Riverwalk: Easton, PA’s, Own Home-Grown “Coconut Road”
The “Coconut Road” earmark scandal reported in today’s edition of The New York Times, “Campaign Funds for Alasskan; Road Aid to Florida,” was cited by Republican U.S. Senator and Presidential Candidate John McCain in last Tuesday evening’s debate moderated by CNN Cable TV anchor Wolf Blitzer.
U.S. Congressman Don Young of Alaska, former chairman of the House Transportation Committee, “who last year steered more than $200 million to a so-called bridge to nowhere reaching 80 people on Gravina Island, has not constituents in Florida,” reports The New YorkTimes.
“The Republican congressman whose district does include Coconut Road,” the NYT continues, “says he did not seek the money.”
Another congressional king of earmarks is Pennsylvania’s Senior U.S. Senator, Republican Arlen Specter, who in collusion with his former colleague Rich Santorum “earmarked” millions of dollars for the project in Easton, Pennsylvania, known as Riverwalk, proposed for construction in the Delaware River and Bushkill Creek flood plain.
Additional taxpayer funding for this so-called public-private partnership involving Arcadia Properties are Easton’s Republican State Senator Rob Wonderling and State Representative Robert Freeman.
Senator Wonderling recently secured a $200,000 state grant for Riverwalk. This is on top of the various state grants he has secured for the Easton Area Industrial Land Development Corporation (EAILDC).
This is the non-profit corporation, chaired by local rainmaker Andy Daub, that recommended the parking lot behind the Governor George Wolf building as the site of the so-called “Intemodal” bus terminal located in the flood-prone ground-floor level of Riverwalk.
Other public officials of governmental and quasi-governmental bodies implicated in this conspiracy are Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell and his various executive departments such as Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Department of Environmental Protection, and Department of Community and Economic Development, and the Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission; Northampton County; the City of Easton including its Department of Planning and Economic Development, Zoning Hearing Board, Redevelopment Authority, and Parking Authority; the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission (DRJTBC); and private partner Lafayette College, located in the College Hill neighborhood of Easton but the owner of numerous, recently acquired properties in the Delaware River-Bushkill Creek flood plain in what is commonly known as the Bushkill Creek Corridor.
Governor Rendell has just thrown another $700,000 at the Riverwalk project.
This is in addition to the $9 million he has already thrown to the City of Easton, Lafayette College, and Arcadia Properties for development in the flood plain of the Bushkill Creek (and Delaware River) Corridor, including N. 3rd St., the two blocks of Snyder St. connecting State Routes 611 and 22, Nevin Terrace, and the 300 block of Bushkill Drive between N. 3rd and N. 4th streets.
Governor Rendell’s latest gift is reported in both editions of today’s mainstream print media, The Morning Call and The Express-Times.
The Billy Bytes publications’ editor, Billy Givens, is an independent candidate for Easton Mayor in the November general election.
The major plank in his platform is the environment - both the natural and the man-made - including construction in the city’s flood plains and on its steep slopes and other ecologically sensitive geographical areas.
Givens may be reached at (610) 253-2868 (home phone), (610) 217-5358 (cell phone), bgivens@billybytes.com (e-mail), or www.billybytes.com/blog/ (blog).
Copyright © 2006-2008 Billy Givens
Billy Givens said,
June 7, 2007 @ 10:56 pm
Riverwalk is the barb of the “fishhook,” the metaphor I employed in my post of May 6, 2007, “Shad Season 2007.”
The eye of this hook is the old Simon Silk Mill building located on Easton’s N. 13th St.
The hook extends from there through the adjacent so-called “Moon property.”
From there, the hook’s shank continues eastward, alongside the Bushkill Creek, through the Integrated Automotive Services (IAS) property at the intersection of Bushkill Drive and Deitrich Street.
From there the hook’s shank continues through the western and southeastern Lafayette College campus to its Morris R. Williams Visual Arts Center and recently acquired Mohican Club and Jac & Co. properties on N. 3rd Street.
The hook continues eastward through the college’s recently acquired Case’s Tire Co. and adjacent properties located in Nevin Terrace.
At this point, the hook starts to form its barb as it turns directly south through State Routes 611 and 248 and Larry Holmes Drive.
The barb ends at Larry Holmes Drive and the half-block of Church Street, where it enters the proposed bus terminal and parking deck, the taxpayer-financed platforms needed by Arcdia Properties to lift its proposed 147 luxury condominiums and chic shopping boutiques and high-end restaurants out of the mire and muck of the Delaware River-Bushkill Creek flood plain.
Riverwalk is a racist project, of the kind that is leading Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama - scheduled to visit Allentown soon - to talk of what he terms a “quiet” socio-economic revolution in America.
The City of Easton made Larry Holmes raise his two buildings on the street bearing his namesake out of the Delaware-Lehigh Rivers flood plain with fill dirt to lift his buildings out of the flood plain.
The City of Easton also required that both buildings be constructed withous basements, subject to flooding.
Even so, the Ringside property still suffered flooding in the floods of 2004, 2005, and 2006, as did portions of S. Green Street, the 100 block of Pine Street, and parts of The Eastonian where the Ciity of Easton and its Zoning Hearing granted variances for the construction of a ground-level swimming pool for occupants of The Eastonian 30 luxury condominiums.
The variances were granted on the basis of a “doggie door” engineered design that theoretically allows flood water to flow through and then automatically close after the flood waters have passed through.
The City of Easton and its planning department, zoning hearing board, and redevelopment authorities and private partners Arcadia Properties, Lafayette College, and the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission (DRJTBC) have cast their barbed fishhook - baited with millions of dollars of taxpayer money - and this barbed hook - rusting away with every day that Riverwalk is delayed - has now come back to snag its proponents in the ass.
Billy Givens said,
June 8, 2007 @ 1:13 am
On the subject of “ass,” Pennsylvania Governor Ed “Fast Eddie” Rendell and the commonwealth’s legislators have effectively told the state’s taxpayers, “KIZ” our azz.”
I refer to the Keystone Innovation Zone, or KIZ, statute, adopted by the legislators and signed into law by “Fast Eddie” in 2004.
Essentially, the KIZ is an extension of the original Keystone Opportunity Zone, or KOZ, statute of 1998.
Even before the 2004 KIZ extension, the 1998 KOZ had already been extended by the KOEZ, or Keystone Opportunity Expansion Zone.
The KOEZ was needed to include projects like Allentown-Whitehall developer Abraham Atiyeh’s Cinema Paradiso and federal General Services Administration/Social Security Administration projects, on downtown Easton’s S. 3rd and 4th streets, respectively - projects not included in the 1998 KOZ tax giveaway to real estate speculators/developers.
The KIZ is built around academia developers like Lafayette College, Lehigh University, and Northampton Community College, the latter two institutions of higher learning located on the very doorsteps of the Sands BethWorks Gaming LLC casino in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania’s South Side neighborhood.
For those concerned about gambling and alcohol addictions, Lehigh University campus was the scene of the 1987 dormitory murder of freshman Jeanne Clery by a convicted assailant allegedly addicted to alcohol.
It was under the KIZ that Lafayette students designed the N. 3rd Street “improvements.”
These students, including the son of a former City of Easton code enforcement officer, received awards for their design.
The only element missing from that design was a large letter “L” embedded in the circle in the middle of N. 3rd Street, between the Morris R. Williams Visual Arts Center and the former Jac & Co. restaurant.
The letter was excluded because a Billy Bytes publication denounced it as an ostentatious show of Lafayette College’s solipsism - an ego-centric symbol or manifestation, buried deep within its id over the years since the City of Easton’s citizens founded it, of the esteem it holds for its host city and the city’s residents.
“What good for Lafayette College,” notwithstanding the oft-used slogan, “is not good for the City of Easton,” necessarily.