Molovinsky, The Morning Call and News

The article about Hooks Seafood restaurant closing states that this type of failure isn't unusual in an urban renewal area, according to experts. So says the Morning Call.  The article also states that The $6 million renovation of the long-closed Sal's Spaghetti House included a crystal chandelier from Hess's department store.... As you can see from my photograph above, Sal's wasn't renovated. The long closed former spaghetti house was demolished, and a new building was constructed in its place.  Now, I can understand the paper not knowing this, after all, the building is over a quarter block away from the newspaper building.  Assuming that people at the Morning Call read the paper, apparently nobody caught the error, twice. This was the second time in about a week that this misinformation was printed. However, this post is about the important part of the story, not covered by the paper.

The restaurant was built pre-NIZ. Save for a $50,000 city grant, the entire cost was borne by the owner. It happens that the owner and his wife were retired from a very lucrative business, and always wanted to own a high end restaurant. Opened as the Cosmopolitan, it was high end indeed.  When that failed to attract enough well heeled, it was transformed into the more price friendly Hook Seafood. However, with the NIZ and Reilly's hospitality group of eateries, the market was now over-saturated.

The owner of the restaurant when asked about lack of foot traffic downtown stated, "I'm not going to get judgmental or say anything negative." Those are traits that nobody accuses this blogger of having.

photocredit:molovinsky- site of the former Sal's Spaghetti House being prepared for new foundation

Shine Off Allentown

Only a couple years ago City Center was claiming that there was a waiting list for it's storefronts. There was no need to promote, the Morning Call was doing that for them. Now, we see the NIZ's prime developer looking for merchants. Truth to be told, some of their remaining merchants are on life support. A $Billion dollars of taxpayer money later, Hamilton Street has less foot traffic than before the NIZ, certainly in the previously busy 700 block.

Nothing about this change of commercial fortune surprises me. Beyond eating lunch, the office workers have no time for shopping. After work their only interest is exiting Dodge as fast as they can. Although, too many vacancies have occurred to still claim store or restaurant demand, the apartment myth is still being sung by Reilly and his Morning Call. Unless they learned how to clone millennials, the reality of that situation will also be apparent soon enough.

Despite my on going critical analysis, I have become a supporter of the NIZ and other such incentives, provided that they used in an equitable fashion.   The marketplace has imposed its own restrictions on City Center LLC.  The massive twin tower projects are on hold. Besides the City Center portfolio,  my concern rests with the existing prior building owners. The NIZ will not succeed surrounded by idle buildings.  I would hope that after the current new projects are completed,  City Center and the other vested interests work on rising the tide for all owners.

Antisemitism In The Trump Era

A facebook friend wrote; There has always been antisemitism in the US, but I've never seen this level in my lifetime until Trump was elected. Trump himself is no antisemite, but it's clear enough that his election has emboldened the antisemites to crawl out from under the rocks.

It is not at all "clear enough" to me. I read about the "resistance" and other absurdities of the disappointed left. I think that it's plausible that some of the acts are being orchestrated to make Trump look guilty by contrived association.  I think that the connection between Trump and the neo-nazi types was fabricated nonsense. Although, it's easier to fabricate such a connection between conservatives and right wing fringe groups, it doesn't make it so. I also likewise believe that Steve Bannon was wrongly smeared by such accusation.  I saw no such concern about Obama's affiliation with Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan.  Whatever the authenticity of these hate acts, associating them to Trump is just part of the hysteria by those so distressed by Trump's win.

Growing Up Parkway

I'm a baby boomer. I was born in December of 1946. As soon as my mother climbed out of the hospital bed, another woman climbed in. I grew up in the neighborhood now called Little Lehigh Manor, wedged between Lehigh Street and the top of the ravine above Lehigh Parkway. That's me on our lawn at the intersection of Catalina and Liberator Avenues, named after airplanes made by Vultee Corporation for the War. We had our own elementary school, our own grocery store, and the park to play in. On Saturdays, older kids would take us along on the trolley, and later the bus, over the 8TH Street Bridge to Hamilton Street. There were far too many stores to see everything. After a matinee of cartoons or Flash Gordon, and a banana split at one of the five and dimes, we would take the bus back over the bridge to Lehigh Street.




Not that many people know where Lehigh Parkway Elementary School is. It's tucked up at the back of the development of twin homes on a dead end street, but I won't say exactly where. I do want to talk about the photograph. It's May Day, around 1952-53. May Day was big then, so were the unions; Most of the fathers worked at the Steel, Mack, Black and Decker, and a hundred other factories going full tilt after the war. The houses were about 8 years old, and there were no fences yet. Hundreds of kids would migrate from one yard to another, and every mother would assume some responsibility for the herd when it was in her yard. Laundry was hung out to dry. If you notice, most of the "audience" are mothers, dads mostly were at work. I'm at the front, right of center, with a light shirt and long belt tail. Don't remember the girl, but see the boy in front of me with the big head? His father had the whole basement setup year round with a huge model train layout. There were so many kid's, the school only went up to second grade. We would then be bused to Jefferson School for third through sixth grade. The neighborhood had its own Halloween Parade and Easter egg hunt. We all walked to school, no one being more than four blocks away. Years ago when I met my significant other, she told me she taught at an elementary school on the south side, but that I would have no idea where it was.

reprinted from January of 2013

Lehigh Valley of Denial

According to Michael Siegel, who knows about such things, the Little Lehigh is in dire trouble.  Meanwhile, back in the land of government and sacred cows,  the LCA,  like Sergeant Schultz on Hogan's Hero, knows and says nothing.  Nestlé and the other bottlers keep sucking out our water like they're making a profit on it.☺☺

Mr. Siegel better get used to frustration.  Here, in our one paper valley, the sacred cows roam free.  Save but for a few bloggers,  no worries here. But even in the blogosphere, the topics of choice involve personal attacks combined with anonymous comments.

Here in the valley the sacred cows herd together.  The Wildlands Conservancy never criticizes the LCA,  and invites Nestlé Water to conduct children's workshops.

Shown above is the former Robin Hood Dam on the Little Lehigh.  It was demolished by The Wildlands Conservancy in order to harvest a state grant.

photocredit; molovinsky

GrassRoots Politics In Allentown

If you're a student of grassroots politics in Allentown, chances are that you know Robert Trotner. This political and community activist has been encouraging political newcomers for a number of years, through both an internet radio show and coffee house gatherings. His recent meetings at the Coffee House Without Limits has attracted new candidates for mayor, city council and the school board. While their names are mostly new to the general public, all of them are involved in the process already, attending meetings and studying Allentown's problems.

I have been a supporter of local outsider politics for decades. These are the people you see at the meetings, week after week. They are the ones that fight the battle for everyone else.  They are the ones who speak out for the many who remain silent.  While a few get elected and become mainstream, most remain unelected, and unrecognized for their commitment.  Reporting their accomplishments has always been an honor for this blog.

Shown sitting with Trotner is City Council candidate Jessica Lee Ortiz and School Board candidate Phoebe Harris.

ADDENDUM: Political outsider and police officer Luiz D. Garcia has announced his candidacy as a Republican for mayor.  I had reached out to Garcia last fall, and we finally connected at a police event at Sacred Heart Hospital earlier this winter.  He is Allentown's first Hispanic Mayoral candidate.