ALLENTOWN, Pa. – The Lehigh Valley Planning Commission has said frequently that the region has a 9,000-unit housing shortage.<\/p>\n
If all of the proposals being considered by the Allentown Planning Commission next week come to fruition, more than 10% of that deficit would be erased.<\/p>\n
The commission is set to consider four separate plans that call for a combined 1,012 new apartments in the city.<\/p>\n
All of the proposals are targeting the same general area: Allentown\u2019s waterfront on the western banks of the Lehigh River.<\/p>\n
They are:<\/p>\n
A sixteen story, 360-unit apartment building at 249 – 301 N. Front Street.<\/p>\n
A seven-story, 210-apartment mixed-use building at 51 N. Front Street.<\/p>\n
A seven-story, 200-unit apartment mixed-use building at 1-17 W, Liberty Street and 2-16 W. Allen Street.<\/p>\n
And a 242-unit apartment mixed-use building at 115 Riverside Drive.<\/p>\n
The properties are currently owned by different variations of an LLC named Lehigh River Development Corp., which is associated with the developer Urban Residential Properties.<\/p>\n
A version of the tallest proposed property- the sixteen story building- has been before planners before. Last year, the developer received approval from the Allentown Planning Commission to build the high-rise with 267 apartment units, more than 21,000 square feet of office space; and more than 23,000 square feet of retail space. But the plans have since been revised and now call for more apartments- 360 in total- and less retail space.<\/p>\n
The property is the former American Atelier furniture factory. It\u2019s not far from another Urban Residential Properties redevelopment project: the Neuweiler Lofts at 401 N. Front Street, where 283 apartments are rising.<\/p>\n
Lehigh River Development Corp. LLC also owns 207 N. Front Street., which is the being converted into the Riverfront Lofts apartments. According to the property\u2019s website, one-, two- and three-bedroom units will be available there this April.<\/p>\n
The four proposals are separate from the 29-acre Waterfront development project being led by Jaindl Enterprises. The master plan was recently amended to include less office space and more housing. Construction is currently underway on the 201-apartment River House at 30 E. Allen Street.<\/p>\n
The Waterfront\u2019s first completed building was a six-story office building, known as 615 Waterfront, which opened in 2023.<\/p>\n
The Allentown Planning Commission meeting is scheduled to begin on Tuesday, March 10 at 12:15 p.m. inside City Council chambers at 435 Hamilton Street.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. – The Lehigh Valley Planning Commission has said frequently that the region has a 9,000-unit housing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,2983,553,60945,60944,2022],"class_list":["post-131316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-allentown-planning-commission","tag-hamilton-street","tag-jaindl-enterprises","tag-lehigh-river-development-corp-llc","tag-lehigh-valley-planning-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131316","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=131316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}