropriate way. On Saturdays one is hard pressed to find a parking space. I believe that his enthusiasm, and a growing community's ambition, has finally awakened 7th Street from a long sleep.

Reality In Short Supply

A new blog, Allentown Afterthoughts, reports that three more businesses have closed. I'm familiar with all three, having written about them before when Lanta stopped the transfer stops on Hamilton Street. En Vogue was a small women's store on 8th. They were double victims of City Hall and Lanta policy. A small public meter lot next to their business was taken away and given to the Allentown Brew Works for its private use; The Lanta transfer bus stop across from their store was closed. The closure of Quiznos and City Line Coffee are especially ironic. Both were housed in the CityLine Building, given both KOZ and outright grants and subsidies by Allentown. Apparently all of Pawlowski's men couldn't keep Humpty Dumpty together. Afterthoughts reports that an art gallery opened, but fails to disclose it's a temporary rent free donation by the landlord of a vacant storefront.

It will be easy forAllentown Afterthoughts to become just another city puff blog, of which there are now a dozen or so. But its owner, Jeff Pooley, a communications professor at Muhlenberg, who lives in center city, may decide to break that mold. He does disclose that his wife is Director of the Allentown Redevelopment Authority. A recent article in The Morning Call states that Emmaus has become a refuge for shops fleeing Allentown. It mentions that the customers of a Cuisine store, formally on 9th st. in Allentown, were afraid to come downtown, hence the move to Emmaus. The article then mentions the success of Main Street Program on Allentown's 7th Street. A viable Hispanic Business District has evolved there, but it's totally unrealistic to think that the Emmaus clientele would shop there. It's important to recognize that the previous statement is not intended to be classist or racist. Walmart and Brooks Brothers understand that they have different clientele. The manager of 7th St., Pete Lewnes, who is doing an excellent job, is quoted as saying that Hamilton Street needs a Main Street Program. In reality it simply needs its former customer base which Lanta took away when it removed the bus transfer stops. The Brew Works and CityLine, both on Hamilton Street, received much more money than any Main Street Program would provide.

I understand that public officials will never look to this blog for lessons on optimism, but until which time they inject their goals with some realism, the grants from our tax money will not receive much return on investment.

Velcome to Vendig and Allentown Photographic

In 1933, with the end of Prohibition, my grandparents(maternal) started operating the Vendig Hotel. They were the working partners, another immigrant family, here longer, were the silent backers. The hotel was directly across from the current Main Street Depot Restaurant in Bethlehem, which was the old New Jersey Line Terminal. With my grandmother cooking, they became well known for crab cakes and other shelled seafood. What wasn't known, was that she was strictly kosher, and never even tasted anything she prepared. As some may recall, my grandparents came from Hungarian Transylvania (now Romania) in the early 20's. Family lore says Bela Lugosi visited the hotel. Lugosi was born in the same area of then Hungary, and started his acting career playing Jesus in Passion Plays. In 1931, after immigrating to America years earlier, he got his big break playing Dracula. Typecast as a villain, Lugosi was reduced in later years to drug addiction and playing in low budget monster films. He died in the mid 50's and was buried in his Dracula cape.
My last uncle, who as a boy lived above the hotel, had no recollection of Lugosi. The partner families would later merge through marriage and 40 years later come to own the old vaudeville theater in South Bethlehem known as The Globe. It too is gone.

My experience with Allentown Photographic in the late 70's, at 12 N 8th Street, was not unlike my grandparent's with the Vendig Hotel. Neither were particularly successful, both only lasted a few years, but provided many memories. Now, Bela Lugosi never came into my shop, but my custom darkroom did attract numerous characters. I printed negatives supposedly smuggled out of Russia of the Romanov Family, while my strange anonymous customer watched by the door for KBG agents.(If they were real, I made no copies, nor did I keep the negatives) I once rented the darkroom to the local Porno King for his art directors to produce Puritan Magazine. His former building is now becoming the new Mayflower Condominiums. I snuck into a local high school to photograph an old circus juggler perform his act, one more time, on the stage. This photo gem, of a midget skating between legs, is from the jugglers' memento's.

posts combined and reprinted from July 2008

Lehigh Parkway Heritage Trail

On Sunday August 8, 1982, Ted Mellin, Senior Editor of Call Chronicle (The Morning Call), proudly wrote that Lehigh Parkway bridle path was designated Trail No. 689, a National Heritage Trail by the U.S. Department of Interior and the National Park Service. It was approved by the United States Congress and signed by the President of the United States March 28, 1982. Among the criterion which qualified the park and trail was the planning by General Trexler beginning in 1924. The area was developed and landscaped as a Parkway during the thirties as a W.P.A. project. J. Franklin Meehan of Philadelphia was the landscape architect for the project.

It should be an honor for any Park Director just to protect and maintain the nationally recognized treasures scattered throughout our diverse park system. Let us come together, at the Allentown Library on Wednesday January 13 at 7:00 p.m., and make sure our heritage is preserved, and not ignored at the expense of new fads and projects.