Pennsylvania Act 71 of July 1, 2004, “legalizing” slot machine and horse racing-track (casino/racino) gambling occurred only four months following the admission by leaders of the National Museum of Industrial History including its Executive Director Stephen Donches that the project lacked sufficient funding to proceed.

The same kind of scam is being employed in Bethlehem’s sister city, Easton, located nine miles to the east on State Route 22 and on the Delaware River bordering New Jersey, to construct an interstate transportation bus terminal and/or depot-parking garage-shopping center-condominium mutation in the flood plain of the Delaware River and a major Delaware River tributary, Bushkill Creek.

This mutant development represents the eastern terminus along Larry Holmes Drive and State Routes 248 and 611, of a more grandiose development officially titled “Bushkill Village,” whose western terminus is Easton’s North 13th Street and an abandoned brick structure that once was home to the Simon Silk Mill.
North 13th Street intersects with another State Route identified as Lafayette Street and Bushkill Drive.

Bushkill Drive parallels Bushkill Creek between this intersection and Larry State Route 611, also known as North Delaware Drive.

This stretch of creek and parallel roadway is known officially on City of Easton records as the “Bushkill Creek Corridor.:

This corridor is bordered to the south by the privately owned Easton Cemetery and State Route 22.
The City of Easton and Lafayette College, located in the College Hill neighborhood of Easton, are in the process of acquiring more than 33 privately owned properties in the “Bushkill Creek Corridor” for the construction of a new Aldous Huxlian urban village.

The City of Easton in cooperation with Lafayette College, Northampton County, the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have already acquired many of the properties targeted for this project, many under the coercive threat of eminent domain.

Though this “New Urban Village” would compete directly with the business and commercial interests of the historic Downtown Easton neighborhood, among its most ardent advocates are the Downtown Neighborhood Association and an organization known as the “New Urbanists of Easton.”

The membership of both organizations comprises mostly a newcomer-to-the area, yuppie-style, trust-fund-kiddie-type demographic with little or no appreciation of the City’s rich history, culture, and architectural heritage.