I grew on Liberator Avenue. Liberator and Catalina Avenues, and Coronado Street, were named for Vultee-Consolidated WW2 planes, and are next to the airport built as part of the war effort. Vultee Street was built to connect the hangers with the Mack 5C plant, which was given over to Vultee-Consolidated for plane part manufacturing during the war. Vultee Street was the runway, and Lehigh Street would be closed off if a plane was landing. Today, this small airport now known as Queen City, has been under relentless threat by Mayor Ed Pawlowski, now a member of the Lehigh Valley Airport Authority. This past Tuesday, fellow board members started pushing back against Pawlowski. "You're not the mayor of the Lehigh Valley International Airport." board member Frank Kovacs to PawlowskiThe board voted to build a new taxiway, indicating there's not much consensus to sell the airport, which has been Pawlowski's objective. Pawlowski wants to add to Allentown's real estate glut, for a short sighted tax gain. Matt Assad, from The Morning Call, wrote an excellent article explaining the arguments to both sell and keep Queen City. He also provides quotes of the tense discussion between board members and Pawlowski. This blogger is not surprised by Pawlowski's position, but questions Don Cunningham's judgement in appointing him to the Authority.
reprinted from April of 2012
ADDENDUM FEBRUARY 7, 2018: My pushback against Pawlowski started in 2006. In 2007 when I started this blog, he and his enablers were still being defended as good for Allentown, even by fellow bloggers. This blog is fact based. I have no politicians whom I support. I am loyal only to issues, not elected officials.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteRemember the Allentown Informer, the Yahoo Group Site, those were pre-blog days. I started it with technical assistance from a friend when Roy was mayor and it carried over to the early years of the Pawlowski rein of terror. It petered out when blogs were born.
The point is, I took a lot of heat from some Republicans for not going along with the crowd in proclaiming Ed's greatness. it was sort of a mass hysteria. Very odd, been strange ever since.
I understand that according to the terms of the agreement, Convair Field was given to the City of Allentown by the Federal Government with some type of "in perpetuity" clause that it remain an airport.
ReplyDeleteAs it seems that ABE (Lehigh Valley International) is destined to become a largely freight airport to support the large internet distribution centers which are springing up like mushrooms in the area, it would seem that the future of Queen City Airport be for General Aviation, although it could also be used for UPS and other freight aircraft operators. The City of Allentown, though the Airport Authority should be looking at these facilities as revenue generators, and looking to lease parcels for warehouse space to accommodate the loading/unloading of aircraft.
Although, I suppose, government doesn't think like business, does it ?