WEBVTT - How an American City Can Become a Manufacturing Hub 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:15.840 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:21.320 Hello and welcome to another episode of the All Thoughts Podcast. 0:00:21.360 --> 0:00:22.919 I'm Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe. 0:00:22.920 --> 0:00:24.200 Why isn't Joe? 0:00:24.239 --> 0:00:28.920 Do you ever discover little cultural blind spots that you 0:00:29.040 --> 0:00:30.040 had in your life? 0:00:30.520 --> 0:00:33.839 I'm like, where are you going with this? 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:37.200 So I discovered one recently and it kind of led 0:00:37.240 --> 0:00:39.760 to a minor epiphany for me. But I had heard 0:00:39.760 --> 0:00:43.400 the Billy Joel song Alan Town. I had never watched 0:00:43.400 --> 0:00:47.040 the video, and in preparation for this episode, I watched 0:00:47.080 --> 0:00:51.160 the video and suddenly a bunch of Simpsons references made 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:51.760 sense to me. 0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:52.520 Interesting. 0:00:52.640 --> 0:00:54.480 And I don't mean to be I don't mean to 0:00:54.520 --> 0:00:57.960 be very grand millennial by making Simpsons references. 0:00:59.160 --> 0:01:01.640 Simpsons reference to like someone younger in the office, they 0:01:01.720 --> 0:01:05.720 look at the blank stare. I know, it's reallyressed. I 0:01:06.040 --> 0:01:07.840 just don't do it anymore because it's so depressing. 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:09.720 I know, and here I am doing it on the podcast. 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:12.720 But I actually, you know, we're the same generation, so 0:01:12.760 --> 0:01:13.240 we could do it. 0:01:13.480 --> 0:01:14.080 We can do it. 0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:16.119 This is a safe listeners might not get it. 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:18.080 So the reason I bring it up, though, is for 0:01:18.440 --> 0:01:20.520 kind of a serious point, not just to talk about 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:22.560 Billy Joel music, although now that I think about it, 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:25.600 he has a lot of songs about like the political 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:30.760 economy of America. But it is because Allentown, Pennsylvania basically 0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:34.720 became a poster child for de industrialization and the hollowing 0:01:34.760 --> 0:01:37.559 out of American manufacturing in the nineteen eighties. 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:40.640 It was a great intro and thank you and of course, right, 0:01:40.840 --> 0:01:44.600 so we know, and obviously over the years on odd lots, 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:51.320 we've talked a lot about industrialization, de industrialization, reindustrialization, great, 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:56.160 all very interesting themes. Everyone maybe like feels in their 0:01:56.240 --> 0:02:00.680 gut somehow that they're like pro reindustrialization, whatever that means. Right, 0:02:00.840 --> 0:02:03.560 But then the gap between like somehow like we feel 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:06.800 good about producing physical things, we want more of that, 0:02:07.080 --> 0:02:09.560 What does that actually look like in practice? What are 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:13.240 these jobs? What are these potential industries? Then it suddenly 0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:16.560 gets much more hazy. Right, people don't know what that 0:02:16.600 --> 0:02:17.359 actually looks. 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:19.239 Like in practice? Right, how do you actually go about 0:02:19.600 --> 0:02:23.360 implementing industrial policy on a local scale. And I have 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:25.880 to say, the other thing I found out in researching 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:29.280 for this podcast. I had no idea, but Allentown, Pennsylvania 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:32.120 was also the site of the first some of the 0:02:32.160 --> 0:02:36.920 first mass produced transistors, yeah, which are like the precursor 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:38.919 to semiconductors of today. 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:41.799 Can I say what random thinking about Billy Joel before 0:02:41.840 --> 0:02:44.519 we go further, you know, because obviously you mentioned he 0:02:44.639 --> 0:02:47.240 talks about, you know, a lot of political economy things 0:02:47.280 --> 0:02:49.440 and including of course, and we didn't start the fire. 0:02:49.880 --> 0:02:52.520 The final line of that song is like something about 0:02:52.520 --> 0:02:55.440 the Cola wars, and he's like, I can't take it anymore, 0:02:55.560 --> 0:02:57.320 and I just think it's really funny that the Cola 0:02:57.400 --> 0:02:59.760 wars coke vers pepsi is the thing that tip to 0:02:59.800 --> 0:03:02.919 over edge like a Vietnam War. All these things happened, 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:05.240 and finally the thing that tipped them over the edge 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:08.160 was the cold anyway sidechrick, but I just had to. 0:03:08.080 --> 0:03:08.560 Get that out. 0:03:08.639 --> 0:03:11.360 We should do a whole episode on Billy Joels songs 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:14.760 at some point, including my favorite karaoke standard, which is 0:03:14.800 --> 0:03:18.000 down Easter Alexa, all about the decline of the fishing industry. 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:22.160 But anyway, Allentown, Pennsylvania, let's focus. We do, in fact 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:24.560 have the perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:28.040 the Mayor of Allentown, Matt Turk. So thank you so 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:30.320 much for coming on all thoughts place. 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:32.000 It's a huge pleasure to be here. 0:03:32.200 --> 0:03:34.800 It actually helps because we are we are at the 0:03:34.800 --> 0:03:36.600 conference in Madrid, right and. 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:39.400 We just saw you have a medal from me from 0:03:39.440 --> 0:03:41.880 the marathon over the weekend. Tell us about that. 0:03:42.240 --> 0:03:45.440 I landed on Saturday, went right to the marathon expo, 0:03:45.520 --> 0:03:48.200 picked up my bib. Twenty four hours later I was 0:03:48.280 --> 0:03:52.400 starting the Madrid forty two k not twenty six miles, 0:03:52.440 --> 0:03:56.480 forty two kilometers marathon. It was hot, it was hilly, 0:03:56.960 --> 0:04:01.120 it was beautiful, great crowd support, phenomenal marathon fun finished 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:04.440 the marathon and then went right to a reception for 0:04:04.640 --> 0:04:07.360 Bloomberg City Lab and I've been NonStop since then. 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:10.840 That is dedication to both Cardio and city Bustling. So 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:15.560 congrats on that. I mentioned Allantown the song and the 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:19.320 video in the intro, and I discovered there's some controversy 0:04:19.320 --> 0:04:22.800 about this because apparently the steelmaking was more in Bethlehem 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:26.200 rather than in Allantown. So should Billy Joel have been 0:04:26.320 --> 0:04:28.279 talking about semiconductors instead of steel? 0:04:28.920 --> 0:04:31.520 I mean, there's he could have been talking about Max trucks. 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:35.599 He could have been talking about silk manufacturing. That's like 0:04:35.680 --> 0:04:39.440 the local controversy is that like he's talking about you know, 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:43.760 Bethleem but he didn't rhyme as well with shutting factories down. 0:04:43.839 --> 0:04:45.360 But then there's you know, I was surprised. 0:04:45.360 --> 0:04:45.920 I thought that. 0:04:46.440 --> 0:04:49.279 Everyone in the country felt like not great about the 0:04:49.320 --> 0:04:51.840 song Allentown. Then I met the mayor of Toledo and 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:54.240 he was like, that's a great song. It's about the 0:04:54.279 --> 0:04:55.960 working man and blah blah blah blah blah, And I 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:58.400 was like, what are you talking about, Like this is 0:04:58.640 --> 0:05:01.599 the song that like everybody in our region and the 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:05.120 Lehigh Alley just like dreads hearing because it's about this 0:05:05.240 --> 0:05:08.719 like different era that maybe was like felt right in 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:11.920 the moment in eighteen eighty two, like that maybe kind 0:05:11.920 --> 0:05:15.120 of captured the moment, But in twenty twenty six, it's 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:18.160 like it doesn't sound further from it couldn't sound further 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:18.760 from the truth. 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:21.599 Give us like a little Allentown history, Like what is 0:05:21.680 --> 0:05:24.080 the timeline when we talk about these sort of key 0:05:24.640 --> 0:05:29.400 industries that were once associated with the city of Allentown. 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:31.880 What was the sort of peak of it and when 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:33.320 was the sort of trough. 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:34.880 Maan, Yeah, I mean so, I mean the city was 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:38.320 founded back in seventeen sixty two. It had its revolutionary moment. 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:40.600 We hid the liberty bell there, but it really picked 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:44.240 up and incorporated in eighteen sixty seven for the kind 0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:47.920 of reconstruction, and that's when the industry really started to 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:52.320 It started to industrialize. Like many American cities, early industry 0:05:52.640 --> 0:05:56.840 was cigar manufacturing, so tobacco that was growing in Lancaster 0:05:57.120 --> 0:06:01.600 was shipped to Allentown for production into cigars. Silk manufacturing 0:06:01.640 --> 0:06:05.520 became a pretty big deal in that area. It was 0:06:05.600 --> 0:06:08.200 a place where silk could be brought in and then processed. 0:06:08.760 --> 0:06:12.279 In the early kind of nineteen ten, sort of around 0:06:12.320 --> 0:06:17.240 the First World War, mac truck moved to Allentown from Brooklyn. 0:06:17.360 --> 0:06:21.040 This was like nineteen fifteen, and industrial production of those 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:26.839 vehicles started. We manufactured volty bombers, a particular type of 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:30.479 bomber for World War Two. This is all coincident with 0:06:30.760 --> 0:06:37.520 Bethlehem's steel industry rising up. The industrial work continued through 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:40.719 I think you guys must mentioned the transistor in Western Electric. 0:06:40.800 --> 0:06:43.479 That was kind of a big story. But then, like 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:47.920 a lot of places, manufacturing started to decline, not as 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:50.800 strongly in Allentown as other parts of the country. But 0:06:51.600 --> 0:06:55.640 the Western Electric plant eventually shut down. The year were 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:57.360 we talked about with that Western Electric was. 0:06:57.320 --> 0:06:58.400 In the seventies. 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:04.479 It actually it morphed into something else that eventually became Broadcom. 0:07:04.560 --> 0:07:07.880 So there's still some manufacturing. It didn't necessarily exist in 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:12.239 the city. It spread out into suburban parts of the region. 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:17.440 There's still some chip manufacturing occurring or wafer polishing occurring 0:07:17.480 --> 0:07:19.960 in the area. We still have the kind of muscle 0:07:20.000 --> 0:07:26.400 memory of semiconductor manufacturing. But again, the industry evolved and changed. 0:07:26.840 --> 0:07:29.760 The Volta aircraft shut down when there's no need to 0:07:29.800 --> 0:07:34.640 produce bombers anymore. MAC Trucks continued operations in Allentown, but 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:37.200 in the eighties shifted most of its production to a 0:07:37.240 --> 0:07:40.680 plant in Mcunjie that still operates today. A lot of 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:44.240 those old MAC plants were acquired by an organization that 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:46.920 I used to work for, the Allentown Economic twelve in Corporation, 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:53.280 and repurposed. Initially repurposed for this is the eighties. The 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:56.080 thought at the time was that it could be an 0:07:56.120 --> 0:07:59.760 incubator facility, a business incubator. It did become that, but 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:03.400 it is more of a manufacturing incubator. These were old 0:08:04.360 --> 0:08:09.560 sawtooth roof buildings with twelve to eighteen foot ceilings, so 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:11.800 some big spaces but not a lot of clearance. They 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:15.200 weren't suited for modern manufacturing. And that's what a lot 0:08:15.240 --> 0:08:16.960 of the building stock in all the time looked like. 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:21.320 But the production was still occurring in some capacity in 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:25.080 the city, definitely in the region. When the steel shut 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:28.200 down in Bethalem in eighteen ninety eight, I think was 0:08:28.240 --> 0:08:33.440 when they did their last cast. That's when leading up 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:36.120 to that, the region had already started to think about 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:40.240 how to diversify, how to build on the Western electric 0:08:40.480 --> 0:08:46.720 The semiconductor manufacturer Lehigh University was a source of engineering talent. 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:51.719 They started to diversify out into life sciences. So there's 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:56.440 some precursor drugs that are manufactured there, some medical supplies 0:08:56.480 --> 0:08:59.559 that are still manufactured there bibraun Another one that I 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:02.880 didn't meant was air products. So it's an industrial gas manufacturer. 0:09:02.920 --> 0:09:05.360 I know you guys were recently talking about helium. Air 0:09:05.400 --> 0:09:06.480 products is like, it's. 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:09.320 So fun talking to a listener. That makes it so easy. 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:10.320 It's like a helium. 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:11.160 Yeah, the helium. 0:09:11.520 --> 0:09:14.839 So helium was something that air products manufacturers. It's one 0:09:14.840 --> 0:09:17.640 of those head scratchers when you're talking about a region's 0:09:17.679 --> 0:09:21.200 industrial output to say, like we make like an element, 0:09:21.440 --> 0:09:26.640 like an elemental element like the low Yeah, it's hard 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:29.960 to describe how that happens. But that was founded in Allentown, 0:09:30.320 --> 0:09:33.080 actually was founded in Tennessee and moved Downlandtown in the fifties, 0:09:33.480 --> 0:09:35.400 but a lot of that production was still occurring. The 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:38.800 kind of civic leaders of the time in the early 0:09:38.920 --> 0:09:42.400 nineties as they could foresee the end of Bethelm Steel 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:44.480 when it was acquired I think it was acquired by 0:09:44.480 --> 0:09:47.200 our store, Midal, But they could see the end in sight, 0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:51.040 and so they made a conscious effort to diversify, working 0:09:51.040 --> 0:09:53.439 with a commonalth of Pennsylvania to stand up some tech 0:09:53.559 --> 0:09:57.960 led economic development, which had its It was successful in 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:02.559 a few places. The biggest sess in attracting investment or 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:05.000 the biggest kind of economic development story for the region 0:10:05.440 --> 0:10:08.920 was in two thousand and six when the region convinced Olympus, 0:10:09.400 --> 0:10:13.640 which is the manufacturer of surgical devices, to relocate its 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:15.199 North American headquarters too. 0:10:15.760 --> 0:10:17.520 They were out in suburban Bethlehem. 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:20.880 But that's been the character right, there's it's a very 0:10:20.880 --> 0:10:25.360 diverse fide economy today, it's still about seventeen percent of 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:29.040 the jobs or manufacturing jobs, so it's much higher than 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:32.680 many other parts of the country and it's held pretty steady. 0:10:33.160 --> 0:10:36.240 So that's. 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:40.360 Well, that was a fantastic summary. But on that note, 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:42.559 I mean, I think a lot of cities and towns 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:45.640 in America, whether they're in the russ Belt or Pennsylvania 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:48.080 or the South or wherever, who have gone through this 0:10:48.200 --> 0:10:51.760 de industrialization phase. They all say they want to build 0:10:51.800 --> 0:10:55.200 back their manufacturing sector in some way. But it feels 0:10:55.200 --> 0:10:57.360 like Allentown has kind of gone about it in a 0:10:57.400 --> 0:11:00.560 slightly different way in that you've had to sort of 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:04.120 grand strategy or vision for how to do that rather 0:11:04.160 --> 0:11:07.600 than try to attract just like individual businesses in a 0:11:07.640 --> 0:11:10.760 piecemeal way. Can you talk about how you actually formulated 0:11:10.800 --> 0:11:11.199 that plant. 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:14.400 Yeah, So I started working for the Economic Development Corporation 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:18.800 in two thousand and eight, and we had the manufacturing 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:22.200 incubator it's called the Bridgeworks and Manufacturing Incubator that was 0:11:22.320 --> 0:11:25.559 in place at that time. It was trying to pivot 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:27.559 away from manufacturing. 0:11:27.600 --> 0:11:28.320 When I got there. 0:11:28.880 --> 0:11:31.440 We also had an industrial building that sort of funded 0:11:31.480 --> 0:11:35.439 our existence, where we had a T shirt manufacturer an 0:11:35.440 --> 0:11:40.440 industrial valvevest manufacturer and somebody who is building large scale 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:42.719 tents as tenants, and they were kind of keeping the 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:46.240 organization alive. There was this, you know, in two thousand 0:11:46.240 --> 0:11:48.920 and eight. It was right kind of in the early 0:11:49.000 --> 0:11:51.480 days of the global financial crisis. There is some concern 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:54.520 about how we would recover economically, what we would do, 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:59.160 but these early investments in manufacturing were, from what I 0:11:59.160 --> 0:12:02.800 could see looking ahead, something we shouldn't turn our backs on. 0:12:03.200 --> 0:12:07.160 There was this healthy manufacturing, seemingly healthy manufacturing economy in 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:11.520 place in the Lehigh Valley, and it felt like it 0:12:11.559 --> 0:12:15.120 felt like there was an opportunity to build for the future. 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:18.960 I worked with our CEO or executive director at that 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:23.400 time to start thinking about how we might position the 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:28.319 area as a place where you could bring smaller footprint manufacturing. 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:30.800 We knew we had this building stock of buildings that 0:12:30.800 --> 0:12:33.920 were smaller than one hundred thousand square feet, sometimes on 0:12:34.000 --> 0:12:36.960 multiple stories. There was a kind of gravity flow model 0:12:37.000 --> 0:12:40.760 of manufacturing where you would load in raw material at 0:12:40.800 --> 0:12:43.280 the top of the building and as it gained weight, 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:46.280 it would drop down the building for a final finishing 0:12:46.320 --> 0:12:49.560 on the ground floor and then shipping. We felt like 0:12:49.600 --> 0:12:53.199 there was an opportunity to kind of leverage the existing 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:59.640 industrial inventory to attract manufacturers that were more boutique. I 0:12:59.679 --> 0:13:03.640 remember reading an article in the Wall Street Journal in 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:06.720 maybe two thousand and nine or twenty ten about a 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:10.319 bag manufacturer in San Francisco who was like very proud 0:13:10.400 --> 0:13:13.160 of being in San Francisco. I was like, this is 0:13:13.240 --> 0:13:16.200 I think there's something here for us. I reached out 0:13:16.280 --> 0:13:18.719 to the manufacturer. At the time, this was kind of 0:13:18.760 --> 0:13:20.520 around the same time as the rise of like maker 0:13:20.559 --> 0:13:22.800 spaces and three to printing was kind. 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:23.640 Of coming online. 0:13:23.679 --> 0:13:25.760 It looked like you could do some stuff in a 0:13:25.800 --> 0:13:28.640 smaller form factor, and we kept thinking like, this is 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:32.920 a chance for us, with these strong roots in manufacturing 0:13:33.360 --> 0:13:36.400 to bring some of it back. And we got deep into. 0:13:36.280 --> 0:13:37.320 It and really explored. 0:13:37.360 --> 0:13:41.400 We formed something called the Urban Manufacturing Alliance and collaboration 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:44.959 with San Francisco and the Pratt Institute in New York 0:13:45.120 --> 0:13:48.920 and our friends in the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation and 0:13:49.000 --> 0:13:51.160 in Detroit to just kind of bring cities who were 0:13:51.160 --> 0:13:56.440 interested in manufacturing together. We started talking about reshoring or 0:13:56.480 --> 0:13:59.000 on shoring at that time, but it felt distant. 0:14:14.840 --> 0:14:16.760 I'm glad you brought up the sort of maker of 0:14:16.840 --> 0:14:18.640 three D printing phenomenon, because. 0:14:18.679 --> 0:14:19.400 Such a thing around that. 0:14:19.520 --> 0:14:22.400 Yeah, it was, but it's forgotten, isn't it. Because when 0:14:22.440 --> 0:14:25.800 we talk generally about the tailwind or the growth of 0:14:25.840 --> 0:14:29.000 the twenty tens, it's almost entirely people talk about tech, right, 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:32.640 software et cetera, the Internet and all that, and then 0:14:32.680 --> 0:14:35.680 we talk about post COVID, this re you know, this 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:39.400 new enthusiasm for reshoring. But it was like this forgotten 0:14:39.480 --> 0:14:42.920 chapter that within particularly the first half of the twenty tens, 0:14:43.200 --> 0:14:46.240 the various maker spaces and the three D printers and 0:14:46.280 --> 0:14:48.560 people were really excited about that kind of fizzled out 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:50.240 like that, like that mini movement. 0:14:50.320 --> 0:14:50.880 You don't hear that. 0:14:51.440 --> 0:14:52.280 It fizzled out for sure. 0:14:52.320 --> 0:14:56.480 But so we did a reindustrialization strategy in twenty fourteen. 0:14:56.520 --> 0:14:59.560 We worked with somebody to evaluate our total industrial stock. 0:15:00.120 --> 0:15:01.680 I had at that point moved on to work for 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:06.000 the Regional Economic Development Corporation, but was still involved with 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:09.200 the Serban Manufacturing Alliance at the region. We could see 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:12.040 that manufacturing was still important. I had a better sense 0:15:12.080 --> 0:15:15.400 of what other types of manufacturing was occurring in the area. 0:15:15.840 --> 0:15:20.640 We developed a strategy kept thinking what I kept seeing 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:23.480 at the region was that there is real demand to 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:28.280 be in the Lehigh Valley and in these smaller footprint buildings. 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:32.440 So we saw inquiries all the time for buildings between 0:15:32.440 --> 0:15:34.880 forty and eighty thousand square feet. But this is a 0:15:34.880 --> 0:15:38.600 time when we have ALLYS pivoting its economy toward transportation 0:15:38.640 --> 0:15:42.880 and warehousing, building million square foot buildings with twenty four 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:47.920 to thirty six foot ceilings. Really, as this other technological 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:51.200 trend of the e comms started to show up, this 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:53.920 was the high demand for industrial space. So we had 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:57.840 lots of interest from small manufacturers, particularly coming out of 0:15:57.880 --> 0:16:02.320 places like Brooklyn where it was like not quite the 0:16:02.440 --> 0:16:05.080 place to be, who wanted to spread their arms a 0:16:05.160 --> 0:16:08.800 little bit and maybe have access to to talent they 0:16:08.800 --> 0:16:10.360 were trying to be in that we have ally, but 0:16:10.400 --> 0:16:13.120 we didn't have a ton of building space to meet 0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:13.640 their needs. 0:16:13.680 --> 0:16:14.640 So when we. 0:16:14.600 --> 0:16:17.760 Built that reindustrialization strategy, a big part of it was 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:23.600 how do we position the built environment for this demand. 0:16:24.160 --> 0:16:27.800 And some of that is, you know, rehabbing existing industrial 0:16:27.840 --> 0:16:33.440 buildings as surprise surprise industrial buildings, so it's it's continued 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:34.080 on from there. 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:37.280 Yeah, So this is another thing I learned about Allentown. 0:16:37.320 --> 0:16:40.000 I'm full of Allentown facts at the moment. But apparently 0:16:40.160 --> 0:16:43.240 Allentown is within a day's drive of forty percent of 0:16:43.280 --> 0:16:45.080 the population in the US. Is that true? 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:48.800 Yeah, it's it's over on many more than one hundred 0:16:48.800 --> 0:16:51.600 million people, and that's what made it such a strong 0:16:52.000 --> 0:16:55.120 destination for some of the e comm But it's also 0:16:55.240 --> 0:16:57.600 like that, you know, you go back to, like why 0:16:57.640 --> 0:17:01.400 it is a vibrant economic region is that it's a 0:17:01.440 --> 0:17:03.760 great place for weight gaining industries. 0:17:03.920 --> 0:17:04.080 Right. 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:08.119 So the other big thing we worked on the Regional 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:12.280 Economic Development Corporation was we recruited Ocean Spray to make 0:17:12.480 --> 0:17:15.879 most of its great cranberry juice in the weih Have Alley. 0:17:15.960 --> 0:17:18.760 Sam Adams was brewing most of its beer in the 0:17:19.040 --> 0:17:19.520 High Valley. 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:22.520 Was it weight gaining industry anything. 0:17:22.240 --> 0:17:25.560 You add water to basically, right, So you when you 0:17:25.600 --> 0:17:29.280 have the cranberries come into the plant like to become 0:17:29.359 --> 0:17:31.840 cranberry juice, you add a ton of water. It doesn't 0:17:31.840 --> 0:17:34.920 make sense to produce that far away and then ship 0:17:34.960 --> 0:17:37.679 all that water. So because you're not just you know, 0:17:37.680 --> 0:17:40.640 within a day's drive of forty percent of this population, 0:17:40.720 --> 0:17:43.360 you're also close in New York so a lot of 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:47.480 like Curraig Doctor Pepper has a big production plant, there's 0:17:47.520 --> 0:17:51.280 a lot of food manufacturing that occurs there as well. 0:17:51.840 --> 0:17:54.680 And then on the manufacturing side, you also because of 0:17:54.720 --> 0:17:58.040 the e COMM because of the food manufacturing, you saw 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:01.840 a lot of packaging and bottling UH manufacturing show up. 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:05.119 So one of our most recent in Allentown successes was 0:18:05.160 --> 0:18:09.040 recruiting a company called Schless Bottle that manufacturers bottles for 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:14.040 beverages and they wanted to be close to the production point. 0:18:14.080 --> 0:18:18.240 So the manufacturing bottles in Allentown, filling it with beverages 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:19.560 and serving it back to New York. 0:18:19.640 --> 0:18:23.200 This is so core like Ricardo Houseman coded stuff, like Okay, 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:25.640 you have this one industry and then you have innovation 0:18:25.840 --> 0:18:30.320 in an adjacent industry. Super monkey swinging from China. So yeah, 0:18:30.320 --> 0:18:32.520 I'm also just like learning all these terms. You know, 0:18:32.680 --> 0:18:36.320 gravity based manufacturing I hadn't or weight gaining. This is 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:38.080 all fantastic stuff. 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:40.679 Weight gain industry is I think what we're both doing in. 0:18:40.720 --> 0:18:45.480 Maderia, That's what we're both doing in Madrid. Yeah, we 0:18:45.520 --> 0:18:47.639 should have run a marathon and then and then we 0:18:47.680 --> 0:18:51.520 could have compensated for all that. What are like you know, 0:18:51.560 --> 0:18:55.600 obviously this is all against the backdrop of this vortex 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:59.640 of manufacturing going to China largely, et cetera. When people think, 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:02.560 you know, you're at a conference like this and probably 0:19:02.560 --> 0:19:06.600 a lot of mayors are interested in reindustrialization, et cetera. 0:19:07.040 --> 0:19:11.400 What types of industries are good candidates generally for thinking 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:13.800 of like what should be built locally, Like it's something 0:19:13.880 --> 0:19:16.639 like plastic bags or bags. It's like, well, I don't know, 0:19:16.680 --> 0:19:19.960 maybe that could be offshore. What are like strong candidates 0:19:20.000 --> 0:19:21.679 for what is durable here? 0:19:21.720 --> 0:19:24.560 It's that you mentioned plastic bags because one of the 0:19:24.600 --> 0:19:28.360 things we recruited as was kind of leaving the. 0:19:28.320 --> 0:19:30.240 World of economic development and going into politics. 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:34.320 Yeah, it was a Turkish plastic bag manufacturer, So that 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:36.760 was kind of interesting. So one of the things that 0:19:36.800 --> 0:19:39.760 distinguished the region. And I think it's good for onshoing 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:41.520 and I want to go back on the onshore for 0:19:41.600 --> 0:19:44.960 a second. When we developed this strategy, when we're talking 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:48.399 about onshoing and reshoring, back in the early twenty tens, 0:19:48.960 --> 0:19:51.040 there was no like we didn't know a global pandemic 0:19:51.160 --> 0:19:54.360 was going to come and disrupt supply chains. We were 0:19:54.359 --> 0:19:58.399 thinking about like the logistics of making things in close 0:19:58.440 --> 0:20:01.560 to the customer. And and I was I was thinking 0:20:01.560 --> 0:20:05.000 a lot about the theft of IP in China and 0:20:05.040 --> 0:20:09.000 how it was kind of like those components of globalism 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:11.600 didn't make a ton of sense. You're like kind of 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:15.000 giving away your most precious resource. So a lot of 0:20:15.000 --> 0:20:17.480 it was driven by like, how do you kind of 0:20:17.560 --> 0:20:21.360 capture the spirit of a manufacturer of American manufacturing? Now 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:23.600 COVID hit and all of a sudden, That's what brought 0:20:23.640 --> 0:20:26.320 into stark relief. That's what made it make sense. So 0:20:26.520 --> 0:20:27.959 one of the things that I think makes a ton 0:20:28.000 --> 0:20:30.800 of sense. And we still see a lot of in Allentown, 0:20:30.840 --> 0:20:35.119 whether it's the transistors, or it's the bag manufacturing or 0:20:35.640 --> 0:20:41.120 Westport axle manufacturers axles for Mac trucks in Allentown area, 0:20:41.840 --> 0:20:45.320 it's components, right, It's how do how do you de 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:50.600 risk the supply chain by diversifying your component manufacturing? That 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:54.520 makes a lot of sense in cities because you're not 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:58.200 building the whole truck there, right, And to build the 0:20:58.240 --> 0:21:01.479 whole truck you need something like Lordtown or Lordstown, you 0:21:01.480 --> 0:21:05.920 need River Rouge, you need the enormous factories when you're 0:21:05.920 --> 0:21:08.840 building the components whatever those components might look like you 0:21:08.880 --> 0:21:11.880 can exist in a much smaller form factor, something as 0:21:11.880 --> 0:21:15.119 small as forty thousand square feet, but even like to 0:21:15.160 --> 0:21:17.919 get down to what we were calling craft manufacturing at 0:21:17.960 --> 0:21:20.439 the time, you might be able to exist in a 0:21:20.640 --> 0:21:24.520 much smaller space and perhaps the ground floor of a 0:21:24.600 --> 0:21:27.879 mixed use building. And that's what the next step for 0:21:28.040 --> 0:21:30.560 us was and what more cities should be doing, I 0:21:30.600 --> 0:21:35.200 think is making sure that your zoning allows for light 0:21:35.320 --> 0:21:39.720 industrial to take place in residential neighborhoods, so that you're 0:21:39.760 --> 0:21:42.080 not kind of you have to make sure that you 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:45.040 allow this stuff to happen in your city and the 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:49.440 new manufacturing. We think about Pittsburgh in the early part 0:21:49.440 --> 0:21:52.480 of the twentieth century as being so thick with smog 0:21:52.520 --> 0:21:55.440 that you couldn't even see across the river. You know, 0:21:55.520 --> 0:21:58.600 you still see pictures of I remember being in tangent 0:21:58.640 --> 0:22:01.159 and China in two thousand and seven teen, and like 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:04.080 you couldn't see as you're going across the bridge. That's 0:22:04.080 --> 0:22:06.760 not what manufacturing really looks like anymore. So you can 0:22:07.160 --> 0:22:10.159 kind of do that in cities. So as cities are 0:22:10.200 --> 0:22:13.280 thinking about what type of manufacturing you might try to attract, 0:22:13.359 --> 0:22:18.080 I think high value component manufacturer, light touch, but high tech. 0:22:18.520 --> 0:22:21.720 Again taking advantage of the resources that we have in 0:22:21.840 --> 0:22:25.840 American cities and taking advantage of the fact that people 0:22:25.960 --> 0:22:29.000 now are choosing where they're going to be first and 0:22:29.040 --> 0:22:32.399 then what they're going to do second. And the cities 0:22:32.440 --> 0:22:35.359 that have a vocational advantage on cost of quality of 0:22:35.600 --> 0:22:39.840 life can attract those industries if they set themselves up 0:22:39.840 --> 0:22:40.199 to do it. 0:22:40.320 --> 0:22:43.120 I say more about the rezoning process because if there's 0:22:43.400 --> 0:22:46.919 one thing I remember from playing some city for hours, 0:22:47.040 --> 0:22:49.280 you know, in the late nineteen nineties, it was that 0:22:49.359 --> 0:22:53.600 if you zone industry next to residential, your population is 0:22:53.640 --> 0:22:56.399 not going to be happy. So I'm very curious like 0:22:56.560 --> 0:22:59.800 how much that has actually changed and what the rezoning 0:22:59.800 --> 0:23:02.640 part is like now versus say, ten years ago. 0:23:02.800 --> 0:23:06.400 So a lot of cities, because of the housing crisis, 0:23:06.480 --> 0:23:12.240 are exploring more aggressive zoning policy that allows for denser housing, 0:23:12.359 --> 0:23:17.040 allows for different types of housing. We just passed in 0:23:17.200 --> 0:23:21.560 the beginning of twenty twenty six reform to our zoning 0:23:21.600 --> 0:23:24.879 code and a reform to our zoning map that is 0:23:24.920 --> 0:23:27.399 a form based code, so it's really focused less on 0:23:27.440 --> 0:23:30.240 what's happening inside the building and more on what the 0:23:30.240 --> 0:23:33.880 buildings will look like interesting, so that can allow that's 0:23:33.920 --> 0:23:36.239 the type of thing that can allow. For now in 0:23:36.280 --> 0:23:38.760 some city, when you built, when you zoned industrial, you 0:23:38.760 --> 0:23:41.800 were going to get like the tire manufacturing plant. Not 0:23:41.880 --> 0:23:44.639 a great idea for cities to have tire manufacturing plants 0:23:44.640 --> 0:23:48.680 in their downtowns, but great idea to have like craft 0:23:48.760 --> 0:23:53.600 brewing or like small garment assembly, something that is kind 0:23:53.600 --> 0:23:57.160 of like bespoke manufacturing. I think what cities can do 0:23:57.440 --> 0:24:01.760 as they're investigating the limitations of their zoning code to 0:24:01.880 --> 0:24:04.639 build towards the cities that they want to be is 0:24:04.800 --> 0:24:07.720 dig in and understand exactly what you might allow. I mean, 0:24:07.720 --> 0:24:11.200 in zoning, you have to allow for all uses somewhere 0:24:11.240 --> 0:24:15.399 in in the jurisdiction. So if you can allow for 0:24:15.600 --> 0:24:19.360 certain types of manufacturing uses, you create flexibility that can 0:24:19.400 --> 0:24:22.840 add some vibrancy to the neighborhood. I go back to 0:24:22.920 --> 0:24:25.800 like one of my big points when I was in 0:24:25.840 --> 0:24:28.119 the Urban Manufacturing Alliance that I don't know what it 0:24:28.119 --> 0:24:32.040 looks like now, but we talked about the lack of 0:24:32.040 --> 0:24:34.760 interest in young people working in manufacturing, and that's always 0:24:34.760 --> 0:24:37.560 been one of the challenges and one thing that occurred 0:24:37.560 --> 0:24:41.600 to me is that when Mac Trucks moved to Allantown 0:24:41.640 --> 0:24:44.240 in nineteen twenty three, they built a plant right next 0:24:44.280 --> 0:24:47.600 to well, they built the plant and then they built 0:24:47.119 --> 0:24:50.520 the worker housing right next door to the plant, and 0:24:50.560 --> 0:24:53.840 people would walk to work all day. And what we 0:24:53.920 --> 0:24:56.880 knew then is that it sounds amazing, and that's people 0:24:56.920 --> 0:24:59.719 would like to do that whatever they're doing for work. 0:25:00.320 --> 0:25:04.119 When young, when children saw people walking to work with 0:25:04.160 --> 0:25:06.640 the lunch box and knew that that person was going 0:25:06.680 --> 0:25:10.159 to work on in the silk plant or in the 0:25:11.320 --> 0:25:15.439 truck plant, they saw a person working and a person 0:25:15.480 --> 0:25:18.639 who was like connected to manufacturing. When we moved all 0:25:18.680 --> 0:25:20.679 of the production out to the suburbs and people were 0:25:20.680 --> 0:25:23.639 getting in a car to drive to work, the like 0:25:23.760 --> 0:25:26.680 rando kid on the street who's just you know, hula 0:25:26.720 --> 0:25:29.840 hooping or whatever, doesn't get a chance to see workers 0:25:30.280 --> 0:25:32.600 and doesn't get a chance to see the dignity of 0:25:32.680 --> 0:25:35.800 work in manufacturing and lose his interest in it. And 0:25:35.840 --> 0:25:38.080 so we're so far removed now, and we've tried to 0:25:38.359 --> 0:25:41.200 do things, whether it was to three D printing or 0:25:41.240 --> 0:25:45.119 like kind of get kids excited about manufacturing, but fundamentally 0:25:45.160 --> 0:25:48.560 it's still the work is removed from everyday life, and 0:25:48.640 --> 0:25:50.640 so if you can get back to that point where 0:25:50.680 --> 0:25:54.440 you can add manufacturing back to everyday life, I think 0:25:54.440 --> 0:25:58.640 there's an opportunity to rekindle the interest in the careers. 0:25:59.080 --> 0:26:01.359 We need to do an episode how sim City? 0:26:02.200 --> 0:26:04.960 Right, Like we were internalizing all these lessons from a 0:26:05.040 --> 0:26:07.960 video game and then oh, then suddenly all of the 0:26:08.119 --> 0:26:11.399 main factoring goes out into the exerbs, and then no 0:26:11.440 --> 0:26:14.720 one sees the workers, and then suddenly how City ruined? 0:26:14.960 --> 0:26:16.080 Sim City ruined? 0:26:16.119 --> 0:26:16.879 I would love that. 0:26:17.200 --> 0:26:19.240 I would have loved to see that, honestly, Like the 0:26:19.440 --> 0:26:22.480 I think the mayor, like any mayor who has played 0:26:22.480 --> 0:26:24.280 some city, like the minute you sit down at the desk, 0:26:24.280 --> 0:26:25.160 you're like, oh my god. 0:26:25.040 --> 0:26:26.840 This is totally this amazing. 0:26:26.880 --> 0:26:30.159 Were now I really actually want to do this episode. 0:26:30.680 --> 0:26:36.119 Post COVID, you get this re enthusiasm for manufacturing just 0:26:36.760 --> 0:26:40.520 supply chain reasons, also national security reasons. We get the 0:26:40.600 --> 0:26:43.680 Chips Act, we get the Inflation Reduction Act. What did 0:26:43.720 --> 0:26:47.280 that look like from the perspective of these big programs, 0:26:47.320 --> 0:26:48.960 these sort of the Biden euro programs. 0:26:49.200 --> 0:26:50.720 What did that look like from your perspective? 0:26:50.800 --> 0:26:54.119 So for us, one thing was it was like a 0:26:54.119 --> 0:26:57.080 return to an industrial policy right like previously the United 0:26:57.080 --> 0:27:00.439 States is like the industrial policy didn't make a lot 0:27:00.480 --> 0:27:03.520 of sense for an economic development professional. Now we saw 0:27:03.600 --> 0:27:08.200 like this the federal government was pushing in a particular direction, right, 0:27:08.240 --> 0:27:11.120 and it was like, let's start making stuff again. When 0:27:11.160 --> 0:27:14.479 I became mayor in twenty twenty two, when you were 0:27:14.640 --> 0:27:17.520 sworn in as mayor, you come in with a bunch 0:27:17.520 --> 0:27:19.840 of campaign promises, you sit in the seat and you realize, 0:27:19.840 --> 0:27:22.920 like all of a sudden, there's a completely new set 0:27:23.000 --> 0:27:24.320 of challenges. 0:27:23.840 --> 0:27:24.840 That you have to unlock. 0:27:24.960 --> 0:27:26.919 Right, So all this stuff you wanted into do in 0:27:26.920 --> 0:27:31.760 the campaign, it's nice, but there's more pressing needs. Among 0:27:31.800 --> 0:27:35.199 the things that I could see in the city was 0:27:35.320 --> 0:27:38.480 that we were well, we didn't know what we didn't know, 0:27:38.520 --> 0:27:39.720 so we had a lot to learning. We had to 0:27:39.720 --> 0:27:42.439 dig in and understand the city a little better and 0:27:42.520 --> 0:27:43.600 understand what was going on. 0:27:44.119 --> 0:27:46.160 We also didn't like. 0:27:46.200 --> 0:27:48.760 We had to let some relationships fail, and so we 0:27:49.000 --> 0:27:51.360 needed to get back and make sure that our partners 0:27:51.400 --> 0:27:54.000 were on the same page as us, and we kind 0:27:54.000 --> 0:27:57.040 of lost the capacity to innovate, to get creative and 0:27:57.119 --> 0:28:01.520 do new things. So I was great that I entered 0:28:01.520 --> 0:28:05.879 into the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative at just the 0:28:05.960 --> 0:28:08.879 right moment when when I was feeling desperate, and they 0:28:09.000 --> 0:28:12.960 kind of invested in that capacity. Through doing that, I 0:28:13.000 --> 0:28:14.879 was able to attack one of the things that was 0:28:14.960 --> 0:28:17.320 clearly an issue, which was road safety. 0:28:17.880 --> 0:28:18.200 We had. 0:28:18.320 --> 0:28:20.440 There was a federal grant, the Safe Streets for All 0:28:20.680 --> 0:28:24.800 program that was helping cities plan for safer streets. I'm 0:28:24.840 --> 0:28:28.400 going to get to the point, I promised, so we 0:28:29.400 --> 0:28:32.520 I was a bicycling and running guy, so I wanted 0:28:32.600 --> 0:28:34.880 to like and I felt like we could do better 0:28:34.960 --> 0:28:38.960 for our city if we had safer streets. Bloomberg stood 0:28:39.040 --> 0:28:41.160 up with some partners, the Local Infrastructure Hub. 0:28:41.680 --> 0:28:42.360 It helped me. 0:28:42.440 --> 0:28:45.680 Teach my team how to use data to apply for 0:28:45.840 --> 0:28:48.800 federal funds. It helped us think about how we could 0:28:48.920 --> 0:28:54.520 work with partners to accomplish good outcomes for residents and 0:28:54.600 --> 0:28:55.520 try some new things. 0:28:55.880 --> 0:29:00.200 We're lucky. I also got right in Secretary Boudajes his 0:29:00.280 --> 0:29:01.320 face and said. 0:29:01.200 --> 0:29:04.320 I need help, and we're lucky to get a planning 0:29:04.360 --> 0:29:09.720 grant through that program. That experience helped us understand how 0:29:09.760 --> 0:29:13.960 to as a city returned to federal grants at the State. 0:29:14.000 --> 0:29:17.400 About right after we were awarded that Safe Streets grant, 0:29:17.720 --> 0:29:22.080 the Economic Development Administration announced its Recompete Pilot project and 0:29:22.160 --> 0:29:24.800 it was focused on areas that were I think it 0:29:24.920 --> 0:29:28.040 was this June of twenty twenty three. It was focused 0:29:28.080 --> 0:29:30.800 on areas that had a high prime age employment gap, 0:29:31.240 --> 0:29:34.360 and so prime age employment gap is people between the 0:29:34.360 --> 0:29:38.040 ages of twenty five to fifty four. Prime age employment 0:29:38.120 --> 0:29:40.560 gap as people who are either unemployed at higher than 0:29:40.560 --> 0:29:41.400 average rates. 0:29:41.320 --> 0:29:42.880 Or out of the labor force. 0:29:43.400 --> 0:29:46.160 We looked and saw that Allentown, in fact had a 0:29:46.240 --> 0:29:49.520 high prime age employment gap. Ours was like at six percent. 0:29:50.080 --> 0:29:52.760 We dialed into a particular neighborhood and saw that in 0:29:52.760 --> 0:29:55.800 that area is about twelve percent the region of about 0:29:55.920 --> 0:29:58.840 our neighborhood of about twenty three thousand people that were 0:29:59.160 --> 0:30:03.800 just disproportionately out of the labor force or unemployed. And 0:30:04.040 --> 0:30:06.880 we started to dig in on that group of people 0:30:06.920 --> 0:30:10.040 and how could we at the same time prepare as 0:30:10.080 --> 0:30:13.000 we're thinking about like these changes and the changes to 0:30:13.440 --> 0:30:15.320 the demands of the workforce, how can we make sure 0:30:15.320 --> 0:30:18.200 that our people could work right? And that was where 0:30:18.240 --> 0:30:21.560 these two things came together, is we knew that through 0:30:21.920 --> 0:30:24.800 working with our partners that we have Valley Economic Development Corporation, 0:30:24.880 --> 0:30:28.120 there's still a high demand for manufacturing labor as well 0:30:28.160 --> 0:30:31.280 as healthcare. We knew that the barriers to getting people 0:30:31.320 --> 0:30:35.080 to good jobs sometimes were a lack of available resources, 0:30:35.120 --> 0:30:39.680 things like flexible and affordable childcare. We knew that people 0:30:39.760 --> 0:30:43.520 were sometimes challenged by transportation, that if those jobs are 0:30:43.520 --> 0:30:45.360 out in the suburbs and they didn't have a car, 0:30:45.680 --> 0:30:47.760 it's hard to get to them. And we also knew 0:30:47.760 --> 0:30:49.720 that if we wanted to make sure that people without 0:30:49.760 --> 0:30:52.760 cars could get to work, went to build industrial sites 0:30:52.800 --> 0:30:56.840 in the city. So we put together an application and 0:30:56.880 --> 0:31:00.400 submitted it to EDA, and again, because of the work 0:31:00.400 --> 0:31:03.240 that we had done in the past, we're successful and 0:31:03.320 --> 0:31:06.600 we're able to So we landed a strategic development grant 0:31:07.000 --> 0:31:09.200 in December of twenty three and then we got a 0:31:09.200 --> 0:31:13.040 twenty million dollar investment for implementation. So our team right 0:31:13.080 --> 0:31:15.960 now is working to make sure that as we work 0:31:16.040 --> 0:31:19.160 to bring these manufacturing jobs to not just the city 0:31:19.200 --> 0:31:23.240 but to the entire region, that Allentonians are well positioned 0:31:23.640 --> 0:31:27.600 to get to those jobs. And that's that is, you know, 0:31:28.440 --> 0:31:31.120 a big piece where cities have to be able to 0:31:31.120 --> 0:31:33.640 play a role is making sure that people have the 0:31:34.160 --> 0:31:36.560 tools they need to access the good things that are 0:31:36.560 --> 0:31:37.560 happening in the economy. 0:31:38.240 --> 0:31:41.240 Have you got all the grant money, the Biden aer 0:31:41.360 --> 0:31:45.400 grant money, that all of it so okay, So there's 0:31:45.640 --> 0:31:46.240 no make. 0:31:46.160 --> 0:31:46.880 Sure or like. 0:31:47.040 --> 0:31:51.440 As soon as the November fifth, twenty twenty four, like, 0:31:51.520 --> 0:31:54.280 we went into overdrive to just make sure that we 0:31:54.280 --> 0:31:57.520 weren't at risk of losing anything. And that came through 0:31:57.520 --> 0:32:00.160 the Chips and Science Act, and it was a relatively 0:32:00.200 --> 0:32:05.240 small programs so and you know, practically speaking, our region 0:32:05.320 --> 0:32:10.480 is intensely political, so it would not make sense to. 0:32:09.880 --> 0:32:10.760 Go back some of that. 0:32:11.200 --> 0:32:13.200 I had to fight for some other stuff to make 0:32:13.240 --> 0:32:16.600 sure that we got it, including us I wrote a 0:32:16.680 --> 0:32:19.840 letter to Secretary Rawlins and the USDA about how important 0:32:19.880 --> 0:32:23.880 trees were two cities across America. We've worked to make 0:32:23.920 --> 0:32:27.320 sure we didn't lose the street funding. But you know, 0:32:27.520 --> 0:32:30.720 we're for some of the funding for things that you 0:32:30.760 --> 0:32:33.320 do in cities. It's like very practical, it's it's good 0:32:33.360 --> 0:32:37.520 for residents, it's it should be nonpartisan as long as 0:32:37.560 --> 0:32:41.520 you like, are not exclusively focused on the various different 0:32:41.560 --> 0:32:43.040 things the administration is focused on. 0:32:58.680 --> 0:33:02.080 So speaking of practicality. I sometimes get the sense that 0:33:02.120 --> 0:33:04.960 there's like a bit of a disconnect between how people 0:33:05.000 --> 0:33:08.160 in DC are thinking about industrial policy, whether it's Trump 0:33:08.320 --> 0:33:12.240 or the Biden administration, versus like mayors such as yourself, 0:33:12.320 --> 0:33:15.400 you actually have to implement the stuff and figure out 0:33:15.440 --> 0:33:19.200 exactly how to spend the money. Like what's the biggest 0:33:19.320 --> 0:33:22.400 area of I guess, like tension that you see or 0:33:22.440 --> 0:33:25.160 what could DC actually do to make using those federal 0:33:25.200 --> 0:33:26.640 funds easier for you? 0:33:27.480 --> 0:33:28.040 Oh? 0:33:28.080 --> 0:33:32.240 Wow, so there is tension for sure, right, And I 0:33:32.280 --> 0:33:34.880 think that a recognition like the biggest thing that DC 0:33:35.040 --> 0:33:38.440 could do is make sure that people are not worried 0:33:38.560 --> 0:33:41.200 about their healthcare or not worried about putting food on 0:33:41.280 --> 0:33:43.680 the table, or not worried about a thousand other things, 0:33:44.000 --> 0:33:46.720 and can worry about just like being part of this 0:33:46.760 --> 0:33:50.560 American dream, like and building towards something, and that they 0:33:50.600 --> 0:33:54.959 could you be part of the dignity of work. And 0:33:55.000 --> 0:33:58.200 so there's some things that they could just focus less 0:33:58.360 --> 0:34:01.320 on or like trying to cut us of I think 0:34:01.360 --> 0:34:05.640 that cities probably don't think as much about immigration from 0:34:05.640 --> 0:34:08.319 that perspective as an economic driver, but I think that 0:34:08.600 --> 0:34:11.520 we have to continue to bring new people in bring 0:34:11.560 --> 0:34:16.680 new ideas in make American cities places that can receive investment, 0:34:17.200 --> 0:34:21.319 and knowing that somewhat that investment is like it's intellectual capital, right, 0:34:21.400 --> 0:34:24.120 So we want people to come in and feel comfortable 0:34:24.200 --> 0:34:27.960 making stuff and making new technology in our cities. I 0:34:28.000 --> 0:34:30.720 would to say, I think it's not uncommon for mayors 0:34:30.760 --> 0:34:36.080 to be pretty bipartisan in Allentown, where one of my 0:34:36.440 --> 0:34:41.239 senators is Senator Dave McCormick, who's on the the He's 0:34:41.239 --> 0:34:45.120 a Republican. I'm a Democrat, but I appreciate Senat McCormick's 0:34:45.200 --> 0:34:49.920 interest in competitiveness and trying to attract industry and particular 0:34:49.960 --> 0:34:54.920 manufacturing to Pennsylvania. And I think my conversation with Senat McCormick, 0:34:55.000 --> 0:34:59.080 he is somewhat agnostic about where that happens. I think 0:34:59.080 --> 0:35:03.600 he's he'd be happy if the manufacturing investments happened in 0:35:03.640 --> 0:35:07.000 the suburbs or in the cities. It doesn't matter to 0:35:07.040 --> 0:35:10.920 him as much as Pennsylvania remaining competitive. I know he 0:35:11.040 --> 0:35:14.400 was involved with one of the big kind of future 0:35:14.960 --> 0:35:19.920 thinking or future looking manufacturing investments that occurred in our 0:35:20.000 --> 0:35:22.839 area is Eli Lilly announced the three and a half 0:35:22.920 --> 0:35:26.560 billion dollar investment that is just outside of the city limits, 0:35:27.160 --> 0:35:30.000 but their three and a half billion dollar investment will 0:35:30.040 --> 0:35:32.200 create like eight hundred and fifty jobs. I want to 0:35:32.200 --> 0:35:33.839 make sure that all of the residents of the city 0:35:33.840 --> 0:35:37.680 of Allentown are capable of accessing those jobs. I also 0:35:37.719 --> 0:35:40.399 want to make sure that any of the supply chain 0:35:40.600 --> 0:35:46.880 that goes into that Lily golp one manufacturing can be 0:35:46.960 --> 0:35:49.680 produced in the city. If it can be, we want 0:35:49.719 --> 0:35:51.680 to make sure that that we're capable of. 0:35:52.239 --> 0:35:53.120 Connecting to that. 0:35:53.680 --> 0:35:56.680 So that's one thing I think continuing to make sure 0:35:56.719 --> 0:36:01.239 that the country is head of The other thing is 0:36:02.480 --> 0:36:04.239 and this is one that we're kind of going back 0:36:04.239 --> 0:36:08.200 and forth with we you know, Governor Shapiro has launched 0:36:08.239 --> 0:36:12.880 a very aggressive economic development strategy that wants to attract 0:36:13.040 --> 0:36:16.279 more investment and lots of different types of investment. I 0:36:16.320 --> 0:36:19.680 think there's and I've spoken with Bruce Katz formula of 0:36:19.680 --> 0:36:23.160 Brooking is about this, is that Pennsylvania seems like it's 0:36:23.160 --> 0:36:27.160 well situated to be a center of defense manufacturing in 0:36:27.239 --> 0:36:31.680 this new world. Clearly, like there's based on what's happening 0:36:31.760 --> 0:36:35.920 in Iran, there is like there's still need for munitions, 0:36:36.040 --> 0:36:40.279 right and how we can play a role in that 0:36:40.600 --> 0:36:43.960 is I think part of our future. That was what 0:36:44.120 --> 0:36:47.600 we proudly tell the story of how Bethlem Steel helped 0:36:47.600 --> 0:36:50.120 win the war in World War two by building the 0:36:50.760 --> 0:36:53.719 the ships that helped us when the war. I talked 0:36:53.719 --> 0:36:57.200 about VOLTI bomber is helping us when the war. I 0:36:57.239 --> 0:36:59.680 think that there is we have. We're home to mac 0:36:59.680 --> 0:37:04.480 Defense in Allentown. Mac Defense makes giant like heavy duty 0:37:04.960 --> 0:37:08.920 trucks for the US military. We can compete in that 0:37:09.080 --> 0:37:11.960 area as well, and that is manufacturing. So I think 0:37:11.960 --> 0:37:17.800 there's as if the federal government focuses on creating opportunities 0:37:17.840 --> 0:37:21.759 in cities and the states to host manufacturing and it 0:37:21.800 --> 0:37:24.560 makes it easy for that to happen and makes it 0:37:24.560 --> 0:37:26.799 easy to hire people and train people to be ready 0:37:26.800 --> 0:37:28.920 for that work. I think that's that's where we need 0:37:28.960 --> 0:37:29.560 them to play. 0:37:29.680 --> 0:37:32.440 You're already sort of alluded to this, but does it 0:37:32.480 --> 0:37:34.840 feel good to be in a state where it's like 0:37:35.680 --> 0:37:39.680 every national election is just geared towards making the citizens 0:37:39.719 --> 0:37:43.600 of Pennsylvania happy? Like all like that is You're you're 0:37:43.840 --> 0:37:46.920 talking to some mayor from another you know, from Florida. 0:37:46.960 --> 0:37:49.359 It's like try being a swing state. Try being the 0:37:49.400 --> 0:37:51.960 most important state for the electoral college. 0:37:52.040 --> 0:37:53.600 It must be nice. It can be. 0:37:54.480 --> 0:37:57.240 It also turns you into like, like I have given 0:37:57.960 --> 0:38:01.000 tours of my city to foreign press. 0:38:01.960 --> 0:38:05.719 Every country borders that they get the diner in Pennsylvania. 0:38:05.800 --> 0:38:07.160 Right, that's the classic. 0:38:06.840 --> 0:38:10.279 Trop Yeah then, so I mean it's it's nice to 0:38:10.360 --> 0:38:14.120 be the center of attention for that way in the 0:38:14.320 --> 0:38:15.840 like in that politicians kind of want. 0:38:15.680 --> 0:38:16.400 To make you happy. 0:38:16.440 --> 0:38:21.080 But practically speaking, you know, there's like, as a mayor, 0:38:21.160 --> 0:38:23.640 your job is to just meet the needs of your residence, right, 0:38:23.719 --> 0:38:25.919 Like that's what you dial in on, and so whatever 0:38:25.920 --> 0:38:29.000 they're doing nationally, like you're just worried about residents. 0:38:29.200 --> 0:38:32.600 One reason that people are very excited or that people 0:38:32.760 --> 0:38:36.200 are have an affinity towards manufacturing is the jobs, right, 0:38:36.320 --> 0:38:38.600 and you mentioned the jobs and people seeing. 0:38:38.480 --> 0:38:39.319 People go to work. 0:38:39.640 --> 0:38:43.040 Another reason, particularly over the last several years or the 0:38:43.120 --> 0:38:47.400 last post COVID, is for national security reasons, not wanting 0:38:47.480 --> 0:38:52.080 to rely on China or other countries for really critical things. However, 0:38:52.160 --> 0:38:56.640 some of these most advanced industries they're they're not particularly 0:38:56.680 --> 0:38:58.200 going to be job heavy, right. There's a lot of 0:38:58.280 --> 0:39:02.960 robotics and increasing automation is there a disconnect between the 0:39:03.040 --> 0:39:06.440 sort of again maybe emotional maybe like the sort of 0:39:06.520 --> 0:39:11.040 romantic notions that people have about manufacturing versus the reality 0:39:11.120 --> 0:39:14.280 of the actual labor intensivity of some of these industries. 0:39:14.640 --> 0:39:17.480 I think that from the mayor's perspective, I probably am 0:39:17.520 --> 0:39:20.320 more in that kind of romantic world, right like where 0:39:20.320 --> 0:39:22.960 we're just kind of like, yeah, you know, we envision 0:39:23.000 --> 0:39:24.759 a world in which people will always be putting their 0:39:24.760 --> 0:39:27.680 hands on stuff right one way or another. And when 0:39:27.680 --> 0:39:31.240 you get into a higher technology where like we already 0:39:31.239 --> 0:39:35.120 have robots doing like precision surgery, presumably some of the 0:39:35.120 --> 0:39:37.719 precision manufacturing is going to be better done with a 0:39:37.840 --> 0:39:40.600 robotic hand than the steady hand or strong back of 0:39:41.920 --> 0:39:42.880 somebody on the line. 0:39:43.280 --> 0:39:47.280 I do think that, as you like, there's. 0:39:46.440 --> 0:39:48.239 Still and this is a vibe that I'm starting to 0:39:48.239 --> 0:39:50.200 get mayors tend to pick up, like because we're on 0:39:50.239 --> 0:39:53.600 the ground, Yeah, we start to hear the vibes before. 0:39:53.360 --> 0:39:54.800 They become national vibes. 0:39:55.200 --> 0:39:59.000 But I think that there's there's a very strong at 0:39:59.120 --> 0:40:01.680 least in in my city and some other cities that 0:40:01.880 --> 0:40:06.480 have visited, there's like a strong like handmade or like 0:40:06.840 --> 0:40:11.480 a rejection of the robots and AI, whether it's art 0:40:11.719 --> 0:40:15.440 or like the produced goods, I don't know if anybody, 0:40:15.920 --> 0:40:18.600 I don't know what the the logical end to that is, 0:40:18.680 --> 0:40:21.560 but I think there's on on the consumer side, there's 0:40:21.600 --> 0:40:24.800 there's still a desire. I think people romanticize some of 0:40:24.840 --> 0:40:28.040 the product, right, and they'd rather have something that that 0:40:28.120 --> 0:40:31.440 people have made. On the jobs side of it, I 0:40:31.480 --> 0:40:35.640 think that there's there's still this belief that we need 0:40:35.640 --> 0:40:38.120 to preserve the dignity of work, that there's always going 0:40:38.160 --> 0:40:39.400 to be that we're going to have to find some 0:40:39.520 --> 0:40:43.640 way to allow people to continue to work. That maybe 0:40:43.640 --> 0:40:46.399 you don't need the robots running the whole warehouse, right, 0:40:46.480 --> 0:40:50.120 that maybe you need, you know, somebody to be involved. 0:40:50.120 --> 0:40:53.760 And we've seen that, Like this is my first job 0:40:53.840 --> 0:40:56.880 out of grad school was working in the billboard industry 0:40:57.360 --> 0:41:01.720 and in Panama, and I remember vividly talking to somebody 0:41:01.760 --> 0:41:04.160 who has, you know, introduced myself. This is in my 0:41:04.200 --> 0:41:07.200 economic development days, and I was like, oh, you know, 0:41:07.880 --> 0:41:09.880 at first I started in billboards and the guy was 0:41:09.920 --> 0:41:11.839 in private equity and he was like, that's great, man, 0:41:12.280 --> 0:41:15.480 billboards are awesome. The only thing better than billboards is 0:41:15.920 --> 0:41:18.279 coin up landromats, and I was like, I was like, dude, 0:41:18.960 --> 0:41:21.279 you're in the wrong business now, because like maybe in 0:41:21.320 --> 0:41:23.880 private equity, like that was a great idea, like the 0:41:23.960 --> 0:41:26.719 fear of your jobs, like down to self storage, which 0:41:27.040 --> 0:41:29.440 I think is the worse than the cities. But like 0:41:29.600 --> 0:41:32.160 weird job creators, like we have to find ways to 0:41:32.680 --> 0:41:36.240 create jobs, to create opportunities for people to be dignified 0:41:36.280 --> 0:41:39.280 by their work. So while there may be some value 0:41:39.360 --> 0:41:44.840 to like squeezing out every single nickel of cost from 0:41:44.880 --> 0:41:48.719 some operation, there's a lot to benefit cities and to 0:41:48.800 --> 0:41:51.799 benefit society of having people, you know, actually putting their 0:41:51.800 --> 0:41:52.480 hands on things. 0:41:52.719 --> 0:41:55.560 Can you talk specifically about how you're thinking about data centers, 0:41:55.600 --> 0:41:58.920 because this is like the example of what we're getting at, 0:41:59.040 --> 0:42:01.680 and in the theory, you know, Allentown, you got a 0:42:01.719 --> 0:42:04.720 bunch of big warehouses and things like that. 0:42:04.120 --> 0:42:07.600 That presumably, yeah to that needed energy at one point. 0:42:08.040 --> 0:42:12.359 Yeah, I have lots of sophisticated and unsophisticated thoughts about 0:42:12.440 --> 0:42:15.319 data centers we as a city and as a mayor. 0:42:15.320 --> 0:42:16.879 I'm thinking about them in a couple of ways. One 0:42:17.440 --> 0:42:20.000 like they're very clearly a political issue now, and they're 0:42:20.000 --> 0:42:23.319 a political issue for hate saying both sides, but for 0:42:23.400 --> 0:42:24.400 both sides, right. 0:42:24.239 --> 0:42:25.560 Like we there really are. 0:42:26.360 --> 0:42:27.200 It's kind of crazy. 0:42:27.320 --> 0:42:28.759 There's legislation, so I think that. 0:42:29.160 --> 0:42:32.880 So we amended our zoning Right after we amended our 0:42:32.960 --> 0:42:36.200 zoning ordinance, we then we made an amendment to the 0:42:36.400 --> 0:42:40.560 ordinance with reference to data centers. The reality for a 0:42:40.640 --> 0:42:43.600 city like Allentown, in most cities in the country, is 0:42:43.640 --> 0:42:46.040 that we don't really have any space for data centers. 0:42:46.480 --> 0:42:49.320 It's unlikely that a hyperscale one. It's not just unlikely 0:42:49.480 --> 0:42:52.120 a hyper scale er cannot locate in the city of 0:42:52.120 --> 0:42:57.839 Allentown unless they acquire a bunch of homes and demolish them. 0:43:00.480 --> 0:43:04.440 But it is reality in place like Phoenix, right, So 0:43:04.480 --> 0:43:08.000 we amendedor zoning code to just set up certain requirements 0:43:08.040 --> 0:43:11.520 around the establishment of a data center, just to make 0:43:11.560 --> 0:43:14.840 sure that our backs are covered. The worst thing that 0:43:14.880 --> 0:43:17.840 happens in any municipality is like something shows up that 0:43:17.880 --> 0:43:20.000 people don't want and your hands are tied because your 0:43:20.080 --> 0:43:23.080 zoning allows for it. So we make sure that we 0:43:23.120 --> 0:43:24.920 are covered in that respect. 0:43:25.080 --> 0:43:25.799 Sorry, just be clear. 0:43:25.880 --> 0:43:28.759 Covered like you've data center proofed you're zoning is. 0:43:28.680 --> 0:43:33.160 That we're in the process of review right now to 0:43:33.360 --> 0:43:37.680 make sure that any proposed data center has to demonstrate 0:43:37.960 --> 0:43:41.600 not just the highway use or the water use, but 0:43:41.640 --> 0:43:45.640 also like energy sources. So we're making sure that data 0:43:45.640 --> 0:43:49.520 centers have proposed for the city have can demonstrate their 0:43:49.960 --> 0:43:51.120 compliance basically. 0:43:51.520 --> 0:43:53.760 So it's it's political as. 0:43:53.640 --> 0:43:55.719 I understand the technology, and this is probably the less 0:43:55.719 --> 0:43:59.440 sophisticated side of the thought. It's getting smaller and smaller, right. 0:43:59.480 --> 0:44:02.120 The data centers do not have to exist at this 0:44:02.840 --> 0:44:05.319 incredible you know, to take up lots and lots of land. 0:44:05.360 --> 0:44:08.360 They can exist perhaps in downtowns. I don't know what 0:44:08.360 --> 0:44:10.160 their energy needs are going to be. I know that 0:44:10.560 --> 0:44:13.279 most mayors are concerned about data centers, not because they're 0:44:13.320 --> 0:44:16.719 worried about land use or a lack of jobs, but 0:44:16.800 --> 0:44:21.760 because utility bills are significantly rising. At the same time 0:44:21.800 --> 0:44:24.560 that food bills are rising and gas bills are rising 0:44:24.600 --> 0:44:28.440 and housing is getting more expensive. Now people are also 0:44:28.440 --> 0:44:31.400 seeing their utility bills rise, so that that's been driving 0:44:31.400 --> 0:44:32.560 a lot of the concern for mayors. 0:44:32.600 --> 0:44:35.040 I think, you know, I know someone I heard about it. 0:44:35.080 --> 0:44:38.960 There's a startup in New York City that is doing 0:44:39.000 --> 0:44:40.920 something that's like, I don't know exactly what it is. 0:44:41.160 --> 0:44:42.799 I was hearing about it from a friend. But they're 0:44:42.800 --> 0:44:47.040 like training some Nvidia chips or doing something and it's 0:44:47.160 --> 0:44:50.040 just with like a normal like sort of like residential 0:44:50.120 --> 0:44:54.360 connection to the electricity. It's fairly small scale. It's not mega, 0:44:54.520 --> 0:44:57.000 but like, yeah, to your point, like it does feel 0:44:57.000 --> 0:44:59.920 like the footprint there at least it's some potentially new 0:45:00.160 --> 0:45:03.560 applications the footprints. You hear about the giant things, but 0:45:03.600 --> 0:45:05.439 the footprints are also potentially coming down. 0:45:05.520 --> 0:45:07.080 That was what was what I was here. You know, 0:45:07.160 --> 0:45:11.520 I'm an AI skeptic as a mayor. I've been talked back. 0:45:11.920 --> 0:45:14.560 I keep going back this. 0:45:14.719 --> 0:45:18.759 Yeah, but I was talking to somebody at Hopkins, at 0:45:18.800 --> 0:45:22.080 Johns Hopkins who is like, hey, you shouldn't be so skeptical, 0:45:22.120 --> 0:45:26.640 because it's going to open It might result in some 0:45:26.640 --> 0:45:29.920 somewhat fewer human human react interactions, but it's going to 0:45:30.400 --> 0:45:34.560 open the door for humans and city government specifically to 0:45:34.600 --> 0:45:38.160 participate more and more in helping people out. And she 0:45:38.280 --> 0:45:39.960 was the one who mentioned like, and it's also like 0:45:40.480 --> 0:45:43.480 all of the like the fear about data center might 0:45:43.520 --> 0:45:47.000 be misplaced, like there is we are I'm not necessarily 0:45:47.320 --> 0:45:50.640 a great believer in technology figuring out a way to 0:45:50.719 --> 0:45:54.200 get us to like save our bacon for forever. But 0:45:54.719 --> 0:45:57.840 it does seem like this is one that there's short 0:45:57.960 --> 0:46:00.880 term concern about and I don't know what what it 0:46:00.960 --> 0:46:04.319 really stems from, but whenever politicians are involved, you have 0:46:04.360 --> 0:46:05.240 to raise an eyebrow. 0:46:06.080 --> 0:46:08.920 I have one more question, and it's a very important one. 0:46:09.560 --> 0:46:14.480 What's the deal with Yakos? If I google allanown controversy, 0:46:14.719 --> 0:46:16.080 Yakos comes up. 0:46:16.400 --> 0:46:20.360 Yeah. I think there's probably a couple of Yako's controversies. 0:46:20.719 --> 0:46:24.319 The very local one is like you got to pick 0:46:24.320 --> 0:46:26.920 a sort. You gotta choose between Yakos or Pots. Apparently 0:46:27.320 --> 0:46:31.239 they eat pots hot dogs, and Bethlehem. I guess we 0:46:31.280 --> 0:46:34.760 should say Yako's is a hot dog hot dog. Okay, Yeah, 0:46:34.960 --> 0:46:37.600 the folks in Bethlam like, I love my neighbor, but 0:46:37.760 --> 0:46:39.240 I would never eat a Pots dog. 0:46:40.680 --> 0:46:41.239 Yakos. 0:46:41.600 --> 0:46:43.480 There's one of the deals is like you have to 0:46:43.480 --> 0:46:46.319 know how to order it right. So the order is 0:46:46.400 --> 0:46:48.560 like you just get two dogs. I order two dogs 0:46:48.560 --> 0:46:52.120 with everything and a chocolate milk. Some people get perogies 0:46:52.200 --> 0:46:54.879 with it too. One of the there was a few 0:46:54.960 --> 0:47:00.440 years ago a guy named Gary Eyakoca, whose family owned Yako, 0:47:00.520 --> 0:47:05.360 has talked about how his Yako is on Seventh Street, 0:47:05.400 --> 0:47:08.759 which is in center city, Allentown couldn't exist anymore because 0:47:08.760 --> 0:47:11.759 of the demographic changes that we've seen in Allentown. So 0:47:11.880 --> 0:47:14.319 Yako's I think is he and I went back and 0:47:14.360 --> 0:47:16.400 forth a little bit. We're very good friends now, but 0:47:16.600 --> 0:47:20.319 we were we struggled a little bit because I'm the 0:47:20.320 --> 0:47:22.680 first Latino mayor of Allentown. So the other thing that 0:47:22.760 --> 0:47:26.400 makes the Billy Joel song so wrong in twenty twenty 0:47:26.440 --> 0:47:29.560 six is that in nineteen eighty two, it was like 0:47:30.080 --> 0:47:33.520 it was a very homogenous. Basically everybody in Allentown was 0:47:33.680 --> 0:47:38.799 white European. Today we're fifty five percent Latino, like we 0:47:38.840 --> 0:47:43.879 are a very different city. And his case was like, well, 0:47:43.920 --> 0:47:46.600 you know it isn't it ain't like it was, And 0:47:46.960 --> 0:47:49.560 you know it was kind of it felt to me 0:47:49.680 --> 0:47:51.719 like kind of a rejection of our new city that 0:47:51.800 --> 0:47:54.960 I just love. So we went back and forth a 0:47:54.960 --> 0:47:59.000 little bit on that. There's probably other Yako's controversies out there. 0:47:59.480 --> 0:48:03.200 There's like he has like a big hot dog statue 0:48:03.719 --> 0:48:07.160 that roves around a little bit, but it's a good 0:48:07.200 --> 0:48:09.759 hot dog. If you come to Alentine, I will treat 0:48:09.760 --> 0:48:11.480 you to Yaka is hot dog, and. 0:48:11.600 --> 0:48:12.640 You'll teach us how to order it. 0:48:13.080 --> 0:48:15.960 Teach you how to order like the politicians get a 0:48:16.000 --> 0:48:18.600 huge scandal they ordered it the wrong way, like you know, 0:48:18.680 --> 0:48:21.239 it is like John Carrey, like ordered whether you get 0:48:21.239 --> 0:48:23.239 like Swiss cheese instead of something else. 0:48:23.440 --> 0:48:26.080 Yeah, it's our version of the cheese steak. 0:48:26.520 --> 0:48:28.719 And there's a special like Lee Have Valley version of 0:48:28.760 --> 0:48:29.520 the cheese steak. 0:48:29.360 --> 0:48:32.799 As well that the Philadelphians would want nothing to do with. 0:48:33.800 --> 0:48:35.120 What makes America great. 0:48:35.280 --> 0:48:39.080 Like these niche these niche loyalties towards certain orders and 0:48:39.160 --> 0:48:39.919 certain hot dog. 0:48:40.120 --> 0:48:43.279 Yeah all right, Maryturk, thank you so much for coming 0:48:43.280 --> 0:48:43.840 on all thoughts. 0:48:43.840 --> 0:48:45.879 That was great, Thank you. It really had a good time. 0:48:58.440 --> 0:49:00.640 So that was super interesting. There are a lot of 0:49:00.640 --> 0:49:03.080 things to pick out from there. But one thing that 0:49:03.120 --> 0:49:06.440 stood out was that sort of twenty tens era of 0:49:06.560 --> 0:49:11.280 like made in America craft manufacturing. I remember that really, Yeah. 0:49:11.160 --> 0:49:14.439 No totally. It's actually pretently kind of depressing because those 0:49:14.640 --> 0:49:17.400 maker bought festival or the maker body. I think it's 0:49:17.440 --> 0:49:20.400 different than the maker festivals. But there was that culture 0:49:21.080 --> 0:49:25.279 of people doing tinkering and. 0:49:23.640 --> 0:49:25.240 The printing story. 0:49:25.360 --> 0:49:25.919 Remember that. 0:49:26.000 --> 0:49:28.319 Yeah, yeah, it was like a thing, and it's like 0:49:28.360 --> 0:49:31.000 all sort of fizzled out, but there was just like 0:49:31.000 --> 0:49:36.680 a forgotten part of post GFC artistical manufacturing, cynical manufacturing 0:49:36.719 --> 0:49:38.480 and people just building weird stuff. 0:49:38.800 --> 0:49:40.400 Things aren't weird enough anymore. 0:49:40.400 --> 0:49:42.319 But yeah, I might get weird with AI. 0:49:42.480 --> 0:49:43.479 No, they're gonna get weird. 0:49:43.600 --> 0:49:46.120 But I'm glad he brought that up because I I 0:49:46.239 --> 0:49:49.359 it doesn't get discussed enough. Yeah, just generally though, like 0:49:49.400 --> 0:49:51.200 I thought it was great and like, first of all, 0:49:51.400 --> 0:49:53.480 just learning a bunch of new things. You know, I 0:49:53.520 --> 0:49:56.719 hadn't heard of weight gaining manufacturing, but that makes a 0:49:56.719 --> 0:49:59.560 lot of sense, right, Like if there's some process that 0:49:59.640 --> 0:50:02.440 adds a lot of weight, such as water to a product, 0:50:02.840 --> 0:50:04.840 you want that to be at the last mile of 0:50:04.880 --> 0:50:08.360 the supply chain rather than early on. Also fascinating to 0:50:08.400 --> 0:50:11.640 think about, like, okay, what a strategic advantage it is 0:50:11.680 --> 0:50:14.880 to be within a day's drive of one hundred million people. 0:50:15.200 --> 0:50:17.640 So therefore it makes a less sense to put various 0:50:17.680 --> 0:50:20.840 you know, e commerce warehouses in so much interesting stuff there. 0:50:20.719 --> 0:50:23.680 Also the mixed zoning I found really interesting, but because 0:50:23.719 --> 0:50:26.440 it is true if you think about industry, you know, 0:50:26.560 --> 0:50:29.439 even ten or twenty years ago, it was much more 0:50:29.480 --> 0:50:33.880 polluting and noisy and disturbing than it is now. And 0:50:33.960 --> 0:50:36.920 so you can have in an era of high tech manufacturing, 0:50:36.960 --> 0:50:40.440 you absolutely could have mixed use neighborhoods and buildings. 0:50:40.760 --> 0:50:42.640 Why not, right, So you just have to update the 0:50:42.760 --> 0:50:45.680 zoning to reflect the reality that it's not going to 0:50:45.719 --> 0:50:48.600 be automatically repellent to the neighbors. 0:50:48.239 --> 0:50:51.200 And then everyone can walk to work with their lunch boxes. 0:50:51.560 --> 0:50:52.279 Yeah, all right? 0:50:52.320 --> 0:50:53.759 Shall we leave it there for the bike to work? 0:50:53.800 --> 0:50:54.000 Yeah? 0:50:54.040 --> 0:50:54.600 Or bike to work? 0:50:54.680 --> 0:50:55.359 Yeah? 0:50:55.440 --> 0:50:55.800 Okay. 0:50:56.000 --> 0:50:58.320 This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast. 0:50:58.440 --> 0:51:01.480 I'm Tracy Allaway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway. 0:51:01.280 --> 0:51:04.080 And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart. 0:51:04.160 --> 0:51:07.319 Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen armand dash Ol 0:51:07.320 --> 0:51:11.520 Bennett at Dashbot, Calebrooks at Kelbrooks, and Kevin Lozano at 0:51:11.560 --> 0:51:14.360 Kevin Lloyd Lozano. And for more Oddloss content, go to 0:51:14.400 --> 0:51:16.920 Bloomberg dot com slash odd lots, where The Daily News 0:51:17.000 --> 0:51:19.439 learned all of our episodes and you can chat about 0:51:19.440 --> 0:51:22.040 all these topics twenty four to seven in our discord 0:51:22.320 --> 0:51:24.839 Discord dot gg slash odd Loss. 0:51:24.560 --> 0:51:26.759 And if you enjoy Odd Lots, if you like it 0:51:26.800 --> 0:51:29.440 when we talk about weight gaining industry, then please leave 0:51:29.480 --> 0:51:32.960 us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. 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