Colin McEvoy has the huge news:
National Penn Bancshares Inc., the parent company of Lehigh Valley bank KNBT, will move its headquarters into Two Center City, a part of the Allentown hockey arena redevelopment project, the company announced this morning in a news release [...]
The Allentown operation will be in developer J.B. Reilly‘s building at Seventh and Hamilton streets and employ 275 people in the new tax district, the company said [...]
“It certainly is good news,” Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce President Tony Iannelli said, calling the company’s move a “shot in the arm” for Allentown’s redevelopment effort. “Who would have thought this kind of activity three, four years ago?”
He said the move is the reverse of what’s been seen in recent years, as this company is moving from the suburbs into an urban core.
An “extremely solid organization like KNBT” making a commitment to Center City Allentown is all about “building credibility,” he said. It started with J.B. Reilly bringing its “strong reputation” to the project and has been enhanced by National Penn, he said.
This is the Thode-Geeting cheap rents theory in action. KNBT is based in suburban Boyertown now, but cheap rents in the NIZ make Allentown a more attractive destination, so they’re moving. 245 jobs downtown will help enlarge the market (in addition to hundreds of others), allowing the downtown area to support all kinds of other service businesses that the market is too small to support today. The more people that are working (and living) downtown, the more businesses the market can support.
You’re forgetting the other 1/2 of the Geeting Cheap Rents Theory – to all you businesses in Boyertown that will now go out of business:
Fuck You, you deserve to have your lives destroyed for now bowing in subservience to Government’s control of your lives. Oh, you have kids in college and tuition to pay? Fuck them, the world needs ditch diggers (and bloggers) too.
And the town of Boyertown, a hail/hearty Fuck You too.
If there’s a God, Nat Penn’s loan losses to those businesses will be $40 or $50 million so that the rent isn’t so cheap after all.
John you crazy
I repeat – this could have been done right for the betterment of the entire region. Instead it was done wrong and for the betterment of a few well-connected and wealthy individuals, and carries enormous risk for the vast majority of the Lehigh Valley.
You don’t understand what’s at risk here and worse, you don’t care how many people and businesses get destroyed. You are pathetic.
I think your zero-sum view of this is stupid. The real estate market can and will adjust to a lower level of rents, and a lower rate of rent growth.
It’s by no means a zero-sum view, please stop trying to put my arguments into a little box.
You’re right, everything adjusts. Why not have it adjust positively, and have the entire region grow, and have many thousands of people benefit?
Instead we have this.
You don’t understand basics in finance, economics, development and economic growth, and I’d wager you don’t know whether Boyertown is north, south, east or west of Allentown – so I don’t expect you to understand the destructive capability of what’s going on here. If this is mismanaged (a near certainty) people WILL be destroyed and the potential for failure is substantially higher than it needed to be.
Your view is that there is a static number of businesses, and that if some relocate to Allentown, it means less for other municipalities. That is stupid.
John has resorted to foul language and name calling….
Hey Jeff, how are ya?
Yep I did. I don’t expect you to change your tune given the pile of money JB has paid his sister – er, you – to prostitute yourself. Unless Geeting is also getting paid, I’d hope (why I don’t know) that he’d look at the facts here.
Unfortunately he’s incapable of that.
You really need to get over the fact that you think I am Jeff Vaughn, I am not… it only makes you sound crazier. You are starting to wonder into conspiracy theory land.
Nice try.
What’s your point then? It is very difficult to understand how someone can acknowledge the relationship between demand and prices in one case but deny it in others.