The Reading Eagle hallucinates an economic-development plan for the city

The headline on the Saturday Reading Eagle page-1 story about economic development in Reading is “The plan is developing.”

But the story doesn’t mention a plan.

A photo shows a group of unidentified people who “the city hopes are potential buyers,” but reporter Don Spatz doesn’t talk to any of them to see if they are potentially planning to buy anything.

Instead Spatz talks to the usual suspects, including the well-paid people in charge of that vaguest of activities, economic development.

“The solution is economic development,” said Ellen Horan, president of the Greater Reading Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

That’s like saying the solution to hunger is food. Why waste paper and ink, and readers' patience, with quotes like that?

“We need to get creative about economic development,” said state Sen. Judy Schwank.

“Economic development is the key,” said Brentwood Industry president Peter Rye, also the leader of a group that tried but failed to get a state-designated City Revitalization and Improvement Zone.

The city hopes to get a CRIZ in the next round, he said, and that will be “a paradigm solution, a turnaround solution.”

So where is the plan the Reading Eagle hallucinated? What is the budget? What is the time-frame? What are the goals? If the local newspaper would ask some worthy questions, leaders might try harder to have answers.

The best recent example of economic development in Reading is a grocery store that developer Alan Shuman built in the former outlet district, which has spawned what community developers call a “place,” with the market, a daycare, a taqueria and more.

That’s my unlearned suggestion for economic development – concentrate on helping the people and businesses already in Reading, even if they are not so good at English, to prosper. 

Such a cool, vibrant city would naturally become an attraction for the rich white suburbanites whose visits leaders now seem to see as the only salvation for the place. [I was in Greenwich Village on Saturday. Like that!]

I'll repeat a couple of doable econ-dev goals:

1. Clean up the horrible blight, now including a collapsed roof, that visitors see on their left as they enter the GoggleWorks arts center parking lot from Third Street.

2. Improve the facades, especially the cedar shake shingles, on the south side of the 500 block of Penn Street. 

3. Find two tenants for the vacant strip of retail across Washington Street from the GoggleWorks. 

4. Finish one block of the Buttonwood Gateway Development area.