Zooming In On Allentown's Past

Today, I assigned our aging staff photographer to document the demolition of the 1st. National Bank building. He only took two photographs, complaining that there was no water spray to control the dust. For a building supposedly encumbered with asbestos, one would think that the pedestrians of Allentown deserved better treatment, but of course the upscale people has yet to arrive. Regular readers have been hearing about Lehigh Structural Steel on this blog. If you click on and enlarge this lower closeup, you can clearly see Lehigh

Structural Steel Allentown stenciled on this main beam. Imagine a time when an Allentown centered bank used steel beams made in Allentown for it's headquarters in center square. We will be lucky if the beams used in the new building are made in the U.S.A.
UPDATE: A Morning Call video shows water being sprayed during the demolition. The spray person may have been on lunch break yesterday when I visited the site.

The Debate Performance

As a supporter of Mitt Romney, I'm pleased with my candidate this morning after last night's debate. I listened to the post event pundits declare Obama the evening's winner; And a fine recital it was. Although the Fact Checkers will argue if Obama's Middle East visit in 09 was an Apology Tour, he never did reach Israel. Has the perception of the United States improved in the last four years? This past weekend Egyptian President Morsi attended services in Cairo, where the cleric prayed that the Jews and their supporters are destroyed. When the words of both candidates last evening are analyzed, separated from the performance, charm and oratory tone, there's a different result. As a country, vision and leadership will serve us better than acting and public speaking.

Allentown's New Public Housing

The announcement was for two hundred upscale apartments at 7th and Linden Streets in Allentown. If ever there were two phrases that don't go together, it is upscale and 7th and Linden. The apartments are to attract new residents into downtown, not the existing demographic. The existing demographic would be presumedly priced out, at $1,200 monthly rent. It wasn't that many years ago that The Morning Call prohibited property managers from using words such as luxury and executive in their advertising. We were told then that such adjectives were exclusionary, and promoted discrimination. Reilly, now tells us "This is the next piece in transforming downtown Allentown into a place where people really can live, work and play." I suppose that those who currently live, work and play there aren't really people, at least not the upscale kind. I'm not an opponent of gentrification, or what the young urbanists call mixed income neighborhoods. I know that Reilly could rent two of these units immediately. I know that over the course of a year that he could rent twenty such units, but two hundred? Until this Neighborhood Improvement Zone(NIZ) was created for Allentown's transformation, public housing was  taxpayers subsidizing the tenant, it's now taxpayers subsidizing the landlord.

Soft Spots and Easy Marks

My mother was a tough cookie. My grandparents came over from Eastern Europe when she was little, and my grandfather worked at Bethlehem Steel, until a boiler blew up. Although he survived the explosion, he was badly injured, didn't speak much English, and it was the Depression to boot. Both my mother's parents died young, during the 1940's. My mother did have a few soft spots, one of them being that card sent every year by Father Flanagan. You wouldn't want to get in her way when she was headed to the mailbox with her contribution. I suppose the scandal broke in the late 1950's. Apparently,  my mother wasn't the only one with a soft spot for the boy carrying his brother. Turns out Father Flanagan received so many envelopes he couldn't even open them all. He had rooms full of money. Last year, the Allentown Rescue Mission had revenues of $3.5 million dollars. Their Father Flanagan, Gary Millspaugh, is searching for a COO, chief operating officer, to hire. Alan Jennings announced yesterday that Lehigh Valley Community Action will expand their operations into the Slate Belt. Soliciting to our soft spots has become big business.

UPDATE:The Rescue Mission has the city contract to sweep the sidewalk on Hamilton street, and refers to it as their work program. Yesterday, they announced that they would be discontinuing their drug addiction program. So in total, they seem to being doing less with more, and being subsidized by Allentown taxpayers to boot.

Pawlowski's Water Sham

Yesterday, Mayor Pawlowski gave a press conference in which he said that water rate increases would be capped to inflation, plus a moderate factor. Other pass alongs, which would increase fees, are any capital projects which exceed $2 million dollars. Practically any on going work will exceed $2 million dollars. The current project to replace water meters, which are only ten years old, cost $8,612,681.00. The current project to reline the water main under Union Terrace, and up Reading Road, cost almost half a million dollars a block. Currently, such system maintenance is financed by a state agency through loans amortized over 20 years. Under Pawlowski's five thousand page plan, homeowners will be paying up front as a private company deals with our aging water infrastructure.
UPDATE:Currently, Allentown utilizes all it's departments on a water main leak; Engineering, water, and street. A private company will bill the taxpayers for every private contractor involved in the same repair, and have an incentive to make every job contribute to the threshold necessary to pass the cost along to rate payers. For a City creative enough to form the NIZ to Transform Allentown, they should be able to meet the pension obligation without selling an asset operated by the city since before 1900.

The Engines Of Allentown

Fifty years ago Allentown was home to heavy industry, which required private engines to push material and finished product around their plants. Shown above is the engine at Structural Steel, located under the Tilghman Street Bridge. The Mack 5C plant, located at Lehigh and S. 12th Streets, had it's own engine. Traylor Engineering, on S. 10th Street, also had an engine. Although the private engines of Allentown are gone, a train whistle still blows, as Norfolk Southern rolls through South Allentown, on the old main line.

photograph from the Mark Rabenold Collection