Who Is Repressing Crime Reporting In Allentown?

Mayoral candidate Ed Zucal reported Monday on social media that someone was stabbed on Friday near West Park, and that two cars exchanged gunfire near Hayes Elementary School. As of Tuesday evening, neither incident was reported by the Morning Call or WFMZ.

Being a small town pizza blogger only claiming informed commentary, rather than investigative reporting, I have not checked the police blotter or with those news outlets to analyze the crime repression. However, I do know that both Mayor Tuerk and police chief Roca claim that crime is down. They're not bashful about complimenting themselves when someone is caught, as was the person firing a gun on 2nd St.. From my excursions around Allentown, I can tell you that quality of life is down, and that reality is what affects most of us.

As long as the car stereos vibrate a block away, and people feel free to stop their cars anytime, anywhere, Tuerk and Roca lack credibility with me. Tuerk has been playing his Latino card harder than in his first campaign, but I don't think that compensates with the residents in West Park and other affected neighborhoods.

Pickup Hoops At Jordan Meadows

Subscribers to the blog know that I bill myself as an advocate for the traditional park system and the WPA structures within them. However, since 2005 the Allentown parks and recreation departments have been combined, and I claim no expertise about the recreation programs. On the contrary, I know very little about them.

I do know that the basketball courts at Cedar Beach are heavily used. I do know that the baseball field in Fountain Park is heavily used. I do know that whenever kids are playing sports, it is positive for both them and the city.

With the above disclaimers, allow me to opine that the recreation sector of the park department should refrain from those activities for which there may not be much long term demand, such as was the case with roller hockey in Jordan Meadows. Near the parking lot at Robin Hood in the Parkway, it's painful to see a disk golf tee located at the neglected WPA spring pond, with its quaint miniature bridge. 

Shown above a pickup game of hoops at Jordan Meadow.  The handball court was also in use this past Saturday.

Homeless and Roller Hockey on Jordan Creek

This past Friday I visited the Jordan Meadows pathway for the first time.  The pathway itself is on the west ridge above the creek, while the large homeless encampment is down the slope, on the creek itself.  The city organized a trash pickup over several days, the last occurring on Friday. I passed a few do-gooders with a photographer in tow.

While the park department has built a large multi-sport complex on the east side of the creek, the purpose of the west side walk path, beyond accommodating the homeless, isn't clear to me. While the east bank sports a new lighting system,  the only recent investment on the west side was by Nat Hyman, to his lawyer. Hyman, after donating land for the walkway, feels forced to sue the city to maintain quality of life for his tenants, impacted by the homeless encampment. Rather than relocate the homeless, the city is encouraging the situation by supposedly supplying porta johns and trash containers. A previous homeless encampment near Basin Street, which was not impacting any rent paying tenants, was dismantled by the city to facilitate a commercial real estate deal. Furthermore, they built that commercial developer a $million plus private bridge off Martin Luther King Blvd.

As an advocate for the traditional park system, the placement of the sports complex puzzled me.,,Bucky Boyle served the area for years. Saturday found me back at Jordan Meadows, this time on the east sports complex side. Speaking to guys playing both handball and basketball, none of them have ever seen any activity at the roller hockey field. Hopefully that will change, because the city has just reconfigured the field for soccer.

Crime In Cedar Park

Subscribers to this blog know that for years I have been advocating for the park department to keep the large pavilion in the picnic grove. Instead, with typical bureaucratic mentality, they submitted the structure to benign neglect, intent on replacement. 

That former beautiful structure met its demise yesterday.  A park employee gave me the company line that it wasn't safe. What won't be as safe is its metal lightning rod replacement. In addition to bad planning, talk about bad timing!! Now, after all these years, they tear it down right before the picnic season begins?

While some in the administration don't appreciate my unsolicited sidewalk supervision, I actually have been holding my tongue on many items. If I printed my punch list for the parks, I'd have to have five posts a day. Like Popeye, now-a-days I only speak out on the things I can't stand anymore.

A Meat Market In Easton

When I was in high school my father owned a small meat market in Easton. It was called Melbern, and was on South 4th Street. That small row of old buildings was replaced in the early 1980's by the current KWM Insurance Agency. I spent my high school summers working in the meat market, and exploring Northampton Street on my lunch breaks. 

Recently, I returned to retrace my steps. Back then I would walk down to the circle for lunch, usually stopping to visit a friend who worked at the lunchmeat counter in the five and dime. The circle is still busy with a lunch crowd, even without a NIZ subsidized by Pennsylvania taxpayers. 

The buildings, for the most part, are original and charming. Easton is up and coming, because it wasn't lucky enough to become revitalized with sterile towers of architectural mediocrity.

I even stopped in to visit Sal Panto at the new city hall. I suspect he saw me coming through a surveillance system, because his secretary assured me that he wasn't in. 

 reprinted from April of 2018 

Freight train crossing river in Easton in 1939

Allentown's $10Million Dollar Joke

Allentown is embarrassed about the Gateway appearance entering downtown Hamilton Street from the west.  Allentown has a lot to be embarrassed about, but the condition of the sidewalk is the least of its problems.  People are concerned about the lack of people on Hamilton Street, and more so, the character of the ones that are there!

Our city leaders and planners are taking about a new sidewalk and new trees. Over the years I have seen them reconfigure that sidewalk at least half a dozen times. Add trees, cut down trees, wrong trees, right trees, add bricks, remove bricks, and never have those things mattered.  

What's sad is these planners know that it doesn't matter, that it's a joke, yet they still do it.

If the new buildings in the above rendering of the new Gateway sidewalk/tree project look lifeless and nondescript, it is because those new buildings are lifeless and nondescript. If I have offended any of the planners, then we're even.

above reprinted from December of 2022

ADDENDUM APRIL 30, 2025: A current piece in the Morning Call is about Urban Forestry. Apparently, there is a grant for sidewalk trees. I can tell you that today's trees are tomorrow's sidewalk replacement, and in Allentown that is generally at the homeowner's expense. Trees and sidewalks are not compatible for the long term.