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By Andrew M. Seder aseder@timesleader.com
Times Leader Staff Writer
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WILKES-BARRE TWP. – A dozen years ago, the land around the Wachovia Arena at Casey Plaza was potholed and lined with lifeless culm banks. Easily visible from Interstate 81, the few hundred acres stood as a stark reminder of Luzerne County’s coal mining past.

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Retail development in the area of the Wachovia Arena. One project is a hotel being built off Highland Boulevard.

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Hilton Hotel on Highland Boulevard in Wilkes-Barre Township.

Pete G. Wilcox photos/The Times Leader

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The former coal strip mining pits were “God-awful,” said Todd A. Vonderheid president of the Wilkes-Barre Chamber of Business and Industry. But that would soon change.

Northeastern Pennsylvania was being eyed as the site of a convention center or civic arena and downtown Scranton or the Greater Wilkes-Barre area were the finalists. Land near the existing Lord & Taylor distribution center along Highland Park Boulevard was selected, but to succeed, the arena would require an exit off of Interstate 81. One of the most fortuitous turns of events in the history of Luzerne County was under way.

Without the arena, there would be no Highland Park Boulevard exit off of I-81. Without that exit, the retail boom seen the past decade in the vicinity of the arena might not have occurred.

“The arena created the impetus for the projects,” Vonderheid said. Developers began buying land and national retailers now had a prime location to enter the Wilkes-Barre market.

Mundy Street, which resembled a roller coaster track instead of a thoroughfare, was repaved, sewer and power lines were extended further into Wilkes-Barre Township and Highland Park Boulevard was connected to Mundy Street.

“The infrastructure created the opportunity; the private sector took it and ran with it,” Vonderheid said.

The idea of an exit off of I-81 had for years been on the PennDOT “12-year plan” but until the arena project showed no sign of moving up the priority list.

Frank McCabe, president of High Hotels Ltd. in Lancaster, opened the 123-room Hilton Gardens Hotel within a quarter-mile of the Highland Park Boulevard exit ramp in 2002. He said the location was perfect, but only because of the exit.

“It was too isolated there without an exit,” McCabe said. He didn’t hesitate when asked whether there’d be a hotel there today without that exit ramp.

“Nope. Absolutely not,” he replied.

Vonderheid said without the exit, plenty of businesses would not have located to the stretch of Highland Park Boulevard that was originally destined to be a cul-de-sac serving an industrial park with Lord and Taylor as its anchor tenant.

“There just wasn’t money to make that kind of infrastructure improvements,” Vonderheid recalled. But the approval of the arena changed that.

“The arena didn’t create the Arena Hub and associated retail but it helped make it happen.”

“Once we had won the arena site and the exit was coming, everything was different,” he added.

Among the first to get things going was Robert Tambur. He purchased some acreage that he called “an ugly piece of property.”

“I took a risk, but it paid off,” Tambur said.

He saw the potential. So too did national home improvement giant Lowe’s.

The company approached Tambur, telling him that the region is underserved from a retail standpoint. The Lowe’s representative said that if they came in, more retail chains would follow. That prediction proved spot on.

Within a few years of the Lowe’s 1998 opening, more than a dozen other stores would open along Mundy Street and Highland Park Boulevard. From retailers such as Dick’s Sporting Goods, Target, Michael’s Crafts and Barnes & Noble to eateries, including Olive Garden, Cracker Barrel and Red Robin, a one-mile stretch in each direction from the arena became a destination location.

Other retailers would follow over time, including a Wal-Mart-anchored Wilkes-Barre Township Marketplace along Highland Park Boulevard. It opened in 2004 and joined the two already built but still expanding shopping centers along Mundy Street – the Arena Hub Plaza and the Wilkes-Barre Township Commons.