Readers of The Morning Call have seen several photo spreads of Tony Luke's opening on Hamilton Street. Two spreads in a row showed Mayor Pawlowski and the owner hyping the new cheesesteak spot, along with at least two articles in recent weeks announcing that the business was coming. The same readers have also seen coupon ads by Zandy's, which have been advertising in the paper for maybe 20 years. Zandy's, on the intersection of St. John and Lehigh Streets, is a third generation Allentown business. Yesterday, a reader commented on a different blog topic that the NIZ is crony capitalism, supported by crony journalism. Submitted comments about which cheesesteak you think is better will not appear, I don't care about that. What I do care about is a mayor and a newspaper, who now seems to think that Allentown starts and stops at the NIZ portion of Hamilton Street.
let's not forget the NIX-free Sewards Steak Shop as well.
ReplyDeletebernie@8:49, you are correct, there are numerous other long established steak shops and businesses in allentown, which are being undercut by the paper's endless promotion of the NIZ
ReplyDeleteI have some experience with this from living in Minneapolis.
ReplyDeleteAs the downtown grows, with more and more public / government projects - the only thing that matters is the downtown.
They (elected officials) will have all kinds of hype about how great 'it is' (downtown), and the focus then becomes how can we get even more money for projects, so downtown can be even greater.
Meanwhile the rest of the city becomes the ugly step-child.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteThe advertising for a select few commercial entities starts on the front page and continues all the way through the news section of the Call. This passes for journalism these days. Do kids go to J school to learn this?
Scott Armstrong
Sad, but sadly not unexpected. But that's what we get with a corrupted system..grab that grant money, baby.
ReplyDeletePawlowski claimed that the water sewer lease was necessary to to pay off pension obligations and stabilize the city. With the $211m 50 year lease, they immediately paid off $20m in water and sewer debt. They only pit a bandaid on the pension with $6.1m in 2014. Now the Mayor wants to erase any positives by adding another $20m. How is this sound fiscal policy? Will the constant deficit spending negate any favorable impacts NIZ? What is this new borrowimg for?
ReplyDeleteIn 2013 the city had $30 million in unallocated funds from the water sale proceeds. They shouldn't need another $20 million unless i'm wrong
DeleteMy problem with all this is that there seems to be no effort to bring an existing allentown business downtown. Wether it be Brass Rail, Zandys, Vinces or Ritz ice cream. I think Hotel Bethlehem owns the rights to the name Hess's patio restaurant and their stawberry pie so how about an outlet. Village bake shop is another one. As RFK said "Some see things as they are and say why,Others see things as they could be and say why not". There is no reason why we cant include locals in this downtown development.
ReplyDelete