This is straight from the Morning Call
"Officials and developers broke ground for The Standard at 111 N. Sixth St., plans for which call for a four-story, 196,000-square-foot apartment building with 130 studio apartments, 89 one-bedroom apartments, 38 two-bedroom apartments, a dog park and a pedestrian bridge to a nearby parking garage.
J.B. Reilly, president and founder of City Center Group, said it will be the developer’s biggest apartment in downtown Allentown and that it will be complete in the next 12 months"
I mean where should I start?
Positives:
1. A big new building in a struggling downtown that has nothing to offer its tenants .
2. See number 1
Negatives:
1. No one who currently lives in the city will be able to live there.
2. No one who lives outside of the city wants to live there.
3. I believe this is covered in the NIZ so NO tax revenue on this until like 2097 or when we are all dead.
4. This is starting to get into the ghetto. Well just deeper into it.
How is this something Allentown needs?
11 comments:
It's been said before but it's worth repeating, many fear these apartment building will eventually become truly affordable/section 8 or the equivalent. That would be a demographic disaster for a city that already has a very high percentage of low income residents. These build them they will come government schemes always end up badly.
“Build it and they will come.”
This is my theory as well, that JB Reilly will eventually sell the whole collection of apartments to the public for use as subsidized public housing.
What enity, precisely, is going to shell out the money to buy these buildings? This isn’t a rhetorical question.
Reilly isn’t a young man, he must have a 20, 30 year plan.
Agreed, not a good future, and it really won't matter what Reilly sells for as the tax revenue paid his debt burden thus it will be free money. I hear the 97% occurpancy rate but see little foot traffic at the multiple buildings I see and walk past every work day.
Who is going to buy this instant slum? It is difficult to see private investors ponying up. The city certainly can’t afford it and is unlikely to go into the rental business. The State has already paid for it once and seems unlikely to buy it again.
The Allentown Housing Authority?
Chicago has extensive experience with high rise low income (Robert Taylor buildings etc.) housing and it’s not pretty.
Maybe Pat Browne has some ideas.
Why would Reilly "sell" us what we ALREADY PAID FOR? Seems to me, should the whole NIZ scheme go belly up, it's already ours...
JB will get as much money out of Allentown, sell his properties to slumlords like Hendricks, Affa and other City officials and JB will leave to the Hamptons with his buckets of NIZ money.
The city officials in the rental game will in turn convert all the properties to HUD qualifying residences and enrich themselves using federal tax dollars and city grants.
I have been reading about all the "15 minute cities" they are proposing and about all the "rewilding" they're proposing... SO, all these housing units start to make sense. They don't care what the occupancy is now, but if and when we lose our property rights, as is already happening in China and other places, they will be very occupied and we will pay rent to the government. Do some deep, deep dives of what is actually happening in China... you'll soil yourself!
What's happening in China... https://www.youtube.com/@chinatruths
If Rodger McClain can afford a second house in Florida JB Reilly can go off to the Hamptons any time he pleases.
Post a Comment