Alan Jennings Misspeaks

Alan Jennings has declared that because of Judge Anthony's prejudicial rant, he should resign.  Jennings seems to have personified Anthony's comment about Allentown being a cesspool, to the people who appear before his bench.  Earlier this week I read on social media that Anthony singled out Puerto Ricans in his rant.  He did not, his admonition was directed against the increasing shootings,  not a particular person, and certainly not any particular ethnicity.

It pains me to write this post.  Although Jennings and myself are on different ends of the liberal/conservative spectrum,  I appreciated our rapport over the years... I even had appeared on his NPR show twice.

Coincidentally this week, I wrote about Allentown first having a poverty industry, and now a violence industry.  Alan was the main force behind the poverty industry.  I once wrote that his organization doesn't just give out fishing poles, that they give out fish markets.  He's disappointed in the judge, and I'm disappointed that Alan wrote this letter to the editor.

photo:The Morning Call

They Shoot Landlords, Don't They?

When I ran as a long-shot independent for mayor in 2005, against Ed Pawlowski and Bill Heydt,  the first thing I did was take The  Morning Call reporter on a tour of the properties that I managed.  As an intercity landlord, operating apartments between 4th and 12th, Walnut and Tilghman Streets,  I knew that  downtown apartments could  become problematic for Allentown.  After the WW2,  it became fashionable to live in a twin or small ranch, and Allentown's row houses began being divided into apartments.  Those apartments were mostly occupied by singles or childless couples, and helped keep downtown and Hamilton Street vital, long past many of its sister cities.  In the 1960's, despite the thousands of converted apartments,  center city was clean, and Allentown was the All American City.  Both the tenants and landlords were hard working and conscientious.  As the urban poor from New York and New Jersey discovered the clean streets of Allentown, and its moderately priced apartments,  a steady influx of new residents arrived daily.  These changes were not encouraged by the landlords.  Nobody ever purchased a building hoping to replace their conscientious middle class occupants, with a poorer, more problematic tenant base.  Various social agencies staked many of these newcomers to the first month rent and security deposits.  Although politically incorrect, I said at the time that Allentown was creating a poverty magnet.  My phrase and analysis back then is now recognized as an unintended consequence of such programs.  During Heydt's administration, Allentown passed a Rental Inspection Law.  Some viewed  this as the solution to the rental problem, I didn't fully agree;  You cannot legislate pride of ownership. Bad operators could, and easily did, cross the T's and dot the i's.  Pawlowski's solution has been to tag buildings as unfit for habitation, so many,  that the process itself has created blight.  Halls of Shame, either by the city or private groups, only stigmatize both the property and owner, but don't produce a solution.  The programs in place, if applied with more flexibility, can work.  The school district is starting to show concern about the consequences of more apartments and students.  Recent zoning changes allowing the conversion of commercial space by right, rather than by variance, will be an additional challenge.  At the end of the day,  all landlords want to see their investment appreciate.  The city must learn to work with that basic incentive as a vehicle for change.

reprinted from June of 2015

Shootings Now Normal In Allentown

When I looked at the digital version of the Morning Call Monday morning, the weekend shootings were the 7th story down the page. The Friday and Sunday shootings were lumped together in one article. By Monday afternoon the shooting story was at the bottom of page.

When shootings have become so commonplace in a city this size, we are indeed a cesspool. When our elected officials are so incensed that someone would dare use that term, it is they who should apologize. They should apologize for thinking that the citizens should consider this level of violence as normal. They should apologize for wanting to put image above safety.

As for the ones who say we should stop complaining, and join them in the marches for harmony, I feel no sense of security from their performances. They for the most part are either being paid to work in the new violence industry, or hope to be elected.

Years ago I complained about the poverty industry.... Those groups and organizations that specialized in the poor. Now that we have a violence industry,  the advocates for the poor seem like the good old days.

Saturday Night In the Little Apple

This weekend I popped into an opening at Soft Machine Gallery at 101 Ridge Avenue. Although the gallery might be in the 1st Ward near the Lehigh River,  the art is as uptown as it gets. John Mortensen and Eva DiOrio started the gallery in a rented space on 15th Street about ten years ago, before creating their own current space on the corner of Ridge and Linden Streets.

The show, which runs through October 5th, features the South African born and Israeli trained  constructions of Michelle Marcuse,  the mixed media collages of Netherland trained Diane Tenerelli, and the whimsically edgy drawings of Kate Hovencamp.

On the way back to the blog bunker, I drove up Linden Street past the Strata buildings. With Stratas on my left, not a millennial in sight on the right, or wrong side of the street. It is as if  J.B. Reilly installed an invisible dog fence to keep his tenants in and safe, not so much different than a minimum security prison. 

I've added the Soft Machine logo and info to this blog's web version sidebar.  It's inspiring to know that people still invest their time and capital elsewhere in the city, without our tax subsidizes as in the  Hamilton Street NIZ.

Allentown Wants To Kill The Messenger

State Representative Peter Schweyer suggested that if Judge Anthony doesn't apologize for referring to a cesspool when sentencing a murderer, that he should resign. I think that Schweyer should resign for not facing facts. I would also recommend that Mike Schlossberg resign.

Mike Schlossberg said that Anthony's comment changes the narrative. Since when is the blunt truth a narrative? According to Schlossberg, the narrative is that 300 people marched against crime. Did that march chase crime away? Since the march, there have been both shootings and stabbings.

Schweyer called Judge Anthony's cesspool comment a cheap shot against Allentown.  I believe that Schweyer's comment was the cheap shot.  Schlossberg called Anthony's comment over the top.  I think that Schlossberg's comments are below par.  Worse for these state representatives, I think that they grossly miscalculate the voter's attitude about the violence.  Simply put, they are sick and tired of it, and the politicians who are in a state of denial and do nothing about it.

A Cesspool Named Allentown

When Judge Anthony used the term cesspool the other day in regard to the shootings in Allentown,  I expected that there would be some push back. Although he was referring to the rash of shootings taking place in the former All American City, I expected to read about him accused of racism, or some other popular accusation of insensitivity, often used to suppress the forthright from speaking the plain truth.  Instead, he is being accused by  our elected leaders of a truly inexcusable insult against our so called award winning revitalizing city.

Judge Anthony is correct,  the city has become a cesspool, and the awards are bull. Furthermore, if our elected leaders are so complacent that they view this daily carnage as acceptable,  it is their leadership that may well be inexcusable.

These elected leaders cite articles praising all the new buildings, and claim that all cities this size have these urban crime issues.  Actually, Allentown is no larger than ever, and most of the new buildings are owned by one man, who was set up by these same elected leaders. Beyond some new offices and their workers poached from the local suburbs,  there is no more activity downtown....Revitalizing is more than some new bricks owned by one person.

If Judge Anthony erred about the shootings, it is that he forgot to mention the stabbings.  I hope that our elected leaders do not start accusing the messengers, and expect us to accept the current level of violence as normal.

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.

reprinted from February of 2017

Center City Kids And Stevens Park

Over the last decade, a large portion of my effort on this blog has been focused on maintaining what I refer to as the traditional park system. To me, that would include the WPA structures and both access to, and view of the streams. I rallied against the riparian buffers, and what I consider the excessive emphasis on recreation. In the park department, although there is no less than six supervisors for recreation, there is not one person assigned to the parks per se.

While the designation playground at Cedar Beach cost $1 million dollars, only $25,000 has been spend on the WPA structures in the last decade, and that was a grant from the Trexler Trust. However, this post isn't about my opinion of current park priorities, but rather the implementation of the current policy.

 The designation playground at Cedar Park was almost, if not criminal in design and implementation. A former park director as the time purchased every item in the Playworld Catalog, from a company he had a prior relationship with from his previous job. So we ended up with an oversized playground, in a location inaccessible to center city kids. Regarding these kids, and our current emphasis on recreation, perhaps no park is more important than humble Stevens Park, at 6th and Tilghman Streets in center city. Although the playground equipment and infrastructure are well up to snuff, community groups found it necessary to reclaim the park this past Saturday. This park should be a sanctuary for the children of center city, and the police department should do whatever is necessary to make it that way. In 2019, that might well require a 24 hour presence.

Stevens Park sits on the site of the former Stevens Elementary School, as shown above in 1918.