ALLENTOWN, Pa. – Allentown City Council held another in a series of special meetings Wednesday night to understand community needs.
The meeting was part of the process for council to determine how to spend the $57,132,604 the city received from the American Rescue Plan Act.
The purpose of the special meetings is to take testimony on needs, not discuss the topics or make decisions.
Council heard testimony Wednesday night from speakers on the topic of tourism and entertainment. Alex Michaels, president and CEO of Discover Lehigh Valley, said tourism creates a better place for residents.
“Locals are invested in what tourism has to offer in hospitality, industry and entertainment,” Michaels said.
Prior to the pandemic years, Michaels said close to 16.5 million people visited the Lehigh Valley in 2018, which had a $2.2 billion economic impact on the region for that year.
Michaels said council should consider the cyclic nature of destination management.
“If you build a place where people want to visit, and if you build a place where people want to live, you’ll build a place where people want to visit and work,” Michaels said. “If you build a place where people want to work, you build a place where business needs to be, and when you build a place where business has to be, you’ll build a place where people have to visit.”
Don Cunningham, President and CEO of the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp., said entertainment culture is central to creating good jobs and to creating opportunities for people, and marketing is an essential component.
“In Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton, and all across the Lehigh Valley, outside of our borders we are often misrepresented and often misunderstood,” Cunningham said. “We don’t have as a region the marketing dollars that other regions have to tell their stories.”
Cunningham reminded council that the pandemic had a very negative impact on restaurants, nightlife, and downtown retail.
“We spent two years driving people out of our entertainment and restaurant facilities, and that was a burden,” Cunningham said. “I think the federal government responded well and now you’re in the challenging position of managing some of those funds of how best to help to rebuild back up the community. Ensure that we don’t lose ground on what has been decades in the making of building up the downtown’s entertainment and cultural arts and regional assets.”
Tyrone Russell, CEO of Faces International, asked for consideration of entertainment venues for people of color.
“Folks like me, Black, brown, and educated, have been left out of the design of the Lehigh Valley and of Allentown in particular,” Russell said. “So as entrepreneurs, my team and I, we got to work, and we wanted to create an environment that would bring folks like us out of the margins and show them we could come together and create what we travel to in Philly, DC and to New York City.”
“This is a larger problem than many of you care to believe because people want to simply minimize it to events,” Russell added. “But this isn’t just about having a good time. This is about community building. This is about retaining talent for larger corporations. This is about attracting outside excellence that avoids the Valley because they believe there is nothing here for us.”
