Lehigh Valley gets $3.4 million grant to promote sustainable development

The grant, aimed at easing housing and transportation costs, will be divided among regional groups and cities.

The federal government has awarded $3.4 million to the Lehigh Valley aimed at making the area more affordable by reducing housing and transportation costs.

The Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp., the lead agency among a consortium of regional organizations and cities that sought the funding, announced the grant today.

“This is really about our taxpayer dollars coming back to the Lehigh Valley,” LVEDC CEO Phil Mitman said at a news conference at Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley headquarters in Bethlehem.

Called Sustainable Communities Grants, the money comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

An exact breakdown of how the money will be spent locally was not available.

Holly Edinger, director of the Lehigh Valley Land Recycling Initiative, estimated three- quarters of the funding would be set aside for planning initiatives and the rest toward projects in the region’s three cities.

Additional public meetings will be scheduled across the region to finalize details, she said. The grant's timetable is three years.

General priorities include: converting brownfields into economic development, promoting transit-related development, advocating affordable-housing policies and conducting jobs and housing studies.

Officials cited national data showing 52 percent of personal spending is consumed by housing and transportation. Easing that burden is the goal of the grant, Edinger said.

“That’s what it’s all about, working and playing closer to where you live,” Easton Mayor Sal Panto Jr. said.

Easton is getting an undetermined amount of money for the redevelopment of the Simon Silk Mill and nearby 13th Street properties.

Bethlehem is also receiving funds for its Eastern Gateway project, aimed at improving the area along East Fourth Street, and Allentown is getting money to redevelop industrial properties around 10th Street.

“What this does is bring jobs back to the cores, where people can walk to work and walk home from work,” said Sara Hailstone, director of Community and Economic Development in Allentown.

Other groups in the consortium include: CACLV, Lehigh Valley Planning Commission, Lehigh and Northampton Transit Authority, Renew Lehigh Valley, Wildlands Conservancy, and economic development departments for Northampton and Lehigh counties. 

"Now it's up to everyone to transform this grant from an awesome opportunity to an awesome reality," Edinger said.

HUD distributed more than $97 million to groups nationwide as part of the program.