Mar 23, 2023

Mistake Of Parking Authority/Lanta


At the Allentown Speak Out forum, Zee, an elderly neighborhood woman, referred to the new Lanta Terminal as Port Authority. She has a point, did Allentown need a Port Authority? In reality the mission of both the Parking Authority and Lanta has become political and distorted, to the detriment of those whom they were intended to serve. I have referred to the Parking Authority in previous posts as a Frankenstein monster who preys on Allentown's poorest residents. Its appetite has recently expanded to include poorer merchants. If it wasn't enough for Lanta to remove the transfer stations from the historical stops near Hamilton Street, the Parking Authority now provides eating and shopping venues for their captured bus riders at the "Terminal". Once upon a time, in Allentown's heyday, the parking meters were monitored by two meter maids in golf carts, employed by the police department. The original mission of the Parking Authority was to facilitate parking for the merchants' behalf. Lanta was suppose to provide the public with transportation to those destinations which enhanced the economic well being of both the riders and the community. The new Allentown Transportation Center fails to serve both the merchants and the riders, conversely, it serves itself by being a mini-mall with virtual prisoners. Allentown City Council now has a member who is on the Lanta Board. The previous Council had a member on the Parking Authority. All the merchants are suffering on Hamilton Street, and already three are closing their doors; City Line Creamery, Hamilton Perk Cafe, and Mish Mash Boutique. The Terminal, new or not, should be closed, and the transfer stops on Hamilton Street should be restored. The public interest is better served by the survival of the Hamilton merchants, than the utilization of the parking deck's adjacent Lanta Terminal.

above reprinted from January 20, 2008

ADDENDUM March 23, 2023: I'm glad to see the Parking Authority coming under scrutiny. As a blogger who has been taking them on for over 15 years,  I marvel at how long they got away with their shenanigans. To a large part the Morning Call was responsible for them not being held accountable. When myself and others would speak out and even document their abuses, the paper turned a blind eye. In 2014 I conducted two press conferences about Authority abuses. One conference the paper ignored, and for the other they took the Authority's answers as gospel. With the press now paying attention, perhaps the best interests of the city and citizens will finally be served.

4 comments:

  1. I posted this (off-topic) on yesterday’s article, but maybe it’s more appropriate today:

    I read that the Mayor said yesterday that the RFP would go out “soon” to hire someone to look at the steps needed to abolish the Parking Authority.

    “Soon”? City Council DOUBLED the amount requested by the Mayor to study the issue, and he didn’t have that all ready to go before he brought it to Council? The only thing that should have been needed after the meeting was a quick change in the amount.

    Call me a cynic, but it seems like the Mayor isn’t as serious about this issue as he’s like to have residents believe. Instead of putting it on the fast track, he seems to be slow-walking this one instead.

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  2. A contrarian submitted a long defense of the Lanta transfer station. Please note that the first part of the post is 15 years old, and the topic of Lanta is mostly passé at this point, especially with virtually no merchants left on Hamilton Street. However, I did notice that Lanta reconfigured their parcel to accommodate a new Reilly Strata, or shenanigans as usual with them and the Parking Authority.

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  3. The presentation of the the low income apartment building at the Community Music School property in front of City Council and the request for $1 million dollars in ARPA funds yesterday piqued my interest. This project was crammed into the parking lot on that site and granted zoning relief by the ZHB despite the protests of dozens of impacted residents. During the hearing, the developer, waived around a letter from City of Allentown staff urging approval of the needed relief. Now those locally impacted residents have to help pay for the project!

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  4. anon@10:32; This is the topic in tomorrow's post, so I'll defer reply until then. You're welcome to resubmit the comment tomorrow, but the blog format doesn't allow me to do so for you.

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