Doing Less With More In Allentown

While Mayor Pawlowski spent the weekend in New York City auditioning for governor, Allentown got zapped with an ice storm. Previous to the Big Water Sell Off this summer, here in the Little Apple, all departments would help out during a storm or other emergency. With the loss of the water department to the Lehigh County Authority, that system has been disrupted. Although we loss some efficiency, we will not see a corresponding savings. A previous undisclosed expense involved in the water transfer was creating a new department for the storm sewer system. Furthermore, apparently $150 million has been designated for the pension fund, as opposed to an earlier projection of 160. What's $10 million among friends and taxpayers?

photocredit:Tay Ney/The Morning Call/December10,2013

A Park Protester From The Past

`Green' Curtain Blocks Sledding And The View
January 09, 1992|The Morning Call
To the Editor:
Hold your sleds girls and boys! Others, too, on the alert! With the planting of a dense cluster of 60 evergreen trees and the erection of a "No Sledding" sign, creating a veritable iron curtain, the park and watershed people have once again undertaken their repetitive effort of the past 45 years to eliminate a most popular sledding slope in Lehigh Parkway. The motive -- crass self-interest in defiance of public good. The effect -- an impassable barrier and concealment of a magnificent vista of "one of the finest valleys in Eastern Pennsylvania."
Children and adults from the 400 homes with longtime and easy access to the slope and others arriving in cars have enjoyed sledding here after school and into the night and throughout the day and night on weekends. Yet sledding is but one of the attractions of this enduring slope. In summer children and teachers from Lehigh Parkway Elementary School have enjoyed a walk down the slope and into the park for a break from book and blackboard. Birders, joggers, hikers and others on a leisurely stroll engrossed in their particular interest have found the slope irresistible.
For a host of others, this opening into the park after a long stretch of woods presents a charming vista and urge to descend. Interest is immediately evoked by the sight of a mid-19th century log house (now tenanted by a city employee whose privacy is further enhanced by the closure of the slope) and a historic wagon trail leading past the site of a lime kiln to tillable lands of earlier times.
The view takes in an expanse of meadowlands, now groomed, to the Little Lehigh River and up the western slope to Lehigh Parkway North. Indeed, a pleasant view to be esteemed and preserved for generations to come. It was distressing on New Year's Day to see a family and their guests intent upon a walk down the slope suddenly stop in amazement and shock as the closure became evident.
The cost in dollars through the years of the park peoples' fixation on destroying the Parkway slope must be staggering indeed without dwelling on other deliberate depletions. Typically, the placement of the 1991 "No Sledding" sign employed a team of four men with three vehicles -- a backhoe, a panel truck, and a super cab pickup truck, the latter furnishing radio music.
BERT A. LUCKENBACH
ALLENTOWN The Morning Call, January 9, 1992
reprinted from May 25, 2010

I grew up in the same neighborhood and spent my childhood winters sledding on the same hill. Mr. Luckenbach would also be saddened that the historic Wagon Trail is now also blocked off, near it's exit halfway on the hill. I suppose children, mittens and sledding is too passive a recreation for this Administration's taste.

reprinted from January 2012

Christmas Past In Lehigh Valley, 1962

Allentown Is Not The Only Place It Snowed This Weekend

Mack Line Overpass

It was just a few years ago that the train overpass at the junction of S. 6th and Lehigh Streets was removed. Although the line ceased operation decades earlier, the overpass remained as a silent monument to our industrial past. One half block of S. 10th Street was serviced by two different rail spur lines. Lehigh Valley Railroad served Traylor Engineering, while Reading served the Mack Factory.

Time Moves Slowly In Easton

Reprinted From November 23, 2009: Business, in the center cities of the Lehigh Valley, is a fragile thing at best. Even Bethlehem, considered the most successful, is more charm than dollars. Essentially, these prior centers of commerce have been reduced to three separate economies. The upscale restaurants serve a clientele, mostly in the evening, that has absolutely no interaction with the surroundings. The tourist venues, fixed or seasonal, also provide little revenue for the surrounding shops. Last, but not least, you have an urban population and the bus people. Bethlehem has managed to maintain an upscale demographic living in it's center city, but this post is about Easton. (Allentown only has one such person living on Hamilton Street, she is the Community Development Director)

The Morning Call has published three stories about the High School Sports Hall of Fame, which will occupy part of the new parking deck and Lanta Terminal, several blocks south of Center Square in Easton. Easton Mayor Sal Panto, perhaps hoping to once again see his high school picture, has been cheerleading this effort. Although there is no question that this is a moronic idea doomed to failure, grants are available, and Panto can't resist a grant. The pending failure of the Sports Museum is the good news; the destruction of the bus people economy is the real consequence. Allentown should have taught Panto an expensive lesson. (Lanta doesn't care about lessons or merchants) People waiting to transfer buses, as they do now at Easton's Center Square, will shop if the store is very close and convenient. They will not walk. They will not make an additional stop and wait for another bus. They don't buy much, but there's many of them. Now, they will sit on benches at the Easton Lanta Transfer Terminal and watch school children come to the Al Bundy Museum on field trips. Panto will wonder why business died on Northampton Street.
reprinted from November 23, 2009, then titled Selling Easton's Soul

UPDATE: Over four years later, Al Bundy and Sal Panto have announced that they're canceling their long planned date. The parking garage and Lanta Terminal will now house Easton City Hall.  I first started writing about Easton's planned parking deck when it was scheduled to be behind the Wolf Building, going back to last century. I understand now why Panto supports Pawlowski for governor, time and projects move very slowly in Easton.

From Homeless To School Director

This is my second post on Ce-Ce Gerlach; The first was this summer, when I covered her block party fundraiser to buy uniforms for the students. Yesterday, I decided to sit down with Ce-Ce and learn more about someone in Allentown's future. She has been instrumental in attempting to share Allentown's good fortune from the arena's NIZ, with the city's less fortunate inter-city residents. Ce-Ce talks their language; She lived in her car for six months, about five years ago. Only 27 years old, she has emerged as a spokeswoman and advocate for Allentown's silent majority. Coming from the poor side of the tracks in Washington D.C., she knows first hand how little of opportunity can spill over from affluence, to a nearby population mired in the poverty cycle. In addition to being a leader on the coalition for community benefit from the NIZ, and the school board, she is on the city's Human Relations Board. She's open to more responsibilities, and even elected offices, in her mission to improve lives in downtown Allentown.