Oct 7, 2019

Urban Renewal In Allentown


Urban renewal projects are nothing new to Allentown. Every couple decades some Mayor thinks he has a brighter idea. In a previous post, I showed the historic Lehigh and Union Street neighborhood, totally destroyed by city planners. Today, an under used Bank calling center sits awkwardly alone on that Lehigh Street hill. The picture above shows another hill of merchants and residents, fed to a mayor's bulldozer. The picture is from 1953, and shows Hamilton Street, from Penn Street down toward the railroad stations. At that time we still had two stations, The Lehigh Valley Railroad and The New Jersey Central. The current closed bar and restaurant occupies the Jersey Central. Everything on Hamilton Street, west of the bridge over the Jordan creek, with the exception of the Post Office, was demolished up to Fifth Street. Government Center would be built on the north side of the street, and a new hotel on the south, to accommodate the many anticipated visitors. Recently we had to remove and replace the facade of the county courthouse, which leaked since it was constructed. The hotel is now a rooming house.

Unannounced plans are underway for a new hotel to service anticipated visitors to Pawlowski's Palace of Sports. It will be up to some future blogger to document how that hotel becomes a rooming house.

reprinted from June 2011

UPDATE OCTOBER 7, 2019: Quite a bit has changed since I wrote this post in 2011. Many historic mercantile buildings of Hamilton Street have been replaced by large glass boxes. Although the amount of new construction and office workers is notable, revitalization has yet to occur. Come 5:00PM, those new workers can't wait to get out of Dodge. The former mentioned mayor has been incarcerated. The new hotel mentioned, subsidized by our tax dollars, sits virtually empty.

5 comments:

  1. Renewal needs to come from people with incomes wanting to move to the city. It will not work with some artificial government renewal. Its not that hard, just make the city an attractive place for business and residents to come here. Clean up the city, and make the taxes attractive and insure safety. It would takes decades and a sustained effort. Not likely to happen.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mike, don't worry, the city planning department has been meeting with the community and getting input. Now they have a plan they call Allentown 2030, Your Vision, Your Voice. It's full of Woke jargon so I'm sure everythings going to be fine.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Apparently, it's time for the city to "Woke" up.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Seems like every city now has 'Vision Plans'. Must be some consulting firm peddling this fodder. Socialism is all about planning - forget about the free market. The Soviets only had 7 year plans - you have a 10 year plan - see how that worked out for the Soviets.

    We have a similar plan in Minneapolis. I can tell you what's in the plan: Adding bike lanes, adding bus lanes, slowing traffic, narrowing roads, green energy, increasing housing density with more apartments.

    ReplyDelete
  5. How about when something is working you leave you hands off !! Then maybe you can have something that works !!

    ReplyDelete

ANONYMOUS COMMENTS SELECTIVELY PUBLISHED. SIGNED COMMENTS GIVEN MORE LEEWAY.