A former neighborhood leader was ambushed at 9th & Chew Streets last week. Youths with their faces covered by bandanas circled her car in ATV vehicles, causing both damage and fright. Although Pawlowski is featuring the new buildings in his campaign material, I suspect that the ambush will not be mentioned. Neither will be the recent shootings, stabbings, home invasions and homicides.
In 2005, I predicted our current state of crime. As a independent candidate for mayor, and an inter-city property manager, I was well aware of the changes moving into Allentown. Although my views were marginalized by The Morning Call at the time, those chickens have come home to roost. Allentown has reached a critical mass of the hardcore under Pawlowski's tenure. Hideous crimes are a daily occurrence. The NIZ district will be full of new Reilly owned buildings, but there will be no revitalization. No yuppie with more than three brain cells will want to live downtown among the gangsters.
The screen shot shown above is from John Ford's 1939 epic, Stagecoach. The movie was filmed in Monument Valley in the Navajo Nation. That movie, and subsequent ones featuring the valley, made it a destination.
Changing the buildings doesn't change the inhabitants of Allentown.
ReplyDeleteI had a (transplant) resident tell me several years ago they wanted nothing but to see the city razed and rebuilt of steel and glass. Then he proceeded to tell me having a drug dealer in a neighborhood was not unlike having ones own police force to keep people in line. The cavalier things people say....
ReplyDeleteGangsters?? who the hell you calling gangsters??? Did they kill that women like racists in Virginia???? Its funny how you hypocrits will praise white drug dealers, and save white addicts. smh....freedom of speech is for cowards too!!!
ReplyDeleteThe real gangsters are in the White House. Why don't you write for Breitbart Mr M. they would love you there.