Watching Allentown's NIZ District

A recent article about Reilly's coming 520 Lofts building caught my attention.  It will be built on the north side of Linden Street, and require some reconfiguring by both the Allentown Parking Authority and Lanta.  Neither of those two entities wanted to comment to the reporter, until which time the project is approved by the Allentown Planning Commission.  I don't think they need worry about Reilly's plans passing muster. In truth no one, save for this blogger, has ever submitted any his plans to any scrutiny.

That free pass from scrutiny extends to the state, the city, the Morning Call, and even the NIZ board.  The Parking Authority has offered surface lots before for his projects.  Language in the recent article suggests that his residential projects can qualify for NIZ financing, while originally, they were supposed to be ineligible. Although Reilly claims that these apartments are demand driven, his recent Soviet era block on Walnut Street must have been incentive driven. It is devoid of everything, including people. It is the worst of all worlds. This past November the NIZ District map itself was altered.  I suspect that there is a correlation between the map changes and Reilly's acquisitions.

While scrutiny is limited solely to this blog,  I'm never the less reprimanded for it. Apologists label me a naysayer and hater of Allentown.  Public officials,  who are entrusted with monitoring the district, have told me they just know how dedicated Reilly is to Allentown.  I'm also dedicated... I'm dedicated to making sure that no person, organization or institution is beyond scrutiny.

Allentown's Covid-19 Pie

Allentown is preparing to hand out $400,000 of federal money to starve off evictions in the city. With a limit of $3,000 per tenant,  they might end up helping out 135 landlords.  I say landlords instead of tenants, because those tenants will probably be moving out anyway, just a month or two latter.

In trying times, which these certainly are, most landlords will work with good tenants.  However, with bad tenants,  a landlord's mistake in judgement quickly becomes known.  Usually tenants who seek assistance in normal times are bad bets.  I suspect that they will be bad bets now.

So while $400,000 won't be helping that many people, it does raise the question of how this federal  Covid19 aid is being put to use.  While the eviction aid sounds good on paper,  it has me shaking my head.

I can only hope that the other uses of the federal financial aid package make more sense.

Well, apparently they don't.

The other aspect of the $2.1 million dollar Covid aid package to Allentown is $500,000 to small businesses.  Who exactly at City Hall is qualified to decide who gets the grants?  Grants will be for $5,000, meaning 100 lucky businesses.  Supposedly it's first come, first serve.  Often in government that means best connected, best served.

With 400 to some landlords, and 500 to some businesses, that leaves $300,000 of our federal money unaccounted for.  Often in such programs the local government entity can keep an administrative fee.

Addendum: O'Hare's Ramblings reports another local proposal

Courting Mediocrity In Name Of Wokeness

Allentown School System tabled naming the new elementary school after General Hays, a nurse who became the first woman general in the army.  An incredibly accomplished person, Hays would have been the first woman an Allentown School is named after.  Hays had served in WW2, Korea and Vietnam.  However Hays, who graduated Allentown High in 1938, had a defect, she was white.

The local black leaders want someone who reflects the current diversity of the system.  Rev. Gregory Edwards and Phyllis Alexander both wrote the school board complaining about Hays.

Perhaps they should name the school after Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw.  She instructed the police force not to arrest for minor infractions, like theft and prostitution, during the virus crisis.  Large groups of young people were running amok in center city Philadelphia, scooping up everything their backpacks could hold. Meanwhile at City Hall, woke mayor Jim Kenney stayed silent about this decline in civilization. Only this weekend, after a merchant and citizen backlash, did Outlaw and Kenney finally reverse policy.

Philadelphia inner city kids were taught a bad lesson by their police commissioner and mayor. Likewise,  Allentown students are being neglected, not by a lack of computers, but of leadership by the school board. They had done well in choosing Hays, and should stick to their decision.  Character and accomplishment should be more important than complexion.

photo of Hays being awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by Westmoreland in 1971  

Supermarket Comes To Allentown

The concrete monolith still stands five stories above Lehigh Street at the Parkway Shopping Center. Currently it sports a clock and a sign for St. Luke's medical offices. It was built in 1953 as the modernistic sign tower for Food Fair supermarket, which then was a stand alone store. Behind it, on South 12th Street was the Black and Decker Factory. The shopping center would not be built to decades later, connecting the former supermarket to the bowling alley built in the 60's. Food Fair was started in the 1920's by Russian immigrant Samuel Friedland in Harrisburg. By 1957 he had 275 stores. 1953 was a rough year for the butcher, baker and candle stick maker; the huge supermarkets were too much competition, even for the bigger independent markets, such as Lehigh Street Superette; it was further east on Lehigh, now the site of a Turkey Hill Market. The sign tower also remains at the 15th and Allen Shopping center, which was another stand alone Food Fair. That parcel remains an independent supermarket. Food Fair would eventually absorb Penn Fruit, which had a market on N. 7th Street, then turn into Pantry Pride. When the Food Fair was built, there was as yet no 15th Street Bridge. Allentown only connected to the south side by the 8th Street Bridge and the Lehigh/Union Street hill. (stone arch bridge, near Regency Tower, was route to West End) Allentown was booming and Mack Trucks were rolling off the line, a block east off Lehigh Street, as fast as they could build them. The factories on S. 12th st. are now flea markets. Mack Headquarters is being sold to a real estate developer. Perhaps those concrete monoliths are the monuments to better times, by those of us who remember.

reprinted from June 2009

Markets Of Allentown's Past

When I was growing up my parents lived on two ends of Allentown, first the south side and then the west end.  I was fortunate to have experienced two great independent markets of Allentown's past.

The Lehigh Street Superette had a great section of small inexpensive toys for a small boy.  An easy walk from Little Lehigh Manor,  I could keep my Hopalong Casidy six shooter in caps, and replace my lost water pistol each summer.  The ice cream fountain featured hand dipped Breyers.  While the kids took a cone, the parents would have a quart or gallon scooped and weighed to take home.

Before  Food Fair was built farther west on Lehigh Street,  my mother would do all her shopping, except for meat,  at Lehigh Market.  Although I didn't pay too much attention, I do remember the cookie selection.

In the late 1950's my parents moved to the west end, and my times at Deiley's West Gate Market began.  Although too old to notice the toy selection,  the soda fountain became a hangout.

In addition to numerous corner markets, every section of Allentown had a popular larger independent, like Lehigh or Deiley's.   A few like Hersh's Market, have survived to this day.

photo of Deiley's Market in 1938

A Former Factory And Neighborhood Of Allentown, Pa.

The Wire Mill was a sprawling industrial plant along 13 acres of the Little Lehigh Creek, just east of Lehigh Street, near the current Martin Luther King Drive.  An 1899 map of Allentown contains the footprint of various industries of the time, and the Wire Mill was the most prominent.  The Lehigh Valley RailRoad constructed two bridges over the Little Lehigh, to bring its Barber Quarry spur line into and out of the plant. Began in 1886, it produced wire and nails until 1943, and then sat abandoned for another twenty years. During WW1, it employed up to 1,200 men around the clock, producing barbed wire for the trench warfare in Europe. The factory sat on the south side of the former Wire Street, which housed narrow row houses on the other side of the street, and the neighborhood above it.



That entire neighborhood was demolished in the early 1970's, as Allentown embraced the modern urban renewal models of the time. The old, modest neighborhood of small row houses, between Lawrence and Union Streets, and on both sides of Lehigh Street, between 4th and 8th Street, were bulldozed away.  It was, in a large part, home to Allentown's black community. How ironic that we destroyed the cohesion of a neighborhood, but renamed Lawrence Street after Martin Luther King. The only remnant of that community and neighborhood still there is the St. James A.M.E. and Zion Church. A former vibrant neighborhood was replaced by a sterile bank call center, sitting alone on a large vacant hill. That building is now the new Building 21 city operated charter school. I would have complained about that urban renewal plan if I was blogging back then. Now, 50 years later, I still consider that plan a failure. Hopefully, future bloggers will have something better to say about Allentown's current revitalization.

The Wire Mill was at the bottom of the Lehigh Street hill, shown above

reprinted from March of 2016

Allentown's First Black Bar

In a neighborhood that no longer exists, Allentown's first legal black liquor establishment had a short tortured run.

McLaughlin's Cafe was on the corner of Wire and Lehigh, at the bottom of the hill. Wire was the street that ran along the Wire Mill, another long forgotten part of Allentown's industrial history. By the mid 1950's, things were getting rough in the old bar. Police became a regular referee as fights and prostitution frequented the establishment. Finally the state liquor board decided to pull their license. 

The neighborhood had two complexions. There were the white descendants of the factory workers, and it also was the center of Allentown's small black population.

Hamp Webb was a popular figure in the black community. Just outside the straight and narrow, he was courted by the white officials for his influence with his community. Hamp operated unlicensed speakeasies with some success.

In the final days of McLaughlin's, they featured black entertainers from Philadelphia, and even referred to it as the Black & White Club. As McLaughlin's license was being revoked, he negotiated a sale to Hamp Webb.

The Morning Call reported that he fought to secure a license to provide a drinking establishment for his fellow Negroes, where they could congregate without being molested. After a court hearing, he was finally given the license in 1957, and Ham Webb Bar&Grill opened.

Hamp Webb was killed the following year in an automobile accident. While operation of the bar was taken over by his sons, they apparently didn't have local connections to deflect legal citations that came with operating a rough bar in a tough neighborhood. The property and license were liquidated at a tax sale in 1960.

Allentown Flood Of 1936

In 1936, northeast United States was decimated by extensive flooding. While Johnstown, Pa. and Nashua, N.H. made national news, Allentown certainly wasn't spared. While locally flooding of the Lehigh and Delaware received the most attention, the Jordan and Little Lehigh Creeks also caused widespread damage. Shown above is Lehigh Street, in the vicinity of the Acorn Hotel, south of the Little Lehigh. The building on the far left would become the Sherman Hotel, which operated for about twenty years, from 1942 to 1961. None of the buildings pictured still stand.

The low lying areas between the Jordan Creek and Lehigh River were flooded.  Numerous people were rescued by rowboat from porch roofs. At that time there was still many houses on the lower section of Hamilton and nearby Streets.

photo courtesy of the Schoenk family.