Lehigh Valley - A great place to live and do business

Compared to many northeastern regions, the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania offers a great opportunity for having an excellent standard of living. Among other things, housing is affordable, there are multiple colleges for arts and entertainment, the schools are good, and there is an abundance of good hospitals. Located in a sweet spot of PA, access to the region is easy from all sides. This strategic location is the main reason why it is a distribution hub for many national companies. I just checked the internet, and even in the recent economic times, local unemployment is still almost 1% below national unemployment rates. In the past few years, we have been a witness to the sustained growth of quality shopping and mid to upscale dining.

I have traveled all over the US and seen rampant vacancies in residential and commercial properties. If you take a drive around the Lehigh Valley, you see few empty buildings and homes. In my neighbor hood, there is only one home for sale. During a recent trip to Indiana, I noticed that ‘for sale’ and ‘foreclosure’ signs were as common as maple trees. Our local home values thankfully have not seen the huge plummet that other areas of the country have witnessed.

I think that we will continue to see the Lehigh Valley region flourish with more business opportunities. The Mayor of Allentown, Ed Pawlowski is doing a great job of bringing back the downtown. I drove down Hamilton Street last week, and noticed some large construction projects going on, and storefronts that had once been vacant --- occupied.  My prediction is that within 5-10 yrs time, we will witness the full gentrification of the various downtown neighborhoods.