READING, Pa.- These are the buildings, right in the heart of Penn Street, sitting across from major development already underway in downtown Reading.<\/p>\n
And now, a $700,000 state grant is helping push this project forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is going to be in the 418-422 Penn Street. These are two old historic buildings, and as a result of this financing, there’ll be 12 units, and underneath, there’ll be studios, shops and retail as well,\u201d said Sen. Judy Schwank.<\/p>\n
Behind the project is a familiar name in the city.<\/p>\n
Cheryl Aston, co-owner of Marvel Ranch, a restaurant that has been part of Reading for more than three decades, is leading the effort.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe invested in some properties downtown because we love our city, we believe in our city, and we think the redevelopment is going to be great,\u201d Aston said.<\/p>\n
Now, she\u2019s bringing that same passion here.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis one is huge. It’s deceptive because it’s only like this, but it goes all the way back to Cherry Street. I think it’s over 2,000 square feet. And it’s got a huge basement,\u201d Aston said.<\/p>\n
The goal is more housing and more businesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor many years, the downtown of Reading has been somewhat vacant, isolated. Since I got elected, it was a priority of mine to make sure that we bring the downtown alive,\u201d said Mayor Eddie Moran.<\/p>\n
And projects like this are starting to add up.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re starting to aggregate all of these positive developments in that particular block and area.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That’s exactly the kind of development that we need to have so that we build momentum,\u201d Schwank said.<\/p>\n
And now, Aston says it\u2019s all hands on deck.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to make it historic, and we want to see them beautiful. We’d like to be able to make some kind of outdoor seating,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa.- These are the buildings, right in the heart of Penn Street, sitting across from major development…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[77299,70898,146,61096,17044,77300,4691,28,736,128,130,129,132,77298],"class_list":["post-172242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-cheryl-aston","tag-downtown-revitalization","tag-grant","tag-historic-buildings","tag-housing-units","tag-marvel-ranch","tag-penn-street","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-redevelopment","tag-retail-shops"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172242","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=172242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}