14 Houses Put On Blighted List By Reading Panel

The city’s Blighted Property Review Committee on Thursday certified 14 more houses as blighted, despite requests from some owners for more time to fix them.

It also removed six properties from its target list because owners had resolved problems. And it tabled action on three other properties.

Despite the certifications – which allow the city to take the properties, by eminent domain if necessary – the owners are in little jeopardy of the homes being wrested from them any time soon.

The Reading Redevelopment Authority, which would take ownership of the homes, has said it won’t take any property unless the city has an identified use for it – which is rare.

Read more: http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=386947

Garden Party at Washington/Chestnut Sts Park, Pottstown

Saturday -May 19, 2012 – Garden Party at the Park- From 10-11:30am

Help plant a garden in the park. We’ll be sprucing up the park with annuals and mulch. Last week a small herb garden (donated by Genesis Housing) was planted next to the Police Sub Station building.  A tour of the new Mosaic Community garden at 443 Chestnut St. will be offered for those that are interested.  Light refreshments will be served.

RSVP by Friday, May 18th you will be attending to vivapottstown@hotmail.com

Easton Opens New Visitors Center

 

Skyline of Easton, PA from Lafayette College (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tourists heading to downtown Easton have a new place to get information and plan their Lehigh Valley experience.

The city’s new visitors center opened Friday in the lobby of the Sigal Museum on Northampton Street. The museum added brochures and pamphlets about Easton and Lehigh Valley attractions and staffers have been trained to assist visitors.

“People still want information face to face,” said Michael Sterschi, president of Discover Lehigh Valley at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Easton considers tourism, along with arts and entertainment, a critical component of revitalizing downtown, said Gretchen Longenbach, the city’s director of community and economic development.

Read more: http://www.mcall.com/news/local/easton/mc-easton-visitors-center-sigal-museum-20120511,0,1914215.story

West Reading Gets Grants For Streets Work

Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Berks County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Big changes will be coming to several West Reading streets this summer, thanks to $300,000 in grants from the state Department of Community and Economic Development.

According to Dean L. Rohrbach, who manages the borough’s Elm Street program, West Reading will be designated as one of the first Keystone Communities Elm Streets in the state, making it eligible for various revitalization grants through the Elm Street program.

“If we’re not among the first, we will be the first,” he said.

The borough has been approved for two grants: one for $250,000 for public improvements and one for $50,000 to help implement various revitalization programs.

Read more: http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=383070

MOSAIC Community Land Trust, Pottstown – Registration April 28, May 5, May 12

Pottstown, PA, 4/23/2012 — Mosaic Community Land Trust is holding registration and orientation for new members of its community garden at 423 Chestnut Street on the following Saturdays: April 28, May 5, and May 12 from 9 AM to 12 PM at the garden.  On May 5th gardeners will be able to choose the plants they would like in their own plot, and the plants will be delivered to the garden on May 12, which will be a day for planting.

There are plots still available for this season.  Plot rates are $25 for households with incomes below $30,000; those with incomes above this level will pay $50.  Groups and organizations can plant a plot for a flat $100.00 season fee.  In addition to offering families a safe place to grow healthy, organic food, this fee includes the choice of plants, water on-site, the use of Mosaic tools, workshops, and advice from experienced gardeners.  Children are welcome and the garden is available for field trips for students.

To apply and register for your plot or to set up a field trip, please contact Sue Repko at 609-658-9043 or srepko@mosaiccommunitylandtrust.org or Mary-Beth Bacallao Lydon at flyeredup8831@gmail.com.

MOSAIC Community Land Trust was established in 2011 and is a registered 501 (c) 3 Non-Profit organization. MOSAIC Community Land Trust provides permanently affordable housing and healthy living choices to people of modest means, and through education and participation, creates a vital community with a focus on arts and culture to stabilize neighborhoods and improve the quality of life in Pottstown.

Lancaster’s Lemon Street Expands Downtown To The North With Stores, Markets And Apartments

Editor’s note:  Lancaster is leading the way as a highly walkable urban community.  Continued development to bring people and businesses downtown is paying big dividends.

 

Fifteen years ago, real estate developer Ed Drogaris sought to breathe life into a mostly moribund block on North Prince Street.

 

His Prince Street Center project eventually redeveloped two vacant tobacco warehouses and a former car dealership.

 

They became 130,000 square feet of residential, commercial, retail and restaurant space.

 

In recent years, his efforts have shifted to the corner of the block.

 

Read more: http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/626451_Sweet-on-Lemon.html#ixzz1sDpjV5U6

 

McDonald’s $3.5 Million Redo In Sinking Spring

Editor’s note:  Now this is being a good neighbor!  Two Roy’s Rants thumbs up!

The 39-year-old McDonald’s restaurant in Sinking Spring is being razed this week, and a brand-new McDonald’s should be completed by July 15.

The $3.5 million project is a joint venture of McDonald’s Corp. and the private investment of Robert Hughes, owner of the Sinking Spring McDonald’s for the past nine years and owner of three others in the area.

Hughes has included a pocket park in his plans. The park will have benches and outdoor seating for McDonald’s customers, but anyone will be able to use the park, Hughes said.

Read more: http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=379434

Lancaster Downtown Investment Group Looks To Future

Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Lancaster County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Last fall, representatives of Lancaster city’s Downtown Investment District began asking what the organization should be doing to improve the city’s center over the next few years.

Among the recommendations were to consider expanding the district’s boundaries, seek more funding from nonprofit property owners and provide funding for downtown surveillance cameras.

Drafting a plan for those things will take more time than DID has before its charter expires at the end of this year, its officials say.

With that in mind, the organization is proposing a short-term charter renewal  that would keep current initiatives in place. New endeavors would wait until the next charter renewal period

Read more: http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/616728_Downtown-investment-group-looks-to-future.html

Enterprising Homeowners Changing The Landscape Of Ailing Neighborhoods Through ‘Blotting

When Buck Harris and his partner, Mike, bought a 145-year-old Italianate house to restore adjacent to Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood two decades ago, the neighborhood ambience included drug shootings and corner prostitutes.

“It was a war zone,” Harris says. “The neighborhood was in dramatic decline at the time. It was known as where you go to get heroin.”

Now, as Harris and other intrepid homeowners have gobbled up the vacant and foreclosed lots surrounding their houses over the years and worked to wipe out drug-related crime, the area has been transformed. Many of the nearly block-long lots, or “blots,” they have created look as if they were lifted from a verdant suburb, with mature trees and a wide expanse of lawn.

Harris’ neighborhood is just one example of how enterprising homeowners are changing the landscape in many depopulated cities, bringing the look of spacious suburbs to abandoned urban neighborhoods.

Read more: http://realestate.msn.com/inner-city-suburbs

Thousands Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day In Phoenixville

Editor’s note:  Can you say cha-ching for downtown Phoenixville merchants.  These kinds of regular events are essential for revitalization.  So what happened in downtown Pottstown for St. Patrick’s Day?  Were there hundreds of people celebrating, dozens or just the usual suspects loitering at the clock tower watching the crickets and tumbleweeds roll down High Street?  You say, “But we don’t have an Irish Pub?”  I say, “We could if someone actively recruited more restaurants and stores to fill High Street.”  Marketing, marketing, marketing!

PHOENIXVILLE, Pa. — The streets of Phoenixville were filled with the spirit of the Irish Saturday as thousands donned their green in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day.

The festive mood continued inside of Bridge Street favorite Molly Maguire’s Irish Restaurant & Pub.

General Manager Neil Bonner said his favorite part of St. Patrick’s Day is being surrounded by good people.

“Everyone comes out just to have a good time and they all get to be just a little bit Irish for a day,” he explained.

Read more: http://www.pottsmerc.com/article/20120317/NEWS01/120319493/thousands-celebrate-st-patrick-s-day-in-phoenixville&pager=full_story

GoggleWorks Apartment Project Uses An Unusual Steel Framing Process

Image via Wikipedia

The wraps on the new GoggleWorks apartments on Washington Street in Reading will be long gone by early summer. In the meantime, the $16.7 million building remains swathed in plastic to keep workers warm.

The plastic also has been covering up an unusual construction process based on a metal framing system. Instead of a typical structural steel framework filled in with masonry blocks and wooden planks, it has prefabricated metal framing and walls that stack in place made by ClarkDietrich Building Systems, an Ohio-based provider of steel construction products and services.

Eric Burkey, president of Reading-based Burkey Construction Co., the project’s general contractor, said the walls are set in place and the cold-formed steel joists and metal deck are set before the walls are placed on the floor above. The wall panels literally sit one on top of the other and carry through the overall height of the building.

“This kind of system has been around for a while,” Burkey said. “It just hasn’t been used a lot.”

Read more: http://businessweekly.readingeagle.com/?p=2331

New Brew Pub Revitalizing Long-Vacant Five Points Landmark In Easton

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Troy Reynard spoke over the pop of nail guns, buzzing of saws and clunking of shovels as he pointed to bare joists, weak beams and a battered and pocked terrazzo floor.

The Mount Vernon building at 542 Northampton St. in Easton has weathered the ages as a boarding house, hotel, bar, restaurant and, according to legend, a popular prohibition-era brothel. To Reynard, the Mount Vernon is more than the ghosts of past, faded incarnations. He plans to make a living out of the old beauty.

“This is our big thing,” said Reynard, 48, of Forks Township.

He, his wife, Kathy, and partners Brad and Judy Nelson, under the moniker Vagabond Properties, plan to pour much of their savings into the landmark building and create Two Rivers Brewery, the city’s first micro brew pub since Weyerbacher moved into the industrial park on the South Side more than a decade ago.

Read more: http://www.mcall.com/news/local/easton/mc-easton-landmark-becomes-microbrewery-20120302,0,7123752.story

New PAID Director Relishes Challenge Of Urban Economic Development

Editor’s note:  90 days into a new job and he scores!  Color me impressed!

POTTSTOWN, Pa. - When your job is to try to attract businesses to a particular place, having a sense of place is pretty important.

So it´s probably a good thing that Steve Bamford has a boatload of real estate experience to call upon in his role as executive director of the Pottstown Area Industrial Development, also known as PAID Inc.

More than two years ago, the Urban Land Institute recommended, among other things, that economic development be taken out of the hands of the politicians and put into the hands of a professional staff. The result was a re-imagining of the largely moribund PAID organization into an active economic development arm with a responsibility sharing agreement between the borough, the school district and the Montgomery Redevelopment Authority.

Read more: http://business-news.thestreet.com/the-mercury/story/new-paid-director-relishes-challenge-urban-economic-development/1

Easton Mayor Applauds Crime Reduction, Economic Development

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Editor’s note:  Will we ever see a headline like this with POTTSTOWN in it?????

Mayor Sal Panto Jr. believes there is much to applaud in Easton, Pa. — a falling crime rate, promising redevelopment projects — but also much yet to do.

Panto outlined his vision for 2012, and mentioned some of the successes of 2011, in a “state of the city” speech Wednesday night before City Council, noting an 11 percent drop in crime overall, and a 37 percent drip in violent crime since 2006.

“Easton is becoming safer for families,” Panto said.

It is a theme he has stuck with in the march to redevelop the downtown into a place to work, eat and live, not just visit from time to time. Panto talked in the speech of a 24/7 downtown, which he said can only happen with new development drawing in full-time residents.

Read more: http://www.mcall.com/news/local/easton/mc-easton-state-of-the-city-20120222,0,5829329.story

Foot Traffic Draws New Business To Kennett Square

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A store owner has moved his store from Delaware to Kennett Square because he likes how vibrant the downtown business community has become.

Mystique, a store that offers men’s and women’s clothing, opened this week at 11 E. State St.

A grand opening is planned for March 2.

“Kennett Square is one of the top 10 small towns in the nation, and they have monthly events, which is wonderful,” said Bill McClane, owner of the store. “I really like the mix here with the variety of stores and all the people walking around.”

Read more:: http://business-news.thestreet.com/daily-local-news/story/foot-traffic-draws-new-business-kennett-square-4/1

West Reading: Keeping It Fresh On The Avenue

When West Reading’s state and community-funded Main Street Program on Penn Avenue reached maturity in 2005, a total of 66 businesses had been created in six years, along with more than 125 jobs.

Grant funding of $6 million from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development revitalized the streetscape with new facades, sidewalk and traffic-lane design, and pedestrian and street lighting.

What’s going on in West Reading to maintain and expand the cycle of growth on the hippest street in the county? Some businesses still flounder, while others take root and grow.

Read more: http://businessweekly.readingeagle.com/?p=1908

Pottstown – Crime vs. Revitalization

Pottstown had a murder this week.  Based on information found in the newspaper, the home is owned by a company in Exton.  Enough said.

I have been quiet about crime lately because I feel it falls on deaf ears.  However, if we think people don’t investigate crime rates before deciding to relocate to a specific community we would be naïve.  That goes for business as well.  We keep talking about how Pottstown is going to revitalize but it’s not happening.  A great big problem aka the elephant in the room is the crime rate and the horrible reputation this community has in the outside world.  Yes, life does exist beyond the borough lines and people do pay attention to what happens here.  An UGG BOOTS ban in the Pottstown Middle School made the national news.

Pottstown’s crime rate went up drastically between 2009 and 2010.  Our city-data.com score rose from 456.6 to 535.6.  The U.S. average is 319.1.  Pottstown’s crime rate is significantly higher (BAD).  As a matter of fact, it was higher than many of the largest cities in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 2010.  Yes, you read that correctly!

City                                Population       Crime Index

Allentown, PA             118,032 (2010)    City-Data Crime Index – 476.5 (2010)

Bethlehem, PA              74,982 (2010)    City-Data Crime Index – 236.1 (2010)

Lancaster, PA               59,433 (2010)    City-Data Crime Index – 519.4 (2010)

York, PA                        44,718 (2010)    City-Data Crime Index – 582.4 (2010)

Scranton, PA                76,089 (2010)    City-Data Crime Index – 275.4 (2010)

Philadelphia, PA      1,526,006 (2010)    City-Data Crime Index – 567.7 (2010)

Pittsburgh, PA             305,704 (2010)    City-Data Crime Index – 411.3 (2010)

Erie, PA                      101,786 (2010)    City-Data Crime Index – 347.4 (2010)

Reading, PA                 88,082 (2010)    City-Data Crime Index – 548.3 (2010)

Harrisburg, PA              49,528 (2010)    City-Data Crime Index – 721.6 (2010)

POTTSTOWN, PA         22,377 (2010)    City-Data Crime Index – 535.6 (2010)

I find this evidence both appalling and disgraceful.  Pottstown was the 74^th largest municipality in Pennsylvania as of the 2010 census.  We should not have higher crime than six of the major cities in this state.  We are below Philadelphia and Reading, but not by much! Harrisburg is evidently in a class by itself!

My point being, this information is very easy to find.  Millions of people use sites like City-data.com to research communities before moving to or investing in them.  So borough leadership, what exactly is the game plan to correct Pottstown’s out of control crime problem?  Ignoring the problem is not a solution!

Somebody better get a clue, like yesterday!

First Friday In Lansdale Moves Forward With New Leadership

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LANSDALE, PA  – The committee to run the borough’s First Friday festival, formed earlier this week over coffee, has only three members and is just beginning to formulate a plan.

That’s according to Charles Booz, whose family owns the Chantilly Lace Florist at 29-31 West Main Street.

Booz said the fledgling committee, which includes himself, Ellen Foulke – manager of the Lansdale Business Center – and his mother Margie, plans to meet with the borough’s parks and recreation and public safety committees next month to find out what is required to hold the event.

Read more: http://thereporteronline.com/articles/2012/01/27/news/doc4f233e4302e5e074103950.txt

Company Unveils Reading Outlet Center Building Plans

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The company that bought the huge No. 1 building at the Reading Outlet Center gave the city a first glimpse Thursday of its plans.

Those include business and commercial space on the first floor, about 150 market-rate apartments on the second through fourth floors and penthouse office space on the top floor of the building at Ninth and Douglas streets.

They also include razing the northwest corner of the block-sized building to erect an attached parking garage with more than 250 spaces, an interior courtyard with playground equipment, lighting and fountains, and security guards monitoring the entire complex.

“Our plan was well received and we are excited to move forward,” said Bill Hynes, a Nazareth, Northampton County-based real estate developer who’s part of Think Loud Development.

Read more: http://www.mcall.com/news/local/

Sly Fox Brewing Company’s Promotional Video About Their New Pottstown Brewery