Dead in the water is an old expression. Allentown's waterfront NIZ project is dead at the water. This past week the local media reported that Jaindl has tenants lined up, but is waiting for all the pieces to be in place, before starting construction. Whoever those commercial tenants are, they sure must be flexible.
This weekend our overpaid, underworked, ghost voting state representative Mike Schlossberg was in Washington, begging for a grant for project's piece of the rail trail. He is getting better at fibbing. He actually claimed that they need the grant, so that the residents of the 1st and 6th Wards can mingle with the future tenants of Waterfront. I believe that Jaindl wants the grant, but he sure doesn't want those ward citizens mingling with his future millennials.
Talking about dead liquid, the Neuweiler building is in worse shape than ever. Even the plywood covering some of the broken windows is rotting away. If the AEDC allows one cent of tax money to be used by Ruckus to rehab that building, Scott Unger should be put in jail. That building is now beyond saving.
brewery circa 1950
so true,,,, after years (decades) of neglect... now the "city" has shown an interest in the 1st & 6th Wards. Surely, there is money to be made by these "carpetbaggers" of the 21st Century. Millennials better start taking spanish lessons if they want to live there... the "City" and politicians could beg for a grant for language classes !!
ReplyDeleteThis "development project" from day 1 never made any sense. You had the City that claimed Eminent Domain on the property and they paid the rear property owner $800K for their property right after it was assessed at $400K. By the way, the City borrowed the money to purchase the rear property when they did it as well and had trouble paying that debt when it came due a little over a year later (please see the MCall article on that one). Ultimately, Ruckus was put in there as a back up from the original planned development of the site. Ruckus never had the capital to rehab the property and barely made the payments to ACIDA for their contract. I remember looking it up one day on google and the way they were trying to fundraise for the project seemed more like a GoFundMe site than an actual investment. They have now had the properties for 5 years and have managed to make it look much worse thatn when the previous private owner had the property, but all they have really done was to put an extension cord from the rear property, that had good electric from previous owner, into the bottling house and claim they had electric in it.
ReplyDeleteThe building is a massive shame and just shows what happens when you let friends of friends from City Hall have favors.