Allentown OKs Plans For Four City Center

English: City of Allentown from east side (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Allentown Planning Commission on Tuesday approved plans for Four City Center, a $30 million, five-story luxury apartment and retail development proposed for Seventh and Linden streets, across from the city’s new arena.

Working with Pennrose Properties, City Center Investment Corp. plans two buildings that will include 168 amenity-packed apartments, half of which will be one-bedroom and the other half two-bedroom units, renting for at least $1,000 a month. They will also house 12-15 first-floor retail and restaurant spaces.

Construction could begin as soon as November and is expected to be complete by the end of 2014.  The goal is to bring more middle-income residents downtown to complement multiple new office buildings, support retailers and inject life into Hamilton Street, which empties out at night and on weekends.

The plans include a large five-story apartment complex with center courtyard, coupled with a smaller three-story, primarily retail structure sitting astride a brick walkway that ties into the city’s Arts Park.  They also include a 600-square-foot pocket park.

Read more: http://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-allentown-four-center-city-20130910,0,158806.story#ixzz2eXXYU2h3
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Air Products To Set Up Shop In Downtown Allentown

The PPL Building (seen here in the distance) is the tallest building in Allentown, Pennsylvania. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Downtown Allentown has attracted a new tenant — one of the region’s nameplate companies.

Air Products of Trexlertown said Thursday it had signed a lease for space at Two City Center, the 11-story office tower being built on the site of the former First National Bank building at Seventh and Hamilton streets, across from the city’s new hockey arena.

The company — one of two Fortune 500 companies in the Lehigh Valley and the region’s third-largest employer with more than 3,600 local workers — expects to move its liquefied natural gas commercial and engineering teams to the building next summer.

“We feel locating these teams at this new development is a meaningful contribution and visible commitment to the revitalization of the city,” Air Products Senior Vice President John Stanley said in a news release.

Read more: http://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-air-products-leases-city-center-space-20130808,0,7399771.story#ixzz2bXcxcx9L
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Allentown’s City Center Gets NIZ Pay Day Of $14.4 Million

The PPL Building (seen here in the distance) is the tallest building in Allentown, Pennsylvania. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Close to half of the $31.8 million in mostly state tax dollars swept up by Allentown‘s arena zone last year will go to the private developer erecting an 11-story office building across Seventh Street from the arena.

City Center Investment Corp. will get $14.4 million of the tax dollars generated by its projects to put toward its construction and land acquisition loans.  The Allentown Neighborhood Improvement Zone Development Authority will get $17.4 million to pay its debt for building PPL Center.

About $2 million would go into state coffers from a part of the city that is estimated to have been generating $22 million in state money before the Neighborhood Improvement Zone was created.

The figures were released Wednesday by ANIZDA Executive Director Sara Hailstone, a month after The Morning Call filed a Right-to-Know request for the information, which was compiled April 6 by authority consultants Compass Point and Concannon Miller.

Read more:  http://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-allentown-arena-zone-tax-dollars-20130529,0,4840494.story

Allentown Hockey Arena Zone Businesses Putting Up Money For Downtown Improvements, Facades

The PPL Building (seen here in the distance) is the tallest building in Allentown, Pennsylvania. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Conscious that the borders of Allentown’s new arena district could become a visible dividing line between the haves and have nots, two downtown businesses are pumping $300,000 into the neighborhood just outside the arena zone.

City Center Investment Corp. will donate $200,000 and PPL will kick in $100,000 to help as many as 30 businesses along Hamilton Street remake their storefronts.

The deal comes as city and community leaders have spent months considering how to help the massive tax incentives undergirding the $272 million arena, hotel and office complex spill into the struggling communities just outside the Neighborhood Improvement Zone.

Under the program, businesses along Hamilton Street, between 10^th and 12^th streets — the first two blocks outside the NIZ — can get grants of roughly $15,000 to reface their shops.  By the time city officials finished their 20-minute news conference Monday to announce the program, six eligible businesses had already expressed interest in the free money.

Read more:  http://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-allentown-hockey-arena-facades-20130429-55,0,6163711.story

Allentown’s Historic Americus Hotel Could Get NIZ Tax Help

The PPL Building (seen here in the distance) is the tallest building in Allentown, Pennsylvania. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Editor’s note:  This is great news! Revitalizing our Pennsylvania cities is important!

Vacant and dilapidated the past nine years, Allentown’s 12-story Americus Center Hotel got good news this week when the state decided the city can alter the borders of its downtown arena zone to include the historic hotel.

Any changes to the borders of its Neighborhood Improvement Zone, Pennsylvania Department of Revenue officials say, must be made before bonds are sold to fund the $220 million arena complex.

With the arena authority preparing to sell bonds next month, it means city officials will have to work fast, said Sara Hailstone, Allentown director of community and economic development.

“We will need to follow up with the Department of Revenue and work through the details,” Hailstone said. “This is a great opportunity for the city.”

Read more: http://www.mcall.com/news/local/allentown/mc-allentown-pa-arena-niz-20120819,0,6877859.story