Stacking The Deck

When Donny Cunningham appointed Ed Pawlowski to the Lehigh Valley Airport Authority, he stacked the deck against Queen City Airport. Pawlowski has advocated selling Queen City for development since before he was mayor. The fact that this city needs no more commercial or residential space is lost on him. South Mall, once home to three large department stores, now has one. The property has underperformed for decades. Needless to say, the last thing the school district needs is more housing and students. The distance between Queen City and Lehigh Valley Airport provides a safety margin between commercial planes and small aircraft. The Airport Authority is a case-study in poor decision making. They took land for runway expansion they never used, now owing the original owners ten times the price in penalty and interest. (LVIA is under court order to pay $26million) They expanded their departure terminal to a size they never needed. They constantly remodel the under used facility. They fired their director with no succession plans in place. Cunningham appointing Pawlowski, with a predetermined agenda, is the last person that board needed.
In an article today in The Morning Call, it states that the sale and development of Queen City could create "thousands of jobs." That is ridiculous.

above reprinted from December of 2011

ADDENDUM: Since I printed the above post in 2011, Queen City managed to stay on as an auxiliary airport. With the demise of Bon-Ton, things have only gotten worse for South Mall. LVIA continues to make unnecessary improvements, and there are still painfully few destinations on their departure board.  Ed Pawlowski is now residing at a federal detention center in Connecticut.