If Allentown City Hall was interested in saving the taxpayers money, they could lay off the City Spokesman. He can do no better job promoting the Arena and it's financing scheme, the NIZ, than The Morning Call reporters, Matt Assad and Scott Kraus. Assad and Kraus, separately and as a team, have been promoting the project since the first article. Today's edition, by Assad, working the ring alone, once again reads like a public relations release. Between the lines, we learn that J.B. Reilly will be asking the Arena Authority to increase his $20million dollar loan, so that he can build his office center sooner. As recently as yesterday, Pawlowski had said that it would be built along with the arena and open by 2013. Another reporter might wonder why he's back to the well already. Another reporter might mention that the fence has taken up half the existing parking spaces in the area. Instead, for balance, they once again use the line, Like chairs on the Titanic, referring to businesses just moving here from somewhere else in the valley. The tag team has used that line no less than six times already. Although even mild skepticism would question whether thousands of jobs will really materialize, center city is being torn down with no scrutiny from the press.
Dec 22, 2011
The Morning Call Tag Team
If Allentown City Hall was interested in saving the taxpayers money, they could lay off the City Spokesman. He can do no better job promoting the Arena and it's financing scheme, the NIZ, than The Morning Call reporters, Matt Assad and Scott Kraus. Assad and Kraus, separately and as a team, have been promoting the project since the first article. Today's edition, by Assad, working the ring alone, once again reads like a public relations release. Between the lines, we learn that J.B. Reilly will be asking the Arena Authority to increase his $20million dollar loan, so that he can build his office center sooner. As recently as yesterday, Pawlowski had said that it would be built along with the arena and open by 2013. Another reporter might wonder why he's back to the well already. Another reporter might mention that the fence has taken up half the existing parking spaces in the area. Instead, for balance, they once again use the line, Like chairs on the Titanic, referring to businesses just moving here from somewhere else in the valley. The tag team has used that line no less than six times already. Although even mild skepticism would question whether thousands of jobs will really materialize, center city is being torn down with no scrutiny from the press.
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Michael, You mention no Arena scrutiny by the Morning call but only praise on the Arena Project. Could it be since the M. C. is in the N.I.Z., that they will be benifiting for their praise.Pay to Play.
ReplyDeletewe had this discussion before, and my answer remains no. i believe it's just easier and more convenient to go with the press releases and rehashes, than the work scrutiny requires.
ReplyDeleteHow much is the American Parkway bridge gonna cost? Isn't it key to downtown revitalization. If you add the millions of dollars, almost $200M now, how long will it take an actuary to declare first year of profit?
ReplyDeleteYes Call is in the NIZ zone. It's really not been kept a secret but JB's plans and their enormous price tags are cause for alarm.
ReplyDeleteMM -
ReplyDeleteWhat's the limit for how much can be built in the NIZ? When does the Authority expire?
If the answers to those questions are "None" and "Never", how will the taxpayers EVER see a benefit from this?
At some point the market becomes over-saturated, if it isn't already. How about a MC article on when the taxpayers might see any return for the risk they are assuming.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteSaw the headlines and wondered how the rash of deadly shootings would work into the equation. The latest shooting is extremely close to my home. This isn’t the first time this sort of violence has visited West Park( a downtown neighborhood) but we did experience an all too brief respite in recent years.
Scott Armstrong
Michael, every time someone responds to your blogs as to Arena Pay to Play you respond immediately that you disagree with them. Pawlowski has raised Hundreds of Thousands of dollars by sending letters to contributors requesting them to pay into his Pawlowski For Mayor Comittee. When the Mayors committee file their campaign report and you read who some of the contribtors and amounts contributed, tell us if it was a campaign contibution or part of the Mayors the more you pay the more you play with the mayor.
ReplyDeleteanon 8:19, since you're making the implication, not me, why don't you look up that information. you can even start a blog on which to post it. meanwhile, this blog deals with facts on the ground. i believe that like Reading, and dozens of other cities, the arena/event center will not improve allentown. i believe that the project will soon have to be funded by property taxes, further contributing to allentown's decline. these realities are of enough concern to me, not your accusations.
ReplyDeleteThe Morning Call gets closer and closer to a high school paper or a college website every day. Not really news gathering, and not really anything more than "sunny side up reporting".
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, murders in A-Town are one thing that's up lately.
The odds that the arena will transform AL-Town are about the same as the mayor growing hair on his head.
I never need a Weather Vain to know which way the wind blows.
ReplyDeleteP.S. - Happy Chanukah, Mr. Molovinsky.
BOB DYLAN's POORER COUSIN
What politicians in Allentown, and quite often in general, for some reason or another, dont seem to understand that even if their magnificent dreams are successful, the perception that center city Allentown is still in decay after they leave the Arena will continue in peoples minds. It is modern infrastructure, a more than adequate police presence, safe housing and a good, responsible and affordable government which makes a town attractive for home buyers, not some scheme hatched in order to further inflate an individual's egotistical desire to be remembered. In the Dec 13th blog you mentioned that one of the row homes on 8th/Walnut St was being auctioned off starting at $65000. I looked into it and stopped when the realestate tax on it was $3500. Nuff said.
ReplyDeleteSorry to be learning about this topic so late. I grew in NY and I saw first hand what turned crappy neighborhoods into places yuppies desired to live in. It was ALWAYS trickled up, meaning that poor artists lived there, made it hip, and THEN banana republic moved in, not the other way around.PA keeps getting it backwards by dumping big white elephants, in your words, that can barely sustain their own weight. What can we do?
ReplyDelete