New Fiscal Year, New AEDC!
LVEDC’s Annual Fall 2022 Signature Event | State Theatre
As AEDC kicks off a new fiscal year, we’re taking a look down memory lane and all the changes that this past year brought us. With the hire of 4 new employees, AEDC has its largest staff in recent history! We welcomed Brittany Butkowski and Lauren Matthews to the team last summer. Brittany joins us as Program Manager for our Bridgeworks Enterprise Center program and Lauren steps into the role of Marketing + Communications Specialist. In fall of 2022 Rich Larish joined our maintenance crew as Assistant Facilities Manager and just recently, Laurence Parker accepted the position of our Facilities Maintenance Technician.
AEDC’s Board of Directors welcomed new members, Darnell Scott of Community Action Lehigh Valley, Dan Quay of Lehigh Valley Health Network, and David Quier of PPL Electric Utilities. Susan E. Youngs stepped in as Treasurer, Matthew B. Green has transitioned to Board Secretary and John G. Englesson now serves as Vice Chairman of the board.
However, the largest accomplishment AEDC celebrated this past year was the announcement that Marcon Properties LLC. will redevelop the former Allentown Metal Works site at 606 S. 10th Street. The brownfield will be returned to manufacturing use and is the future site of Eastern Exterior Wall Systems, Inc. Alvin H. Butz, Inc. was chosen as the Construction Manager for the project which includes the complete renovation of two buildings totaling more than 150,000 square feet. The project is currently under construction, with an estimated cost of just over $40 million and will bring new union manufacturing jobs to our city.
Future site of Eastern Exterior Wall Systems, Inc.
Once again, AEDC’s 3 core programs brought a great deal of positive activity to the Queen City this year. The client companies in our Bridgeworks Enterprise Center incubation program employed 70 full and part time workers and produced a gross revenue of $18,431,621 in 2022. As of March, our Urban Made program had a total of 22 current loans with the original aggregated principal amount of $3.4M. Finally, since 1979, AEDC’s Urban Sites program has returned over 91 acres of vacant or underutilized properties to productive use in the City of Allentown. These 27 projects orchestrated by AEDC generate $3.5M in school taxes, $876,000+ in city taxes and $591,000+ in county taxes annually.
We are also excited to share that AEDC’s updated strategic plan has been finalized for the next 5 years. With all these accomplishments AEDC’s future looks bright, so stay tuned for what lies ahead!
