Lehigh Landing...

While visiting Bucky Boyle Park this summer, I happened to continue walking past the park. I walked towards the America on Wheels museum and through an urban wasteland of the graying ghosts that were last filled with the work of business years ago. This area has been the subject of proposed renovations for years and the most recent being the erection of a minor-league hockey arena. There has not been much news related to that possible construction in some time and it certainly has caused me to wonder if it is ever going to happen.




This wasteland is located between Bucky Boyle and Canal Park. Canal Park is on the other side of the river but is easily visible, especially across the lookout at the museum. On the opposite side of the Hamilton Street Bridge is an open section of rock and grass that is not considered a city park but could, in this writer’s opinion, be easily incorporated into Canal Park with a footbridge and ultimately connected through greenways all the way to Fountain Park. Forgive me readers, every once in awhile my eyes get a little dewy and I am blind in the sight of possibility. It doesn’t take long for the blinks of reality in this city to clear them up. All around this wasteland, in the absence of humanity the presence of pioneer species indicates just how long this area has been abandoned.


On a summer afternoon, the humid quiet seemed startling considering I was in downtown and it was mid-day. It felt as if no one was there, that no one had ever been there and that the disintegrating buildings were simply always that way. This area was always silent save a car engine, a distant yell or siren. If we were to give the Lehigh Landing noise again, what noise should it be given?


Should it be a hockey arena and upscale development? Should it be a more expansive area of environmentally fit park land with educational opportunities and maybe even a café!, or some other small locally owned businesses. Who knows? Right now in December of 2009 it looks like the silence will last for a while longer and every second that silence continues is a second where another possibility, another new chance is left to go lost.

Bottom Line: Use it Allentown. Use it well. The city needs it and there is a lot of possibility there.