Although J.B. Reilly has a lot of experience building apartments, so far he has hedged his bet twice on the yuppie apartments at 7th and Linden. First off, he partnered with Pennrose, who specializes in income restricted and grant subsidized living units. Secondly, he cut expenses by framing the upper floors out of wood. Will the new middle class office workers of the NIZ want to live at 7th and Linden? So far there is no smart private money going into urban residential units. With luck, we are still decades away from such a demand. Reilly is inducing commercial tenants with offers
they cannot refuse. Expect to see the same offers to young selected singles for his apartments. Expect to see the Morning Call headlining the apartments.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteWant to believe there will be some upside to all this free money and good news propaganda. However Allentown is still what it is. Example, returned home from a shopping trip last week and while getting some items out of the trunk I heard some excited voices. Thought it was just the usual teenage high-jinx. It soon became apparent that it was nothing short of a physical brawl involving women and children on a neighboring front porch.Apparently there was some sort of dispute between two teenage girls and one of the mothers loaded the family into the van to settle the score. This involved yelling all the curse words, pushing and shoving.Soon all the children followed the mother's lovely example and joined in. In time the police arrived and separated the two camps. My hat is off to them, they were extremely professional.
One can build all the new buildings they want, and publish all the glowing tales they please, but it is still Allentown. God bless it.
Scott Armstrong
Scott Armstrong