In a special to The Morning Call, a newspaper circulated in Easton, Pennsylvania, and the so-called “Lehigh Valley,” writer Angel R. Ackerman reports the “pull back” by Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, developer Louis Pektor, president of Ashley Development Company,  of  two projects, one in  the  city of Easton’s neighoring borough of Wilson and the other, called the “Majestic,” in Easton itself.

Pektor attributes the “pull back” to the declining market demand for luxury condominiums.

What Pektor does not say is that the Majestic “pull back” is that the site chosen for its construction lies in the flood plain of the Lehigh River, a condition that earlier prevented a Pektor real-estate developer/speculator Abrahm Atiyeh from building a U.S. General Services Administration building on the site for lease to the Social Security Administration.

Nor does Pektor mention in Ackerman’s article that the Majestic project “pull back” is attributable to the fact that Easton is facing a major revision of its zoning ordinances, the first in 20 years, introduced by Easton’s city council last Wednesday, September 26, 2007, and scheduled for adoption at its scheduled October 13, 2007, meeting, in the absence of any public heariings.

Ackerman’s article does quote Barbara Kowitz, Easton’s Director of Planning and Economic Development and the executive director of the city’s redevelopment authority as disappointed but saying that “positive change” comes “slowly.”

What Kowitz is not quoted as saying is that negative change,  such as the Majestic project and the Riverwalk development, proposed for construction in the Delaware River flood plain come quickly - like the devastating 2005 flood of Hurricane Ivan and the two deluges of 2006 quickly following Ivan.