Morning Call's Catch-Up

The Morning Call's feature story on the potential over supply of hotel rooms is nothing new to my regular readers. This blog has often said that the new arena hotel will reduce the Holiday Inn to a flop house, and be another nail in the coffin of the Americus, shown here in better days. According to the article, the Holiday is operating at about 38% occupancy. To think that the arena will sprout enough activity to support two hotels, much less three, is a pipe dream only possible with taxpayer dollars. I believe that if the Americus is to have a future, it will be as apartments. I also believe that ownership will be wrestled away from the current owner, before NIZ financing would be bestowed upon a favored developer for that conversion. Last, but not least, a revelation about my recent editorial in the paper. It was modified by the Morning Call staff to spare a City Council member my frank evaluation. I have inserted the unedited version with the previous post announcing the editorial.

Good News For Joe Paterno Fans

If the memory of Allentown, Pennsylvania is any indication, in about 30 years, the name of Joe Paterno should return to Beaver Stadium with full respect. Back in the 1940's, Allentown was the powerhouse of high school sports. It's football team compiled a record of 60-3-3. In basketball, between 1945-1947 they won 60 straight games, and both sports were coached by one man, J. Birney Crum. Over 20,000 fans would pack the Friday night football blowouts. Allentown set out to build the biggest, most elaborate high school football stadium in Pennsylvania. However, when the stadium was completed in 1948, Allentown High School was under suspension by the PIAA, for using 21 and 22 year old ringers on it's basketball and football teams. Information about this unfortunate misunderstanding is now hard to come by. Birney Crum's image has been completely restored. In 1982, they renamed the stadium after him. From the current school district website: Crum was much more than a demanding, hard-driving coach. He was also a soft, kind-hearted man who took care of the people in his AHS program. Crum recruited boys to go back to high school to finish their education. It doesn't mention that he recruited them back to play football and basketball again, until he got caught. Time is kind to former coaches. Birney even married one of the former cheerleaders, after she graduated. Expect to see Joe Paterno's statue back in 2042.

Forrest Gump card courtesy of Bob Lemke

City Council's Waterloo

An Editorial in The Morning Call, click on Photograph City Council's Waterloo: In the past year Mayor Pawlowski has ushered two major agendas through City Council with long term obligations, the Arena Project and the Trash To Energy contract. Both projects were controversial, had opponents, but didn't demonstrate that City Council can assert itself as an independently minded body of city government. Although both those projects involved enormous sums of money and outside interests, the mayor is once again at the door of City Council, with yet another monumental project. His newest plan, to lease the water and sewer systems for 50 years, will have unprecedented consequences. Three generations of Allentonians will experience both rate increases, and likely, less responsive service. Although Pawlowski can summon a few supporters to endorse his plan, opposition is widespread, from practically everybody who has a water meter in their basement. The plan would transfer some city workers to a private company, and result in disruptive bumping and reorganization of both street and park workers. If City Council cannot protect such a primary municipal service as water, existing since 1905, for whom do they serve? If City Council yet once again accommodates the mayor, their complicity this time will have repercussions. Each new increased water bill will remind the voters of this betrayal. For a primarily young City Council, with political ambitions of their own, they will gamble their future career with this vote. One Councilman, Michael Schlossberg, who is going to Harrisburg unopposed as a State Representative, is resigning early from Council to evade this damaging baggage. Another, Peter Schweyer, also wanted to run for State Representative, but was sidelined by the district mapping controversy. Supposedly, both Schweyer and Guridy would also like to run for Mayor in the future. A "Yes" vote on the water scheme could well be their Waterloo. The water bill will remind the voters, four times each year, for the next 50 years, that City Council elected to be nothing more than a rubber stamp.

2nd and Hamilton

Up to the mid 1960's, before Allentown started tinkering with urban redevelopment, lower Hamilton Street still teemed with businesses. The City had grown from the river west, and lower Hamilton Street was a vibrant area. Two train stations and several rail lines crossed the busy thoroughfare. Front, Ridge and Second were major streets in the first half of the twentieth century. My grandparents settled on the 600 block of 2nd Street in 1895, along with other Jewish immigrants from Russia and Lithuania. As a boy, I worked at my father's meat market on Union Street. I would have lunch at a diner, just out of view in the photo above. The diner was across from the A&P, set back from the people shown on the corner. A&P featured bags of ground to order 8 O'Clock coffee, the Starbucks of it's day.
please click on photo

reprinted from November 2011

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No Firewater For Allentown Injuns

Center City residents in Allentown must frequent the State Store at 1918 Allen Street for their nearest firewater. Although Hamilton Street and center city has umpteen vacancies for many years, and our Allentown and Harrisburg officials cooperate to bring the Injuns hockey, no state firewater stores are provided in city center. Local West End Theater District residents have grown accustomed to double parking, and cars blocking Allen Street, as they wait to enter the small parking lot next to the busy state store. Deeper West End residents have a choice of state stores at Crest Plaza, K-Mart Plaza and the Shops at Cedar Point, but then again, they don't have a problem with firewater.