May 19, 2019, is one of those red-letter days in Bethlehem history.
The day Martin Tower disappeared from the City skyline.
Here we are almost two years later.
Gadfly passes the site pretty frequently on his way to rendezvous with the family drug dealer.
He loves the open space.
But he can literally feel the ground ready to “break” and sprout man-made artifacts.
The developer is asking for some changes in parking, the nature of which Gadfly doesn’t quite understand yet.
But he was interested in these renderings that are part of the paperwork heading to the relevant City committees reviewing the parking change request.
The first here below pictures the whole site.
The second rendering cuts off a bit on the right side and on the bottom of the site, but it labels the buildings. If Gadfly’s memory serves, what’s cut off on the bottom left side is a gas station.
Gadfly finds these questions in a thinking outloud post of March 4, 2020. They are still on his mind as we get closer and closer to seeing action at the site.
- Are we really going to have 500+ apartments there?
- Will they be less cookie-cutter looking than the renderings we saw?
- Will any be “affordable” like the memorable old guy asked at the very tail end of the Nitschmann public meeting?
- Will the whole area be imperviously paved?
- Will we get sidewalks along Schoenersville to the Monocacy so there’s a walkable connection from there to North Bethlehem?
- Will there be a crosswalk or other traffic calming at the foot of the Schoenersville hill?
- Will there be a recreation trail/path access to Burnside and the trail along the Monocacy?
- Will there be better pedestrian/bike access to the youth recreation areas along Schoenersville up to Illick’s Mill?
- Will there be better pedestrian/bike access to Westgate Mall?
- Will there really be a gas station down by 378?