J.B. Reilly said this week that the downtown development is bringing 3,000 jobs to Allentown's $600 million NIZ. Between the National Penn Bank, and his other prospective tenants, that figure seems high. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, and considering everything else he's gotten, we can easily throw that in, each job will cost the state taxpayers $200,000.00. Now, this is nay-sayer math, but then again, this is a blog. Talking of nay-saying, last night over 200 unemployed packed into a center city church, hoping for some benefit from the NIZ. I think a church was an appropriate venue, because that will take a lot of prayer. As I had written in a previous blog post, the new jobs, except for the peanut vendors at the arena, will be white collar, college degree required. This brings us to the photograph shown above. As they demolish the former Gallery Building in the 900 block of Hamilton Street, we see that the steel beams were fabricated at the former Lehigh Structural Steel. At one time, the buildings on Hamilton Street were built by entrepreneurs, to accommodate our prosperity. Now they are funded by taxpayers, hoping to steal another town's employees.
above reprinted from November of 2013
ADDENDUM SEPTEMBER 18, 2023: A decade has passed since I wrote the post above, and we're now funding a $Billion dollars worth of real estate for J.B. Outrage that a privately owned empire is being paid for by the taxpayers is still limited to this blog. The Morning Call continues to praise and promote each new building as progress. The former Lehigh Structural Steel site itself is now part of the NIZ, and hosts a
new commercial building by the Jaindl dynasty.
I have a hard time understanding why the Neighborhood Improvement Zone is allowed to continue on. For taxpayers statewide, this “one of a kind” program has created a money pit that keeps getting deeper.
ReplyDeleteAs a citizen voice for the people, forget about the Morning Call. Very little in that paper is useful. Much of it deceptive and untruthful. Unfortunately, the Morning Call and WFMZ TV pretty much act as a tag team of willful ignorance. Readers and viewers go about their day clueless about politician misuse of their tax dollars.
The "Waterfront Development" was announced by Jaindl over a decade ago. Now I understand there was remediation needed to restore the old steel mill site and rid the ground of contaminants. Now it's 2023, almost 2024. How many people are actually working in the ONE building that was erected ?
ReplyDeleteAs the critic of the NIZ, I find the Jaindl building to have more value to the taxpayers. I have amended the post to include a link about the building. As of yet,I don't believe that many people are working there.
DeleteMy point is always the same. These state tax payer “investments” only have value to this state if people who live and work in these new buildings were not ALREADY living and working in Pennsylvania. So far, after all these years of existence, the Allentown Neighborhood Improvement Zone is lacking in its ability to attract NEW dollars to Pennsylvania.
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