When I was a kid growing up, the area of the State Hospital was called Rittersville. Ritter had been a large landowner, and towns named after such were plentiful in Pennsylvania.
Paul Muschick, columnist for the Morning Call, has an article in the paper that the State Hospital won't be forgotten, because they're erecting a plaque about it. Paul must take those plaques much more seriously than the rest of us.
What they should do is rename that area Reillyville, and erect a plaque about how J.B. Reilly got the parcel for a fraction of its value, in a swan song move by Pat Browne.
I believe at one time there was also an amusement park in this area, I bet you know more about that.
ReplyDeleteToo bad they closed this mental health faculty, it could have been the home of many of the local politicians to protect the citizens from their insanity.
Yes, Ray. It was called Central Park and was adjacent at its back to the State Hospital Farm acres. I roamed there as a boy.
ReplyDeleteAs for the NIZ taxpayer scam, I noticed a recent Morning Call article trumpeting the news about the zone producing 7 million tax dollars more to the same footprint as it did before the NIZ was created. Sounds nice, but . . .
there were several years when that same footprint produced much less tax dollars than it did before the scam began! The whole NIZ is MANY millions behind as a tax revenue source. To that extent, it’s been a massive failure and will continue as such for years to come.
Maybe the Morning Call will do a full review. Nah, won’t happen!
anon@9:24:the main defect of that MC NIZ tax revenue article was that it did NOT emphasize that those taxes didn't go to the state coffer, but rather were diverted to Reilly's privately owned empire debt service.
ReplyDelete9:24 here. Good point, Mike. The whole thing was doomed to failure from the start. I say this because most of the early tax revenues were just SHIFTED to an Allentown address. They were from sources already being paid in some other Pennsylvania municipality!
ReplyDeleteI remain shocked the entire scam has been allowed to continue this long with no end in sight. Sure, downtown Allentown looks a little more glossy on first glance, but beneath the surface the situation is not good for Pennsylvania taxpayers. It’s a racket, but it’s Allentown’s racket, so we only get part of the story here.
I worry that Reilly will build a couple thousand units in Ritterville with a bunch of commercial buildings with tax breaks and it will be empty with no one there and then he will sell the whole place to someone at a huge profit for use as a low income housing project. I just can't imagine why anyone who can afford to buy a house would buy a house in that location and send their kids to ASD public schools. This whole concept at this location makes me very skeptical.
ReplyDelete