« Chargers Say They Don't Have to Pay Rent in Lockout | Main | Frank Gehry: Dizzy heights »
July 6, 2011
Hockey arena site forces day-care center to find new home
Allentown Morning Call
by Elizabeth Murphy
Surely the Allentown Phantoms would never renege on their rent obligations. Right?
Olgie Moreno-Prosper says it's bad enough she has to move her Allentown day-care center to make way for a proposed hockey arena. Now she has to overcome the frustration of zoning bureaucracy to find a new home.
New Generation Learning Center, which tends 75 mostly inner-city children from 6 a.m. to midnight Monday through Friday, is a tenant of 42 N. Seventh St. The building stands on what will practically be center ice if the city successfully builds a new home for the American Hockey League Phantoms, the Philadelphia Flyers' minor league team that now plays in Glens Falls, N.Y.
With Allentown threatening to acquire properties for the project through eminent domain, building owner Marian Rush said she has a contract to sell the building to the city for an undisclosed amount.
Moreno-Prosper, director of New Generation, wants to keep the day care center in the same vicinity and has a potential new home on the second and third floors of 515 Linden St. But that requires city approval because the building is outside the central business district and is zoned high-density residential.
...Moreno-Prosper called the zoning process frustrating.
"We are moving because they are asking us to but they are putting us through this to move," she said, noting that she does understand the separation of the city and the zoning board.
NoLandGrab: If only she were relocating her basketball team rather than her daycare center, the city would've overrode the zoning for her.
Posted by eric at July 6, 2011 11:07 AM