Upside Allentown previews focus on youth initiatives

Over the past five years, Upside Allentown has invested $550,000 worth of annual corporate donations in a variety of initiatives meant to improve communities on the periphery of a resurgent downtown.

During an annual presentation Monday, leaders indicated the project will move in a more youth-focused direction over the next half-dozen years.

Upside Allentown is a six-year Neighborhood Partnership Program run by the Community Action Development Corp. of Allentown and funded by private partners receiving state tax credits. CADC Allentown works with a handful of nonprofits and City Hall to support education, the arts, building facade improvements and public safety, among other things.

For each year of the six-year program, BB&T has paid $150,000; PPL Corp. and TD Bank each contributed $100,000; and Alvin H. Butz, City Center Investment Corp., Lafayette Ambassador Bank and Wells Fargo Bank each contributed $50,000.

Now CADC Allentown is preparing its six-year renewal application with the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, which provides the 80% tax credit to participating businesses.

The recent gun violence in the city has compelled leaders to concentrate the Upside Allentown program on serving youth and their families, CADC Allentown Director Dan Bosket said.

The application isn’t due until April, so Bosket and others didn’t offer much in the way of specifics Monday. But ideally, Upside Allentown would help support the opening of multiple community centers in the Center City area that would offer sports, arts and music activities in addition to mentoring, Bosket said.

He noted that the nonprofit Livin The Dream Foundation recently received zoning relief to operate a community center Friday and Saturday nights at a former textile mill at 314 N. 12th St.

The project would also focus on increasing workforce development opportunities and entrepreneurial training for youth, said Alan Jennings, executive director of Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley, of which CADC Allentown is a subsidiary.

Upside Allentown is not the only group to revisit youth engagement in recent months. Allentown City Council recently created a youth advisory task force to brainstorm how the city can do more to support young families from the outset.

Bosket, who’s also president of the Allentown NAACP, said Upside Allentown will be mindful of not merely replicating others’ efforts and will instead try to connect various initiatives and identify gaps in the larger network to create a “smorgasbord” of resources.

“If you can get kids interested in things that motivate them, that will enable them to take other positive steps toward securing a better future,” Bosket said.

Mayor Ray O’Connell, city police Chief Glenn Granitz and a handful of others spoke Monday on the activities Upside Allentown has helped fund in the past year.

Among others:

• More than 100 students began attending the Head Start Learning Hub in the same building that houses The Morning Call at Sixth and Linden streets in Allentown after an Upside Allentown partner connected City Center Investment with Community Services for Children, which operates the local Head Start program and was in search of new classroom space.

• Upside Allentown also completed four residential rehabilitation projects in the 200 block of North 10th Street, funded the creation of five new businesses and supported ESL classes for 29 residents at The Literacy Center.

• In the area of public safety, it helped fund the enrollment of 37 middle school students in the first stage of the Allentown Police Department’s Youth Civilian Police Academy. Chief Granitz said past graduates of the academy returned this year to serve as student mentors.