Coffee-Roasting Site Planned On East Marion Street In Lancaster

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

Kyle Sollenberger often walks along East Marion Street with his children from his East Orange Street home to Musser Park.

He would pass the vacant, dilapidated building that was the former home of Gam Manufacturing.

An entrepreneur, Sollenberger began thinking about ways to better the neighborhood by reusing the building at 315 E. Marion St..

On Monday, Sollenberger and his architect laid out plans to members of Lancaster city’s Historical Commission.

A city cafe, which he declined to name, is interested in using the building to roast coffee. Previously, before the city’s Zoning Hearing Board, he said the cafe operators also would have a bakery in the building to prepare items for sale in the cafe.  Employee training also would occur there.

Read more: http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/828453_Coffee-roasting-site-planned-on-East-Marion-Street-in-Lancaster.html#ixzz2ONOqY3PT

Latrobe Air Traffic Control Tower To Close

250 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The air traffic control tower at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Latrobe will close, along with 148 others at small airports nationwide, as the Federal Aviation Administration cuts $637 million from its budget by November.

The closures will not force airports to shut down, but pilots will now coordinate takeoffs and landings by radio without ground controllers’ help.

“We will work with the airports and the operators to ensure the procedures are in place to maintain the high level of safety at non-towered airports,” FAA administrator Michael Huerta said in a news release.

Spirit Airlines — which flies out of Latrobe to Dallas, Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Fort Lauderdale and Orlando, Fla. — plans to operate a normal schedule, airline spokeswoman Misty Pinson said.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/westmoreland/latrobe-air-traffic-control-tower-to-close-680511/#ixzz2ONMqa1Kx

Attorney: Ex-Pittsburgh Police Chief Nate Harper To Plead Guilty

A map of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with its neighborhoods labeled. For use primarily in the list of Pittsburgh neighborhoods. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Former Pittsburgh police chief Nate Harper intends to plead guilty after a grand jury returned an indictment against him Friday charging him with conspiracy and tax evasion, his attorney said.

Robert Del Greco Jr. said the evidence against Mr. Harper was “unambiguous.”  He said Mr. Harper would plead guilty to all five counts contained in the indictment without modification.

“It’s a felony,” Mr. Del Greco said this afternoon.  “It’s cost him his career, possibly his pension.  I don’t know that I could put it any better.”

He said his client’s actions were indefensible, that the “lure of the account” proved an “irresistible temptation.”

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/region/federal-grand-jury-meeting-suspended-police-finance-manager-on-hand-680415/#ixzz2ONLqh8zO

$3M Sewer Project On Tap For Pottstown

POTTSTOWN — A multi-year sewer pipe replacement program estimated to cost just shy of $3 million is being planned by the Pottstown Borough Authority.

The news come at the same time as the release of a new report his month by the American Society of Civil Engineers, which gives the nation a D+ grade for the state of our infrastructure.

While that might sound bad, it is actually the first time since the reports began to be issued in 1998, that the nation’s grade has actually improved.

The Report Card concludes that to raise the grades and get America’s infrastructure at an acceptable level, a total investment of $3.6 trillion is needed by 2020 across all 16 sectors highlighted in the report, including roads, bridges, rail, dams, water and sewer infrastructure.

Read more:  http://www.pottsmerc.com/article/20130323/NEWS01/130329807/-3m-sewer-project-on-tap-for-pottstown#full_story

Crime Is Focus Of Community Forum

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

With quality of life one of the top factors businesses consider in deciding to move into a community, the Greater Berks Chamber of Commerce & Industry focused on one local quality-of-life issue at its “State of the Community” breakfast Friday: crime.

Panel members, chief among them Berks County District Attorney John T. Adams, said crime is not as bad as it might seem.

“There’s a misperception of the rate of crime in the city,” Adams told more than 100 Chamber members gathered at the Crowne Plaza Reading, Wyomissing.

He noted that, comparing the local rates of murders, robberies and assaults with comparable cities and counties in the region, Reading and Berks are in the middle of the pack, not worst of the pack.

Read more:  http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=463136

Reading Regional Airport Tower Won’t Close, For Now

English: Reading Airport, Pennsylvania (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Reading Regional Airport‘s air traffic control and training tower is not among the 149 air traffic control facilities that the Federal Aviation Administration announced Friday will close at small airports around the country starting next month.

The FAA made the decision on orders to trim hundreds of millions dollars from its budget as part of the sequestration plan.

Laura Brown, FAA spokeswoman, said only federal contract towers were targeted for closing, adding that Reading is an FAA tower that will require negotiations with the air traffic controllers union before any action is taken.

However, she said the FAA has proposed closing the Reading tower.

Read more:  http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=463163