Bethlehem is now involved in a U.S. Occupational and Safety Administration (OSHA) issue like the one that occurred in Easton in 1995 involving the Easton parking Authority, police station, and Two Rivers Landing, as revealed in yesterday’ edition of The Morning Call.

Just as OSHA shut down work on South Bethlehem’s Palace Row recently, in 1995 it posted and closed the EPA garage in downtown Easton for safety reasons.

EPA’s engineering consulting company’s President Michael Dimitri personally warned the EPA and City of Easton that the garage was a threat to the public’s health, safety, and welfare.
On the strength of these letters, OSHA reopened the garage.  When Billy Bytes publications’ creator, Easton resident Billy Givens, asked OSHA about the safety of the city employees, including the police, who parked in the garage, he was advised by the Allentown office’s manager that OSHA safety regulations applied only to private- and not public-sector employees.

Today, OSHA is requiring the City of Bethlehem to relocate power lines in South Bethlehem’s “Palace Row” as a safety threat to the private-sector electrical workers, members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the IBEW.

The IBEW also played a role in Two Rivers Landing: It sold the Farr’s building that it owned or leased in the southwest corner of Easton’s Center Square for the TRL project.

The Farr’s building was supposed to house the Hugh Moore Park and National Heritage Corridor Museum.  But this phase of the project was never completed: The Congressionally appropriated funds for its creation went instead into the Crayola Factory and Store, Express McDonalds, and the clock that the Bixler and Mitmans bought from the Orr’s department store and relocated from the 300 block of Northampton Street to the entrance to the families’ jewelry store.

Besides aiding the county’s Government Center expansion, the EPA and the City of Easton desired a visible police presence near TRL to assuage the fears of visitors to the tourist destination in the heart of an inner city with a reputation, deserved or otherwise, for crime.

At the time, Paul Weiss Construction was under contract with the EPA and Easton in building the police station.  Easton had sold its police station on S. Union Street to Northampton County for its long-range Government Center expansion and relocated it to the parking garage.

The City of Easton, the Binney & Smith Crayola Crayon Factory and Store, Express McDonald’s, Hugh Moore Park Inc., the Delaware and Lehigh Natigation Canal National Heritage Corridor, and Bixler Jewelers were also busy at that time.
They were preparing for the grand opening of Two Rivers Landing in 1996.

Desperate, the EPA and City of Easton inveighed upon Weiss Construction to write letters to OSHA’s Allentown office certifying the safety of the garage and police station.

Easton Mayor Thomas F. Goldsmith’s Director Kristy Miers also wrote letters to OSHA assuring the garage’s safety.

Today’s Morning Call article also reveals that South Bethlehem’s historic and conservation district is illegal.

It violates Pennsylvania Act 167 of 1961, the enabling legislation authorizing communties to create local historic districts.

This is the act under which the legal local historic districts in Center City Bethlehem north of the Lehigh River were created.

Easton’s recently created local historic district in downtown Easton also violates Act 167.

Easton is currently in the process of creating another illegal local historic district for the College Hill neighborhood.