Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the All Thoughts Podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe.
Speaker 3: Why isn't Joe?
Speaker 2: Do you ever discover little cultural blind spots that you
Speaker 2: had in your life?
Speaker 3: I'm like, where are you going with this?
Speaker 2: So I discovered one recently and it kind of led
Speaker 2: to a minor epiphany for me. But I had heard
Speaker 2: the Billy Joel song Alan Town. I had never watched
Speaker 2: the video, and in preparation for this episode, I watched
Speaker 2: the video and suddenly a bunch of Simpsons references made
Speaker 2: sense to me.
Speaker 4: Interesting.
Speaker 2: And I don't mean to be I don't mean to
Speaker 2: be very grand millennial by making Simpsons references.
Speaker 3: Simpsons reference to like someone younger in the office, they
Speaker 3: look at the blank stare. I know, it's reallyressed. I
Speaker 3: just don't do it anymore because it's so depressing.
Speaker 2: I know, and here I am doing it on the podcast.
Speaker 3: But I actually, you know, we're the same generation, so
Speaker 3: we could do it.
Speaker 2: We can do it.
Speaker 3: This is a safe listeners might not get it.
Speaker 2: So the reason I bring it up, though, is for
Speaker 2: kind of a serious point, not just to talk about
Speaker 2: Billy Joel music, although now that I think about it,
Speaker 2: he has a lot of songs about like the political
Speaker 2: economy of America. But it is because Allentown, Pennsylvania basically
Speaker 2: became a poster child for de industrialization and the hollowing
Speaker 2: out of American manufacturing in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: It was a great intro and thank you and of course, right,
Speaker 3: so we know, and obviously over the years on odd lots,
Speaker 3: we've talked a lot about industrialization, de industrialization, reindustrialization, great,
Speaker 3: all very interesting themes. Everyone maybe like feels in their
Speaker 3: gut somehow that they're like pro reindustrialization, whatever that means. Right,
Speaker 3: But then the gap between like somehow like we feel
Speaker 3: good about producing physical things, we want more of that,
Speaker 3: What does that actually look like in practice? What are
Speaker 3: these jobs? What are these potential industries? Then it suddenly
Speaker 3: gets much more hazy. Right, people don't know what that
Speaker 3: actually looks.
Speaker 2: Like in practice? Right, how do you actually go about
Speaker 2: implementing industrial policy on a local scale. And I have
Speaker 2: to say, the other thing I found out in researching
Speaker 2: for this podcast. I had no idea, but Allentown, Pennsylvania
Speaker 2: was also the site of the first some of the
Speaker 2: first mass produced transistors, yeah, which are like the precursor
Speaker 2: to semiconductors of today.
Speaker 3: Can I say what random thinking about Billy Joel before
Speaker 3: we go further, you know, because obviously you mentioned he
Speaker 3: talks about, you know, a lot of political economy things
Speaker 3: and including of course, and we didn't start the fire.
Speaker 3: The final line of that song is like something about
Speaker 3: the Cola wars, and he's like, I can't take it anymore,
Speaker 3: and I just think it's really funny that the Cola
Speaker 3: wars coke vers pepsi is the thing that tip to
Speaker 3: over edge like a Vietnam War. All these things happened,
Speaker 3: and finally the thing that tipped them over the edge
Speaker 3: was the cold anyway sidechrick, but I just had to.
Speaker 4: Get that out.
Speaker 2: We should do a whole episode on Billy Joels songs
Speaker 2: at some point, including my favorite karaoke standard, which is
Speaker 2: down Easter Alexa, all about the decline of the fishing industry.
Speaker 2: But anyway, Allentown, Pennsylvania, let's focus. We do, in fact
Speaker 2: have the perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with
Speaker 2: the Mayor of Allentown, Matt Turk. So thank you so
Speaker 2: much for coming on all thoughts place.
Speaker 5: It's a huge pleasure to be here.
Speaker 3: It actually helps because we are we are at the
Speaker 3: conference in Madrid, right and.
Speaker 2: We just saw you have a medal from me from
Speaker 2: the marathon over the weekend. Tell us about that.
Speaker 6: I landed on Saturday, went right to the marathon expo,
Speaker 6: picked up my bib. Twenty four hours later I was
Speaker 6: starting the Madrid forty two k not twenty six miles,
Speaker 6: forty two kilometers marathon. It was hot, it was hilly,
Speaker 6: it was beautiful, great crowd support, phenomenal marathon fun finished
Speaker 6: the marathon and then went right to a reception for
Speaker 6: Bloomberg City Lab and I've been NonStop since then.
Speaker 2: That is dedication to both Cardio and city Bustling. So
Speaker 2: congrats on that. I mentioned Allantown the song and the
Speaker 2: video in the intro, and I discovered there's some controversy
Speaker 2: about this because apparently the steelmaking was more in Bethlehem
Speaker 2: rather than in Allantown. So should Billy Joel have been
Speaker 2: talking about semiconductors instead of steel?
Speaker 6: I mean, there's he could have been talking about Max trucks.
Speaker 6: He could have been talking about silk manufacturing. That's like
Speaker 6: the local controversy is that like he's talking about you know,
Speaker 6: Bethleem but he didn't rhyme as well with shutting factories down.
Speaker 6: But then there's you know, I was surprised.
Speaker 5: I thought that.
Speaker 6: Everyone in the country felt like not great about the
Speaker 6: song Allentown. Then I met the mayor of Toledo and
Speaker 6: he was like, that's a great song. It's about the
Speaker 6: working man and blah blah blah blah blah, And I
Speaker 6: was like, what are you talking about, Like this is
Speaker 6: the song that like everybody in our region and the
Speaker 6: Lehigh Alley just like dreads hearing because it's about this
Speaker 6: like different era that maybe was like felt right in
Speaker 6: the moment in eighteen eighty two, like that maybe kind
Speaker 6: of captured the moment, But in twenty twenty six, it's
Speaker 6: like it doesn't sound further from it couldn't sound further
Speaker 6: from the truth.
Speaker 3: Give us like a little Allentown history, Like what is
Speaker 3: the timeline when we talk about these sort of key
Speaker 3: industries that were once associated with the city of Allentown.
Speaker 3: What was the sort of peak of it and when
Speaker 3: was the sort of trough.
Speaker 6: Maan, Yeah, I mean so, I mean the city was
Speaker 6: founded back in seventeen sixty two. It had its revolutionary moment.
Speaker 6: We hid the liberty bell there, but it really picked
Speaker 6: up and incorporated in eighteen sixty seven for the kind
Speaker 6: of reconstruction, and that's when the industry really started to
Speaker 6: It started to industrialize. Like many American cities, early industry
Speaker 6: was cigar manufacturing, so tobacco that was growing in Lancaster
Speaker 6: was shipped to Allentown for production into cigars. Silk manufacturing
Speaker 6: became a pretty big deal in that area. It was
Speaker 6: a place where silk could be brought in and then processed.
Speaker 6: In the early kind of nineteen ten, sort of around
Speaker 6: the First World War, mac truck moved to Allentown from Brooklyn.
Speaker 6: This was like nineteen fifteen, and industrial production of those
Speaker 6: vehicles started. We manufactured volty bombers, a particular type of
Speaker 6: bomber for World War Two. This is all coincident with
Speaker 6: Bethlehem's steel industry rising up. The industrial work continued through
Speaker 6: I think you guys must mentioned the transistor in Western Electric.
Speaker 6: That was kind of a big story. But then, like
Speaker 6: a lot of places, manufacturing started to decline, not as
Speaker 6: strongly in Allentown as other parts of the country. But
Speaker 6: the Western Electric plant eventually shut down. The year were
Speaker 6: we talked about with that Western Electric was.
Speaker 5: In the seventies.
Speaker 6: It actually it morphed into something else that eventually became Broadcom.
Speaker 6: So there's still some manufacturing. It didn't necessarily exist in
Speaker 6: the city. It spread out into suburban parts of the region.
Speaker 6: There's still some chip manufacturing occurring or wafer polishing occurring
Speaker 6: in the area. We still have the kind of muscle
Speaker 6: memory of semiconductor manufacturing. But again, the industry evolved and changed.
Speaker 6: The Volta aircraft shut down when there's no need to
Speaker 6: produce bombers anymore. MAC Trucks continued operations in Allentown, but
Speaker 6: in the eighties shifted most of its production to a
Speaker 6: plant in Mcunjie that still operates today. A lot of
Speaker 6: those old MAC plants were acquired by an organization that
Speaker 6: I used to work for, the Allentown Economic twelve in Corporation,
Speaker 6: and repurposed. Initially repurposed for this is the eighties. The
Speaker 6: thought at the time was that it could be an
Speaker 6: incubator facility, a business incubator. It did become that, but
Speaker 6: it is more of a manufacturing incubator. These were old
Speaker 6: sawtooth roof buildings with twelve to eighteen foot ceilings, so
Speaker 6: some big spaces but not a lot of clearance. They
Speaker 6: weren't suited for modern manufacturing. And that's what a lot
Speaker 6: of the building stock in all the time looked like.
Speaker 6: But the production was still occurring in some capacity in
Speaker 6: the city, definitely in the region. When the steel shut
Speaker 6: down in Bethalem in eighteen ninety eight, I think was
Speaker 6: when they did their last cast. That's when leading up
Speaker 6: to that, the region had already started to think about
Speaker 6: how to diversify, how to build on the Western electric
Speaker 6: The semiconductor manufacturer Lehigh University was a source of engineering talent.
Speaker 6: They started to diversify out into life sciences. So there's
Speaker 6: some precursor drugs that are manufactured there, some medical supplies
Speaker 6: that are still manufactured there bibraun Another one that I
Speaker 6: didn't meant was air products. So it's an industrial gas manufacturer.
Speaker 6: I know you guys were recently talking about helium. Air
Speaker 6: products is like, it's.
Speaker 4: So fun talking to a listener. That makes it so easy.
Speaker 3: It's like a helium.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the helium.
Speaker 6: So helium was something that air products manufacturers. It's one
Speaker 6: of those head scratchers when you're talking about a region's
Speaker 6: industrial output to say, like we make like an element,
Speaker 6: like an elemental element like the low Yeah, it's hard
Speaker 6: to describe how that happens. But that was founded in Allentown,
Speaker 6: actually was founded in Tennessee and moved Downlandtown in the fifties,
Speaker 6: but a lot of that production was still occurring. The
Speaker 6: kind of civic leaders of the time in the early
Speaker 6: nineties as they could foresee the end of Bethelm Steel
Speaker 6: when it was acquired I think it was acquired by
Speaker 6: our store, Midal, But they could see the end in sight,
Speaker 6: and so they made a conscious effort to diversify, working
Speaker 6: with a commonalth of Pennsylvania to stand up some tech
Speaker 6: led economic development, which had its It was successful in
Speaker 6: a few places. The biggest sess in attracting investment or
Speaker 6: the biggest kind of economic development story for the region
Speaker 6: was in two thousand and six when the region convinced Olympus,
Speaker 6: which is the manufacturer of surgical devices, to relocate its
Speaker 6: North American headquarters too.
Speaker 5: They were out in suburban Bethlehem.
Speaker 6: But that's been the character right, there's it's a very
Speaker 6: diverse fide economy today, it's still about seventeen percent of
Speaker 6: the jobs or manufacturing jobs, so it's much higher than
Speaker 6: many other parts of the country and it's held pretty steady.
Speaker 5: So that's.
Speaker 2: Well, that was a fantastic summary. But on that note,
Speaker 2: I mean, I think a lot of cities and towns
Speaker 2: in America, whether they're in the russ Belt or Pennsylvania
Speaker 2: or the South or wherever, who have gone through this
Speaker 2: de industrialization phase. They all say they want to build
Speaker 2: back their manufacturing sector in some way. But it feels
Speaker 2: like Allentown has kind of gone about it in a
Speaker 2: slightly different way in that you've had to sort of
Speaker 2: grand strategy or vision for how to do that rather
Speaker 2: than try to attract just like individual businesses in a
Speaker 2: piecemeal way. Can you talk about how you actually formulated
Speaker 2: that plant.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So I started working for the Economic Development Corporation
Speaker 6: in two thousand and eight, and we had the manufacturing
Speaker 6: incubator it's called the Bridgeworks and Manufacturing Incubator that was
Speaker 6: in place at that time. It was trying to pivot
Speaker 6: away from manufacturing.
Speaker 5: When I got there.
Speaker 6: We also had an industrial building that sort of funded
Speaker 6: our existence, where we had a T shirt manufacturer an
Speaker 6: industrial valvevest manufacturer and somebody who is building large scale
Speaker 6: tents as tenants, and they were kind of keeping the
Speaker 6: organization alive. There was this, you know, in two thousand
Speaker 6: and eight. It was right kind of in the early
Speaker 6: days of the global financial crisis. There is some concern
Speaker 6: about how we would recover economically, what we would do,
Speaker 6: but these early investments in manufacturing were, from what I
Speaker 6: could see looking ahead, something we shouldn't turn our backs on.
Speaker 6: There was this healthy manufacturing, seemingly healthy manufacturing economy in
Speaker 6: place in the Lehigh Valley, and it felt like it
Speaker 6: felt like there was an opportunity to build for the future.
Speaker 6: I worked with our CEO or executive director at that
Speaker 6: time to start thinking about how we might position the
Speaker 6: area as a place where you could bring smaller footprint manufacturing.
Speaker 6: We knew we had this building stock of buildings that
Speaker 6: were smaller than one hundred thousand square feet, sometimes on
Speaker 6: multiple stories. There was a kind of gravity flow model
Speaker 6: of manufacturing where you would load in raw material at
Speaker 6: the top of the building and as it gained weight,
Speaker 6: it would drop down the building for a final finishing
Speaker 6: on the ground floor and then shipping. We felt like
Speaker 6: there was an opportunity to kind of leverage the existing
Speaker 6: industrial inventory to attract manufacturers that were more boutique. I
Speaker 6: remember reading an article in the Wall Street Journal in
Speaker 6: maybe two thousand and nine or twenty ten about a
Speaker 6: bag manufacturer in San Francisco who was like very proud
Speaker 6: of being in San Francisco. I was like, this is
Speaker 6: I think there's something here for us. I reached out
Speaker 6: to the manufacturer. At the time, this was kind of
Speaker 6: around the same time as the rise of like maker
Speaker 6: spaces and three to printing was kind.
Speaker 5: Of coming online.
Speaker 6: It looked like you could do some stuff in a
Speaker 6: smaller form factor, and we kept thinking like, this is
Speaker 6: a chance for us, with these strong roots in manufacturing
Speaker 6: to bring some of it back. And we got deep into.
Speaker 5: It and really explored.
Speaker 6: We formed something called the Urban Manufacturing Alliance and collaboration
Speaker 6: with San Francisco and the Pratt Institute in New York
Speaker 6: and our friends in the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation and
Speaker 6: in Detroit to just kind of bring cities who were
Speaker 6: interested in manufacturing together. We started talking about reshoring or
Speaker 6: on shoring at that time, but it felt distant.
Speaker 3: I'm glad you brought up the sort of maker of
Speaker 3: three D printing phenomenon, because.
Speaker 2: Such a thing around that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was, but it's forgotten, isn't it. Because when
Speaker 3: we talk generally about the tailwind or the growth of
Speaker 3: the twenty tens, it's almost entirely people talk about tech, right,
Speaker 3: software et cetera, the Internet and all that, and then
Speaker 3: we talk about post COVID, this re you know, this
Speaker 3: new enthusiasm for reshoring. But it was like this forgotten
Speaker 3: chapter that within particularly the first half of the twenty tens,
Speaker 3: the various maker spaces and the three D printers and
Speaker 3: people were really excited about that kind of fizzled out
Speaker 3: like that, like that mini movement.
Speaker 6: You don't hear that.
Speaker 5: It fizzled out for sure.
Speaker 6: But so we did a reindustrialization strategy in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 6: We worked with somebody to evaluate our total industrial stock.
Speaker 6: I had at that point moved on to work for
Speaker 6: the Regional Economic Development Corporation, but was still involved with
Speaker 6: the Serban Manufacturing Alliance at the region. We could see
Speaker 6: that manufacturing was still important. I had a better sense
Speaker 6: of what other types of manufacturing was occurring in the area.
Speaker 6: We developed a strategy kept thinking what I kept seeing
Speaker 6: at the region was that there is real demand to
Speaker 6: be in the Lehigh Valley and in these smaller footprint buildings.
Speaker 6: So we saw inquiries all the time for buildings between
Speaker 6: forty and eighty thousand square feet. But this is a
Speaker 6: time when we have ALLYS pivoting its economy toward transportation
Speaker 6: and warehousing, building million square foot buildings with twenty four
Speaker 6: to thirty six foot ceilings. Really, as this other technological
Speaker 6: trend of the e comms started to show up, this
Speaker 6: was the high demand for industrial space. So we had
Speaker 6: lots of interest from small manufacturers, particularly coming out of
Speaker 6: places like Brooklyn where it was like not quite the
Speaker 6: place to be, who wanted to spread their arms a
Speaker 6: little bit and maybe have access to to talent they
Speaker 6: were trying to be in that we have ally, but
Speaker 6: we didn't have a ton of building space to meet
Speaker 6: their needs.
Speaker 5: So when we.
Speaker 6: Built that reindustrialization strategy, a big part of it was
Speaker 6: how do we position the built environment for this demand.
Speaker 6: And some of that is, you know, rehabbing existing industrial
Speaker 6: buildings as surprise surprise industrial buildings, so it's it's continued
Speaker 6: on from there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this is another thing I learned about Allentown.
Speaker 2: I'm full of Allentown facts at the moment. But apparently
Speaker 2: Allentown is within a day's drive of forty percent of
Speaker 2: the population in the US. Is that true?
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's it's over on many more than one hundred
Speaker 6: million people, and that's what made it such a strong
Speaker 6: destination for some of the e comm But it's also
Speaker 6: like that, you know, you go back to, like why
Speaker 6: it is a vibrant economic region is that it's a
Speaker 6: great place for weight gaining industries.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: So the other big thing we worked on the Regional
Speaker 6: Economic Development Corporation was we recruited Ocean Spray to make
Speaker 6: most of its great cranberry juice in the weih Have Alley.
Speaker 6: Sam Adams was brewing most of its beer in the
Speaker 6: High Valley.
Speaker 3: Was it weight gaining industry anything.
Speaker 6: You add water to basically, right, So you when you
Speaker 6: have the cranberries come into the plant like to become
Speaker 6: cranberry juice, you add a ton of water. It doesn't
Speaker 6: make sense to produce that far away and then ship
Speaker 6: all that water. So because you're not just you know,
Speaker 6: within a day's drive of forty percent of this population,
Speaker 6: you're also close in New York so a lot of
Speaker 6: like Curraig Doctor Pepper has a big production plant, there's
Speaker 6: a lot of food manufacturing that occurs there as well.
Speaker 6: And then on the manufacturing side, you also because of
Speaker 6: the e COMM because of the food manufacturing, you saw
Speaker 6: a lot of packaging and bottling UH manufacturing show up.
Speaker 6: So one of our most recent in Allentown successes was
Speaker 6: recruiting a company called Schless Bottle that manufacturers bottles for
Speaker 6: beverages and they wanted to be close to the production point.
Speaker 6: So the manufacturing bottles in Allentown, filling it with beverages
Speaker 6: and serving it back to New York.
Speaker 3: This is so core like Ricardo Houseman coded stuff, like Okay,
Speaker 3: you have this one industry and then you have innovation
Speaker 3: in an adjacent industry. Super monkey swinging from China. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm also just like learning all these terms. You know,
Speaker 3: gravity based manufacturing I hadn't or weight gaining. This is
Speaker 3: all fantastic stuff.
Speaker 2: Weight gain industry is I think what we're both doing in.
Speaker 3: Maderia, That's what we're both doing in Madrid. Yeah, we
Speaker 3: should have run a marathon and then and then we
Speaker 3: could have compensated for all that. What are like you know,
Speaker 3: obviously this is all against the backdrop of this vortex
Speaker 3: of manufacturing going to China largely, et cetera. When people think,
Speaker 3: you know, you're at a conference like this and probably
Speaker 3: a lot of mayors are interested in reindustrialization, et cetera.
Speaker 3: What types of industries are good candidates generally for thinking
Speaker 3: of like what should be built locally, Like it's something
Speaker 3: like plastic bags or bags. It's like, well, I don't know,
Speaker 3: maybe that could be offshore. What are like strong candidates
Speaker 3: for what is durable here?
Speaker 6: It's that you mentioned plastic bags because one of the
Speaker 6: things we recruited as was kind of leaving the.
Speaker 5: World of economic development and going into politics.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was a Turkish plastic bag manufacturer, So that
Speaker 6: was kind of interesting. So one of the things that
Speaker 6: distinguished the region. And I think it's good for onshoing
Speaker 6: and I want to go back on the onshore for
Speaker 6: a second. When we developed this strategy, when we're talking
Speaker 6: about onshoing and reshoring, back in the early twenty tens,
Speaker 6: there was no like we didn't know a global pandemic
Speaker 6: was going to come and disrupt supply chains. We were
Speaker 6: thinking about like the logistics of making things in close
Speaker 6: to the customer. And and I was I was thinking
Speaker 6: a lot about the theft of IP in China and
Speaker 6: how it was kind of like those components of globalism
Speaker 6: didn't make a ton of sense. You're like kind of
Speaker 6: giving away your most precious resource. So a lot of
Speaker 6: it was driven by like, how do you kind of
Speaker 6: capture the spirit of a manufacturer of American manufacturing? Now
Speaker 6: COVID hit and all of a sudden, That's what brought
Speaker 6: into stark relief. That's what made it make sense. So
Speaker 6: one of the things that I think makes a ton
Speaker 6: of sense. And we still see a lot of in Allentown,
Speaker 6: whether it's the transistors, or it's the bag manufacturing or
Speaker 6: Westport axle manufacturers axles for Mac trucks in Allentown area,
Speaker 6: it's components, right, It's how do how do you de
Speaker 6: risk the supply chain by diversifying your component manufacturing? That
Speaker 6: makes a lot of sense in cities because you're not
Speaker 6: building the whole truck there, right, And to build the
Speaker 6: whole truck you need something like Lordtown or Lordstown, you
Speaker 6: need River Rouge, you need the enormous factories when you're
Speaker 6: building the components whatever those components might look like you
Speaker 6: can exist in a much smaller form factor, something as
Speaker 6: small as forty thousand square feet, but even like to
Speaker 6: get down to what we were calling craft manufacturing at
Speaker 6: the time, you might be able to exist in a
Speaker 6: much smaller space and perhaps the ground floor of a
Speaker 6: mixed use building. And that's what the next step for
Speaker 6: us was and what more cities should be doing, I
Speaker 6: think is making sure that your zoning allows for light
Speaker 6: industrial to take place in residential neighborhoods, so that you're
Speaker 6: not kind of you have to make sure that you
Speaker 6: allow this stuff to happen in your city and the
Speaker 6: new manufacturing. We think about Pittsburgh in the early part
Speaker 6: of the twentieth century as being so thick with smog
Speaker 6: that you couldn't even see across the river. You know,
Speaker 6: you still see pictures of I remember being in tangent
Speaker 6: and China in two thousand and seven teen, and like
Speaker 6: you couldn't see as you're going across the bridge. That's
Speaker 6: not what manufacturing really looks like anymore. So you can
Speaker 6: kind of do that in cities. So as cities are
Speaker 6: thinking about what type of manufacturing you might try to attract,
Speaker 6: I think high value component manufacturer, light touch, but high tech.
Speaker 6: Again taking advantage of the resources that we have in
Speaker 6: American cities and taking advantage of the fact that people
Speaker 6: now are choosing where they're going to be first and
Speaker 6: then what they're going to do second. And the cities
Speaker 6: that have a vocational advantage on cost of quality of
Speaker 6: life can attract those industries if they set themselves up
Speaker 6: to do it.
Speaker 2: I say more about the rezoning process because if there's
Speaker 2: one thing I remember from playing some city for hours,
Speaker 2: you know, in the late nineteen nineties, it was that
Speaker 2: if you zone industry next to residential, your population is
Speaker 2: not going to be happy. So I'm very curious like
Speaker 2: how much that has actually changed and what the rezoning
Speaker 2: part is like now versus say, ten years ago.
Speaker 6: So a lot of cities, because of the housing crisis,
Speaker 6: are exploring more aggressive zoning policy that allows for denser housing,
Speaker 6: allows for different types of housing. We just passed in
Speaker 6: the beginning of twenty twenty six reform to our zoning
Speaker 6: code and a reform to our zoning map that is
Speaker 6: a form based code, so it's really focused less on
Speaker 6: what's happening inside the building and more on what the
Speaker 6: buildings will look like interesting, so that can allow that's
Speaker 6: the type of thing that can allow. For now in
Speaker 6: some city, when you built, when you zoned industrial, you
Speaker 6: were going to get like the tire manufacturing plant. Not
Speaker 6: a great idea for cities to have tire manufacturing plants
Speaker 6: in their downtowns, but great idea to have like craft
Speaker 6: brewing or like small garment assembly, something that is kind
Speaker 6: of like bespoke manufacturing. I think what cities can do
Speaker 6: as they're investigating the limitations of their zoning code to
Speaker 6: build towards the cities that they want to be is
Speaker 6: dig in and understand exactly what you might allow. I mean,
Speaker 6: in zoning, you have to allow for all uses somewhere
Speaker 6: in in the jurisdiction. So if you can allow for
Speaker 6: certain types of manufacturing uses, you create flexibility that can
Speaker 6: add some vibrancy to the neighborhood. I go back to
Speaker 6: like one of my big points when I was in
Speaker 6: the Urban Manufacturing Alliance that I don't know what it
Speaker 6: looks like now, but we talked about the lack of
Speaker 6: interest in young people working in manufacturing, and that's always
Speaker 6: been one of the challenges and one thing that occurred
Speaker 6: to me is that when Mac Trucks moved to Allantown
Speaker 6: in nineteen twenty three, they built a plant right next
Speaker 6: to well, they built the plant and then they built
Speaker 6: the worker housing right next door to the plant, and
Speaker 6: people would walk to work all day. And what we
Speaker 6: knew then is that it sounds amazing, and that's people
Speaker 6: would like to do that whatever they're doing for work.
Speaker 6: When young, when children saw people walking to work with
Speaker 6: the lunch box and knew that that person was going
Speaker 6: to work on in the silk plant or in the
Speaker 6: truck plant, they saw a person working and a person
Speaker 6: who was like connected to manufacturing. When we moved all
Speaker 6: of the production out to the suburbs and people were
Speaker 6: getting in a car to drive to work, the like
Speaker 6: rando kid on the street who's just you know, hula
Speaker 6: hooping or whatever, doesn't get a chance to see workers
Speaker 6: and doesn't get a chance to see the dignity of
Speaker 6: work in manufacturing and lose his interest in it. And
Speaker 6: so we're so far removed now, and we've tried to
Speaker 6: do things, whether it was to three D printing or
Speaker 6: like kind of get kids excited about manufacturing, but fundamentally
Speaker 6: it's still the work is removed from everyday life, and
Speaker 6: so if you can get back to that point where
Speaker 6: you can add manufacturing back to everyday life, I think
Speaker 6: there's an opportunity to rekindle the interest in the careers.
Speaker 4: We need to do an episode how sim City?
Speaker 3: Right, Like we were internalizing all these lessons from a
Speaker 3: video game and then oh, then suddenly all of the
Speaker 3: main factoring goes out into the exerbs, and then no
Speaker 3: one sees the workers, and then suddenly how City ruined?
Speaker 4: Sim City ruined?
Speaker 5: I would love that.
Speaker 6: I would have loved to see that, honestly, Like the
Speaker 6: I think the mayor, like any mayor who has played
Speaker 6: some city, like the minute you sit down at the desk,
Speaker 6: you're like, oh my god.
Speaker 5: This is totally this amazing.
Speaker 3: Were now I really actually want to do this episode.
Speaker 3: Post COVID, you get this re enthusiasm for manufacturing just
Speaker 3: supply chain reasons, also national security reasons. We get the
Speaker 3: Chips Act, we get the Inflation Reduction Act. What did
Speaker 3: that look like from the perspective of these big programs,
Speaker 3: these sort of the Biden euro programs.
Speaker 4: What did that look like from your perspective?
Speaker 6: So for us, one thing was it was like a
Speaker 6: return to an industrial policy right like previously the United
Speaker 6: States is like the industrial policy didn't make a lot
Speaker 6: of sense for an economic development professional. Now we saw
Speaker 6: like this the federal government was pushing in a particular direction, right,
Speaker 6: and it was like, let's start making stuff again. When
Speaker 6: I became mayor in twenty twenty two, when you were
Speaker 6: sworn in as mayor, you come in with a bunch
Speaker 6: of campaign promises, you sit in the seat and you realize,
Speaker 6: like all of a sudden, there's a completely new set
Speaker 6: of challenges.
Speaker 5: That you have to unlock.
Speaker 6: Right, So all this stuff you wanted into do in
Speaker 6: the campaign, it's nice, but there's more pressing needs. Among
Speaker 6: the things that I could see in the city was
Speaker 6: that we were well, we didn't know what we didn't know,
Speaker 6: so we had a lot to learning. We had to
Speaker 6: dig in and understand the city a little better and
Speaker 6: understand what was going on.
Speaker 5: We also didn't like.
Speaker 6: We had to let some relationships fail, and so we
Speaker 6: needed to get back and make sure that our partners
Speaker 6: were on the same page as us, and we kind
Speaker 6: of lost the capacity to innovate, to get creative and
Speaker 6: do new things. So I was great that I entered
Speaker 6: into the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative at just the
Speaker 6: right moment when when I was feeling desperate, and they
Speaker 6: kind of invested in that capacity. Through doing that, I
Speaker 6: was able to attack one of the things that was
Speaker 6: clearly an issue, which was road safety.
Speaker 5: We had.
Speaker 6: There was a federal grant, the Safe Streets for All
Speaker 6: program that was helping cities plan for safer streets. I'm
Speaker 6: going to get to the point, I promised, so we
Speaker 6: I was a bicycling and running guy, so I wanted
Speaker 6: to like and I felt like we could do better
Speaker 6: for our city if we had safer streets. Bloomberg stood
Speaker 6: up with some partners, the Local Infrastructure Hub.
Speaker 5: It helped me.
Speaker 6: Teach my team how to use data to apply for
Speaker 6: federal funds. It helped us think about how we could
Speaker 6: work with partners to accomplish good outcomes for residents and
Speaker 6: try some new things.
Speaker 5: We're lucky. I also got right in Secretary Boudajes his
Speaker 5: face and said.
Speaker 6: I need help, and we're lucky to get a planning
Speaker 6: grant through that program. That experience helped us understand how
Speaker 6: to as a city returned to federal grants at the State.
Speaker 6: About right after we were awarded that Safe Streets grant,
Speaker 6: the Economic Development Administration announced its Recompete Pilot project and
Speaker 6: it was focused on areas that were I think it
Speaker 6: was this June of twenty twenty three. It was focused
Speaker 6: on areas that had a high prime age employment gap,
Speaker 6: and so prime age employment gap is people between the
Speaker 6: ages of twenty five to fifty four. Prime age employment
Speaker 6: gap as people who are either unemployed at higher than
Speaker 6: average rates.
Speaker 5: Or out of the labor force.
Speaker 6: We looked and saw that Allentown, in fact had a
Speaker 6: high prime age employment gap. Ours was like at six percent.
Speaker 6: We dialed into a particular neighborhood and saw that in
Speaker 6: that area is about twelve percent the region of about
Speaker 6: our neighborhood of about twenty three thousand people that were
Speaker 6: just disproportionately out of the labor force or unemployed. And
Speaker 6: we started to dig in on that group of people
Speaker 6: and how could we at the same time prepare as
Speaker 6: we're thinking about like these changes and the changes to
Speaker 6: the demands of the workforce, how can we make sure
Speaker 6: that our people could work right? And that was where
Speaker 6: these two things came together, is we knew that through
Speaker 6: working with our partners that we have Valley Economic Development Corporation,
Speaker 6: there's still a high demand for manufacturing labor as well
Speaker 6: as healthcare. We knew that the barriers to getting people
Speaker 6: to good jobs sometimes were a lack of available resources,
Speaker 6: things like flexible and affordable childcare. We knew that people
Speaker 6: were sometimes challenged by transportation, that if those jobs are
Speaker 6: out in the suburbs and they didn't have a car,
Speaker 6: it's hard to get to them. And we also knew
Speaker 6: that if we wanted to make sure that people without
Speaker 6: cars could get to work, went to build industrial sites
Speaker 6: in the city. So we put together an application and
Speaker 6: submitted it to EDA, and again, because of the work
Speaker 6: that we had done in the past, we're successful and
Speaker 6: we're able to So we landed a strategic development grant
Speaker 6: in December of twenty three and then we got a
Speaker 6: twenty million dollar investment for implementation. So our team right
Speaker 6: now is working to make sure that as we work
Speaker 6: to bring these manufacturing jobs to not just the city
Speaker 6: but to the entire region, that Allentonians are well positioned
Speaker 6: to get to those jobs. And that's that is, you know,
Speaker 6: a big piece where cities have to be able to
Speaker 6: play a role is making sure that people have the
Speaker 6: tools they need to access the good things that are
Speaker 6: happening in the economy.
Speaker 2: Have you got all the grant money, the Biden aer
Speaker 2: grant money, that all of it so okay, So there's
Speaker 2: no make.
Speaker 5: Sure or like.
Speaker 6: As soon as the November fifth, twenty twenty four, like,
Speaker 6: we went into overdrive to just make sure that we
Speaker 6: weren't at risk of losing anything. And that came through
Speaker 6: the Chips and Science Act, and it was a relatively
Speaker 6: small programs so and you know, practically speaking, our region
Speaker 6: is intensely political, so it would not make sense to.
Speaker 5: Go back some of that.
Speaker 6: I had to fight for some other stuff to make
Speaker 6: sure that we got it, including us I wrote a
Speaker 6: letter to Secretary Rawlins and the USDA about how important
Speaker 6: trees were two cities across America. We've worked to make
Speaker 6: sure we didn't lose the street funding. But you know,
Speaker 6: we're for some of the funding for things that you
Speaker 6: do in cities. It's like very practical, it's it's good
Speaker 6: for residents, it's it should be nonpartisan as long as
Speaker 6: you like, are not exclusively focused on the various different
Speaker 6: things the administration is focused on.
Speaker 2: So speaking of practicality. I sometimes get the sense that
Speaker 2: there's like a bit of a disconnect between how people
Speaker 2: in DC are thinking about industrial policy, whether it's Trump
Speaker 2: or the Biden administration, versus like mayors such as yourself,
Speaker 2: you actually have to implement the stuff and figure out
Speaker 2: exactly how to spend the money. Like what's the biggest
Speaker 2: area of I guess, like tension that you see or
Speaker 2: what could DC actually do to make using those federal
Speaker 2: funds easier for you?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 6: Wow, so there is tension for sure, right, And I
Speaker 6: think that a recognition like the biggest thing that DC
Speaker 6: could do is make sure that people are not worried
Speaker 6: about their healthcare or not worried about putting food on
Speaker 6: the table, or not worried about a thousand other things,
Speaker 6: and can worry about just like being part of this
Speaker 6: American dream, like and building towards something, and that they
Speaker 6: could you be part of the dignity of work. And
Speaker 6: so there's some things that they could just focus less
Speaker 6: on or like trying to cut us of I think
Speaker 6: that cities probably don't think as much about immigration from
Speaker 6: that perspective as an economic driver, but I think that
Speaker 6: we have to continue to bring new people in bring
Speaker 6: new ideas in make American cities places that can receive investment,
Speaker 6: and knowing that somewhat that investment is like it's intellectual capital, right,
Speaker 6: So we want people to come in and feel comfortable
Speaker 6: making stuff and making new technology in our cities. I
Speaker 6: would to say, I think it's not uncommon for mayors
Speaker 6: to be pretty bipartisan in Allentown, where one of my
Speaker 6: senators is Senator Dave McCormick, who's on the the He's
Speaker 6: a Republican. I'm a Democrat, but I appreciate Senat McCormick's
Speaker 6: interest in competitiveness and trying to attract industry and particular
Speaker 6: manufacturing to Pennsylvania. And I think my conversation with Senat McCormick,
Speaker 6: he is somewhat agnostic about where that happens. I think
Speaker 6: he's he'd be happy if the manufacturing investments happened in
Speaker 6: the suburbs or in the cities. It doesn't matter to
Speaker 6: him as much as Pennsylvania remaining competitive. I know he
Speaker 6: was involved with one of the big kind of future
Speaker 6: thinking or future looking manufacturing investments that occurred in our
Speaker 6: area is Eli Lilly announced the three and a half
Speaker 6: billion dollar investment that is just outside of the city limits,
Speaker 6: but their three and a half billion dollar investment will
Speaker 6: create like eight hundred and fifty jobs. I want to
Speaker 6: make sure that all of the residents of the city
Speaker 6: of Allentown are capable of accessing those jobs. I also
Speaker 6: want to make sure that any of the supply chain
Speaker 6: that goes into that Lily golp one manufacturing can be
Speaker 6: produced in the city. If it can be, we want
Speaker 6: to make sure that that we're capable of.
Speaker 5: Connecting to that.
Speaker 6: So that's one thing I think continuing to make sure
Speaker 6: that the country is head of The other thing is
Speaker 6: and this is one that we're kind of going back
Speaker 6: and forth with we you know, Governor Shapiro has launched
Speaker 6: a very aggressive economic development strategy that wants to attract
Speaker 6: more investment and lots of different types of investment. I
Speaker 6: think there's and I've spoken with Bruce Katz formula of
Speaker 6: Brooking is about this, is that Pennsylvania seems like it's
Speaker 6: well situated to be a center of defense manufacturing in
Speaker 6: this new world. Clearly, like there's based on what's happening
Speaker 6: in Iran, there is like there's still need for munitions,
Speaker 6: right and how we can play a role in that
Speaker 6: is I think part of our future. That was what
Speaker 6: we proudly tell the story of how Bethlem Steel helped
Speaker 6: win the war in World War two by building the
Speaker 6: the ships that helped us when the war. I talked
Speaker 6: about VOLTI bomber is helping us when the war. I
Speaker 6: think that there is we have. We're home to mac
Speaker 6: Defense in Allentown. Mac Defense makes giant like heavy duty
Speaker 6: trucks for the US military. We can compete in that
Speaker 6: area as well, and that is manufacturing. So I think
Speaker 6: there's as if the federal government focuses on creating opportunities
Speaker 6: in cities and the states to host manufacturing and it
Speaker 6: makes it easy for that to happen and makes it
Speaker 6: easy to hire people and train people to be ready
Speaker 6: for that work. I think that's that's where we need
Speaker 6: them to play.
Speaker 3: You're already sort of alluded to this, but does it
Speaker 3: feel good to be in a state where it's like
Speaker 3: every national election is just geared towards making the citizens
Speaker 3: of Pennsylvania happy? Like all like that is You're you're
Speaker 3: talking to some mayor from another you know, from Florida.
Speaker 3: It's like try being a swing state. Try being the
Speaker 3: most important state for the electoral college.
Speaker 5: It must be nice. It can be.
Speaker 6: It also turns you into like, like I have given
Speaker 6: tours of my city to foreign press.
Speaker 3: Every country borders that they get the diner in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 4: Right, that's the classic.
Speaker 6: Trop Yeah then, so I mean it's it's nice to
Speaker 6: be the center of attention for that way in the
Speaker 6: like in that politicians kind of want.
Speaker 5: To make you happy.
Speaker 6: But practically speaking, you know, there's like, as a mayor,
Speaker 6: your job is to just meet the needs of your residence, right,
Speaker 6: Like that's what you dial in on, and so whatever
Speaker 6: they're doing nationally, like you're just worried about residents.
Speaker 3: One reason that people are very excited or that people
Speaker 3: are have an affinity towards manufacturing is the jobs, right,
Speaker 3: and you mentioned the jobs and people seeing.
Speaker 4: People go to work.
Speaker 3: Another reason, particularly over the last several years or the
Speaker 3: last post COVID, is for national security reasons, not wanting
Speaker 3: to rely on China or other countries for really critical things. However,
Speaker 3: some of these most advanced industries they're they're not particularly
Speaker 3: going to be job heavy, right. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: robotics and increasing automation is there a disconnect between the
Speaker 3: sort of again maybe emotional maybe like the sort of
Speaker 3: romantic notions that people have about manufacturing versus the reality
Speaker 3: of the actual labor intensivity of some of these industries.
Speaker 6: I think that from the mayor's perspective, I probably am
Speaker 6: more in that kind of romantic world, right like where
Speaker 6: we're just kind of like, yeah, you know, we envision
Speaker 6: a world in which people will always be putting their
Speaker 6: hands on stuff right one way or another. And when
Speaker 6: you get into a higher technology where like we already
Speaker 6: have robots doing like precision surgery, presumably some of the
Speaker 6: precision manufacturing is going to be better done with a
Speaker 6: robotic hand than the steady hand or strong back of
Speaker 6: somebody on the line.
Speaker 5: I do think that, as you like, there's.
Speaker 6: Still and this is a vibe that I'm starting to
Speaker 6: get mayors tend to pick up, like because we're on
Speaker 6: the ground, Yeah, we start to hear the vibes before.
Speaker 5: They become national vibes.
Speaker 6: But I think that there's there's a very strong at
Speaker 6: least in in my city and some other cities that
Speaker 6: have visited, there's like a strong like handmade or like
Speaker 6: a rejection of the robots and AI, whether it's art
Speaker 6: or like the produced goods, I don't know if anybody,
Speaker 6: I don't know what the the logical end to that is,
Speaker 6: but I think there's on on the consumer side, there's
Speaker 6: there's still a desire. I think people romanticize some of
Speaker 6: the product, right, and they'd rather have something that that
Speaker 6: people have made. On the jobs side of it, I
Speaker 6: think that there's there's still this belief that we need
Speaker 6: to preserve the dignity of work, that there's always going
Speaker 6: to be that we're going to have to find some
Speaker 6: way to allow people to continue to work. That maybe
Speaker 6: you don't need the robots running the whole warehouse, right,
Speaker 6: that maybe you need, you know, somebody to be involved.
Speaker 6: And we've seen that, Like this is my first job
Speaker 6: out of grad school was working in the billboard industry
Speaker 6: and in Panama, and I remember vividly talking to somebody
Speaker 6: who has, you know, introduced myself. This is in my
Speaker 6: economic development days, and I was like, oh, you know,
Speaker 6: at first I started in billboards and the guy was
Speaker 6: in private equity and he was like, that's great, man,
Speaker 6: billboards are awesome. The only thing better than billboards is
Speaker 6: coin up landromats, and I was like, I was like, dude,
Speaker 6: you're in the wrong business now, because like maybe in
Speaker 6: private equity, like that was a great idea, like the
Speaker 6: fear of your jobs, like down to self storage, which
Speaker 6: I think is the worse than the cities. But like
Speaker 6: weird job creators, like we have to find ways to
Speaker 6: create jobs, to create opportunities for people to be dignified
Speaker 6: by their work. So while there may be some value
Speaker 6: to like squeezing out every single nickel of cost from
Speaker 6: some operation, there's a lot to benefit cities and to
Speaker 6: benefit society of having people, you know, actually putting their
Speaker 6: hands on things.
Speaker 2: Can you talk specifically about how you're thinking about data centers,
Speaker 2: because this is like the example of what we're getting at,
Speaker 2: and in the theory, you know, Allentown, you got a
Speaker 2: bunch of big warehouses and things like that.
Speaker 3: That presumably, yeah to that needed energy at one point.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I have lots of sophisticated and unsophisticated thoughts about
Speaker 6: data centers we as a city and as a mayor.
Speaker 6: I'm thinking about them in a couple of ways. One
Speaker 6: like they're very clearly a political issue now, and they're
Speaker 6: a political issue for hate saying both sides, but for
Speaker 6: both sides, right.
Speaker 4: Like we there really are.
Speaker 2: It's kind of crazy.
Speaker 5: There's legislation, so I think that.
Speaker 6: So we amended our zoning Right after we amended our
Speaker 6: zoning ordinance, we then we made an amendment to the
Speaker 6: ordinance with reference to data centers. The reality for a
Speaker 6: city like Allentown, in most cities in the country, is
Speaker 6: that we don't really have any space for data centers.
Speaker 6: It's unlikely that a hyperscale one. It's not just unlikely
Speaker 6: a hyper scale er cannot locate in the city of
Speaker 6: Allentown unless they acquire a bunch of homes and demolish them.
Speaker 6: But it is reality in place like Phoenix, right, So
Speaker 6: we amendedor zoning code to just set up certain requirements
Speaker 6: around the establishment of a data center, just to make
Speaker 6: sure that our backs are covered. The worst thing that
Speaker 6: happens in any municipality is like something shows up that
Speaker 6: people don't want and your hands are tied because your
Speaker 6: zoning allows for it. So we make sure that we
Speaker 6: are covered in that respect.
Speaker 4: Sorry, just be clear.
Speaker 2: Covered like you've data center proofed you're zoning is.
Speaker 6: That we're in the process of review right now to
Speaker 6: make sure that any proposed data center has to demonstrate
Speaker 6: not just the highway use or the water use, but
Speaker 6: also like energy sources. So we're making sure that data
Speaker 6: centers have proposed for the city have can demonstrate their
Speaker 6: compliance basically.
Speaker 5: So it's it's political as.
Speaker 6: I understand the technology, and this is probably the less
Speaker 6: sophisticated side of the thought. It's getting smaller and smaller, right.
Speaker 6: The data centers do not have to exist at this
Speaker 6: incredible you know, to take up lots and lots of land.
Speaker 6: They can exist perhaps in downtowns. I don't know what
Speaker 6: their energy needs are going to be. I know that
Speaker 6: most mayors are concerned about data centers, not because they're
Speaker 6: worried about land use or a lack of jobs, but
Speaker 6: because utility bills are significantly rising. At the same time
Speaker 6: that food bills are rising and gas bills are rising
Speaker 6: and housing is getting more expensive. Now people are also
Speaker 6: seeing their utility bills rise, so that that's been driving
Speaker 6: a lot of the concern for mayors.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, I know someone I heard about it.
Speaker 3: There's a startup in New York City that is doing
Speaker 3: something that's like, I don't know exactly what it is.
Speaker 3: I was hearing about it from a friend. But they're
Speaker 3: like training some Nvidia chips or doing something and it's
Speaker 3: just with like a normal like sort of like residential
Speaker 3: connection to the electricity. It's fairly small scale. It's not mega,
Speaker 3: but like, yeah, to your point, like it does feel
Speaker 3: like the footprint there at least it's some potentially new
Speaker 3: applications the footprints. You hear about the giant things, but
Speaker 3: the footprints are also potentially coming down.
Speaker 6: That was what was what I was here. You know,
Speaker 6: I'm an AI skeptic as a mayor. I've been talked back.
Speaker 5: I keep going back this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but I was talking to somebody at Hopkins, at
Speaker 6: Johns Hopkins who is like, hey, you shouldn't be so skeptical,
Speaker 6: because it's going to open It might result in some
Speaker 6: somewhat fewer human human react interactions, but it's going to
Speaker 6: open the door for humans and city government specifically to
Speaker 6: participate more and more in helping people out. And she
Speaker 6: was the one who mentioned like, and it's also like
Speaker 6: all of the like the fear about data center might
Speaker 6: be misplaced, like there is we are I'm not necessarily
Speaker 6: a great believer in technology figuring out a way to
Speaker 6: get us to like save our bacon for forever. But
Speaker 6: it does seem like this is one that there's short
Speaker 6: term concern about and I don't know what what it
Speaker 6: really stems from, but whenever politicians are involved, you have
Speaker 6: to raise an eyebrow.
Speaker 2: I have one more question, and it's a very important one.
Speaker 2: What's the deal with Yakos? If I google allanown controversy,
Speaker 2: Yakos comes up.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I think there's probably a couple of Yako's controversies.
Speaker 6: The very local one is like you got to pick
Speaker 6: a sort. You gotta choose between Yakos or Pots. Apparently
Speaker 6: they eat pots hot dogs, and Bethlehem. I guess we
Speaker 6: should say Yako's is a hot dog hot dog. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 6: the folks in Bethlam like, I love my neighbor, but
Speaker 6: I would never eat a Pots dog.
Speaker 5: Yakos.
Speaker 6: There's one of the deals is like you have to
Speaker 6: know how to order it right. So the order is
Speaker 6: like you just get two dogs. I order two dogs
Speaker 6: with everything and a chocolate milk. Some people get perogies
Speaker 6: with it too. One of the there was a few
Speaker 6: years ago a guy named Gary Eyakoca, whose family owned Yako,
Speaker 6: has talked about how his Yako is on Seventh Street,
Speaker 6: which is in center city, Allentown couldn't exist anymore because
Speaker 6: of the demographic changes that we've seen in Allentown. So
Speaker 6: Yako's I think is he and I went back and
Speaker 6: forth a little bit. We're very good friends now, but
Speaker 6: we were we struggled a little bit because I'm the
Speaker 6: first Latino mayor of Allentown. So the other thing that
Speaker 6: makes the Billy Joel song so wrong in twenty twenty
Speaker 6: six is that in nineteen eighty two, it was like
Speaker 6: it was a very homogenous. Basically everybody in Allentown was
Speaker 6: white European. Today we're fifty five percent Latino, like we
Speaker 6: are a very different city. And his case was like, well,
Speaker 6: you know it isn't it ain't like it was, And
Speaker 6: you know it was kind of it felt to me
Speaker 6: like kind of a rejection of our new city that
Speaker 6: I just love. So we went back and forth a
Speaker 6: little bit on that. There's probably other Yako's controversies out there.
Speaker 6: There's like he has like a big hot dog statue
Speaker 6: that roves around a little bit, but it's a good
Speaker 6: hot dog. If you come to Alentine, I will treat
Speaker 6: you to Yaka is hot dog, and.
Speaker 2: You'll teach us how to order it.
Speaker 3: Teach you how to order like the politicians get a
Speaker 3: huge scandal they ordered it the wrong way, like you know,
Speaker 3: it is like John Carrey, like ordered whether you get
Speaker 3: like Swiss cheese instead of something else.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's our version of the cheese steak.
Speaker 5: And there's a special like Lee Have Valley version of
Speaker 5: the cheese steak.
Speaker 6: As well that the Philadelphians would want nothing to do with.
Speaker 4: What makes America great.
Speaker 3: Like these niche these niche loyalties towards certain orders and
Speaker 3: certain hot dog.
Speaker 2: Yeah all right, Maryturk, thank you so much for coming
Speaker 2: on all thoughts.
Speaker 5: That was great, Thank you. It really had a good time.
Speaker 2: So that was super interesting. There are a lot of
Speaker 2: things to pick out from there. But one thing that
Speaker 2: stood out was that sort of twenty tens era of
Speaker 2: like made in America craft manufacturing. I remember that really, Yeah.
Speaker 3: No totally. It's actually pretently kind of depressing because those
Speaker 3: maker bought festival or the maker body. I think it's
Speaker 3: different than the maker festivals. But there was that culture
Speaker 3: of people doing tinkering and.
Speaker 2: The printing story.
Speaker 6: Remember that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it was like a thing, and it's like
Speaker 3: all sort of fizzled out, but there was just like
Speaker 3: a forgotten part of post GFC artistical manufacturing, cynical manufacturing
Speaker 3: and people just building weird stuff.
Speaker 4: Things aren't weird enough anymore.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I might get weird with AI.
Speaker 4: No, they're gonna get weird.
Speaker 3: But I'm glad he brought that up because I I
Speaker 3: it doesn't get discussed enough. Yeah, just generally though, like
Speaker 3: I thought it was great and like, first of all,
Speaker 3: just learning a bunch of new things. You know, I
Speaker 3: hadn't heard of weight gaining manufacturing, but that makes a
Speaker 3: lot of sense, right, Like if there's some process that
Speaker 3: adds a lot of weight, such as water to a product,
Speaker 3: you want that to be at the last mile of
Speaker 3: the supply chain rather than early on. Also fascinating to
Speaker 3: think about, like, okay, what a strategic advantage it is
Speaker 3: to be within a day's drive of one hundred million people.
Speaker 3: So therefore it makes a less sense to put various
Speaker 3: you know, e commerce warehouses in so much interesting stuff there.
Speaker 2: Also the mixed zoning I found really interesting, but because
Speaker 2: it is true if you think about industry, you know,
Speaker 2: even ten or twenty years ago, it was much more
Speaker 2: polluting and noisy and disturbing than it is now. And
Speaker 2: so you can have in an era of high tech manufacturing,
Speaker 2: you absolutely could have mixed use neighborhoods and buildings.
Speaker 3: Why not, right, So you just have to update the
Speaker 3: zoning to reflect the reality that it's not going to
Speaker 3: be automatically repellent to the neighbors.
Speaker 2: And then everyone can walk to work with their lunch boxes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right?
Speaker 3: Shall we leave it there for the bike to work?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Or bike to work?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Allaway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Speaker 3: Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen armand dash Ol
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