{"id":123891,"date":"2026-02-26T07:51:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T07:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/123891\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T07:51:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T07:51:18","slug":"its-going-to-be-good-longtime-reading-business-owner-welcomes-new-development-reading-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/123891\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;It&#8217;s going to be good&#8217;: Longtime Reading business owner welcomes new development | Reading Area"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>READING, Pa. \u2013 For more than 20 years, Carlos Salguero has stood behind the counter at <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/profile.php?id=100057680751609\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Russo\u2019s Pizza<\/a> on Penn Street.<\/p>\n<p>Through the ups, through the slow days and through the uncertainty, he has stayed with hope.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think if I leave, you know, everybody leave, and then what\u2019s gonna happen?\u201d Salguero said.<\/p>\n<p>He believed in downtown Reading. And now, he says, it finally feels like others do, too.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s going be good,\u201d Salguero said. \u201cThat\u2019s what we want, and we want more people to come here to invest, to open cafeterias, to open more restaurants, if possible. Like people attract more people\u2026good stores.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When he steps outside, he now sees change taking shape.<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday morning, Alvernia University and its partners held a ceremonial wall-breaking at the 45,000-square-foot American House building at Fourth and Penn streets.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cToday&#8217;s wall-breaking marks a visible step in the transformation of this historic building into a community-centered hub that expands access to health care, strengthens workforce development and creates experiential learning opportunities,\u201d said Tom Minick, Alvernia\u2019s chief advancement, government affairs and athletics officer.<\/p>\n<p>City leaders say the project is part of a broader downtown renaissance.<\/p>\n<p>That includes a redevelopment project at Fifth and Penn featuring residential and retail space. Plans have also been unveiled for 60 apartments and retail and restaurant space at Third and Penn, as well as the redevelopment of the former Santander building at 450 Penn St.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMomentum is definitely ongoing in the city of Reading,\u201d Mayor Eddie Moran said. \u201cWhen one good project starts, it&#8217;s just a ripple effect.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 For more than 20 years, Carlos Salguero has stood behind the counter at Russo\u2019s Pizza&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[5759,28,736,128,130,129,58135],"class_list":["post-123891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-carlos-salguero","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-russo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}