Speaking Nonsense In Allentown

Allentown's gaggle of elected for life gathered in front of Reilly's Marketplace on the Arts Walk to endorse the state's new Main Street Initiative to spend $25 mil to boost the state's main streets. Never mind that although over a $Billion dollars of development went into Reillyville, not one original business or eatery has survived. Despite each new business given free promotion from the Morning Call, not one of them still exists. 

Among the lifers speaking were state reps. Schlossberg, Schweyer and Miller.*  

Perhaps I will have to renew their Molovinsky On Allentown subscriptions to instill a smidgen of real into our elected officials, but I don't think that their voter base holds them too accountable in regard to reality.

* lifer in training

A Jewish Sport

Jewish fighters dominated boxing between the World Wars. In around 1930, a third of all fighters were Jewish, by far the largest ethnic group. Some fighters even purported to be Jewish when they were not, such as the Baer brothers. Jews ruled the light and welterweight divisions, with long time champions Benny Leonard and Barney Ross. Ten world championships were fought with both men in the ring being Jewish. Boxing has long been an economic ladder for immigrant and minority groups.
photo of Jewish heavyweights King Levinsky and Art Lasky, 1934

reprinted from February 2011

Jostling With Windmills

I had a chance encounter with an opponent of the water lease plan in the grocery store. The person mentioned how tiring the battle has been, and how difficult it will be to succeed with keeping the water system in the citizen's hands. I know a little bit about this exhaustion, I have been fighting City Hall for well over a decade, as an army of one. The last group I belonged to was the Cub Scouts. I ran as an independent for office. I think my visits to City Hall inspired some of the security buffers now in place. There are few reporters, or editors, at The Morning Call that I haven't had words with, at one time or another. I could list a few victories here, but I won't risk jinxing my limited success. Blogging has been a fortunate vehicle for me. My detractors would be shocked to see a who's who of my readership. I thank you for that.                                                                     Michael Molovinsky 

above reprinted from September of 2012 

ADDENDUM MARCH 1, 2024:I'm a certified slow learner. Although over another decade has passed, I'm still jostling with the windmills. The first mayor I wrestled with when starting this blog is now up the river. While the current mayor makes junkets to the Caribbean to visit his voter base, and my downtown early morning coffee shops, along with the buildings they were in, have been demolished and replaced by NIZ boxes, I still forage out looking for the remnants of Allentown's past.

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 

 

above reprinted from October of 2012 

ADDENDUM FEBRUARY 29, 2024:This blog is well known for taking the NIZ to task, and I have complained about Jaindl doing away with the LVRR Old Main Line through his waterfront portion. So, with my penchant for criticism out of the way, I confess to liking what Jaindl did with the parcel. He built an attractive building, with a nice setting on the river, including some structural homages to its industrial history. Recently a large group of influentials were invited to an opening of the property. They must have accidently misplaced my invitation.

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.

above reprinted from October of 2012

ADDENDUM FEBRUARY 28, 2024:This post ranks right up there with my pieces which have offended people. Please understand that my mission as a blogger is to cast light on those institutions and practices which usually get a free pass. The free pass phenomenon is especially true for the sacred cows in our community. 

If you see me at the counter in a diner, please give me the time of day, and maybe even a cup of coffee...nobody else will.

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.

above reprinted from October of 2012 

ADDENDUM FEBRUARY 27, 2024:Students of this blog know that I have questioned the occupancy rates of the Strata Apartments(my name for all of Reilly's residential buildings). We now have built over 1000 units for Mr. Reilly. Jarrett Coleman's initiative to scrutinize the NIZ data has progressed to the point that a committee was formed in the state house. I believe that with Pat Browne now as Revenue Czar, getting true figures may be like pulling teeth. In my dogged opinion, the mixing of NIZ's commercial only authorization, and his new rental apartments is the biggest offense against the taxpayers. Who scrutinizes what proportion of the buildings are eligible for our tax dollars, the local NIZ board? Who oversees them???