City Center unveils design of latest apartment building in downtown Allentown

By Jon Harris

So far, most of the new construction in downtown Allentown is easy to spot, from shiny steel-and-glass office towers redefining the city’s skyline to modern four- or five-story apartment buildings with groundfloor retail space.

The latest project from downtown’s largest developer, however, aims to blend in.

City Center Investment Corp. on Wednesday unveiled to The Morning Call details and renderings of 1010 Apartments, a threestory, 88-unit apartment building planned for 1010 W. Hamilton St. City Center described the $12 million project as “classically designed,” meant to blend in with neighboring brownstones.

“Our plan is to create a historic brick townhouse façade along Hamilton Street,” City Center cofounder and President J.B. Reilly said, noting the architecture should tie into the existing structures in the 1000 and 1100 block of Hamilton Street.

News of the plan surfaced last week, when The Morning Call reported City Center bought the former AAA East Central administrative buildings and parking lot at 1014, 1020 and 1026 W. Hamilton St. for $1.15 million, as well as the three-story building at 1010-1012 W. Hamilton St. for $525,000.

The city’s Zoning Hearing Board on Monday night approved City’s Center’s request to demolish the existing buildings at 101012, 1014 and 1020 W. Hamilton St. and consolidate the properties, city spokesperson Mike Moore confirmed. Reilly said Wednesday that City Center expects the project to go before the city Planning Commission in July and, if all goes well, start demolition and construction in the fall.

For City Center, this is its second project outside the city’s Neighborhood Improvement Zone, a unique 128-acre zone that stretches from the downtown to the Lehigh River waterfront and allows developers to harness certain state and local tax revenues to pay project debt service. The developer’s first project outside the NIZ was the 61-unit Walnut Street Commons, which wraps around the community parking deck at the corner of Sixth and Walnut streets.

As that suggests, 1010 Apartments also is the farthest, to date, that City Center has gone down Hamilton Street, which Reilly sees as a natural progression of the 10-year-old law that created the NIZ.

“The goal was to start seeing economic development kind of spread from the NIZ in time and this is a perfect example of that,”

Reilly said.

The project, also, is just the latest apartment project in Allentown for City Center. To date, City Center has completed nine apartment buildings totaling 905 units, with another three structures under construction that will add 445 more apartment units. Then, 1010 Apartments, still in planning, would tack on another 88 units, a mix of studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments.

Most of City Center’s recent apartment work has been focused on the 900 block of Hamilton Street. For example, it completed the first phase of Cityplace, an apartment complex at the former Holiday Inn at Ninth and Hamilton streets, last year, and recently opened the second phase. In addition, City Center expects to finish a five-story, 78-unit building at 950 Hamilton St. in August, Reilly said.

At 932 Hamilton St., where City Center had originally proposed a six-story, 100,000-square-foot office building, the company is working on a 114,000-squarefoot residential structure offering 108 studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments. That building is slated for completion in spring 2022.

“As fast as we’re building them, we’re leasing them,” Reilly said, noting City Center’s average renter is in their early to mid-30s.

In fact, City Center Project Manager Robert DiLorenzo said at the city Planning Commission meeting in December that occupancy is at 99% in the company’s Strata apartment buildings.

The strong demand for apartments has been a bright spot for a downtown that otherwise saw momentum stall because of a pandemic that idled the PPL Center and kept most office employees working from home rather than venturing out at lunch time to support the city’s restaurants.

“When things do start to return to normal, and we see offices reopening, and employees returning downtown, those offices will reopen, in my opinion, to a much more vibrant downtown than pre-pandemic — just because of the activity generated from having that many more residents living downtown,” Steve Bamford, executive director of the entity that oversees the NIZ, said at an October meeting. “As a result, I think Allentown will remain a very desirable business location, and I am very optimistic we will regain the momentum we had pre-pandemic.”

How downtown Allentown emerges from the pandemic remains to be seen, but Reilly said City Center is beginning to see a “pretty significant uptick” in office activity. From conversations with City Center’s office tenants, Reilly said many are working on plans to bring employees back downtown and some have already started to do so.

He expects things downtown to really start ramping up in June.

Reilly said restaurant and retail activity also is starting to pick up, as is business at City Center’s Renaissance Allentown Hotel, which reopened in April following a yearlong closure due to the pandemic.

More people living downtown, Reilly said, can only help the recovery.

Morning Call reporter Andrew Wagaman contributed to this story.