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Saturday, January 29, 2000 Page: 8A
I am Stephanie Jacobs, an architect in downtown Wilkes-Barre, and one of the
two owners of the Perry Block property. The other owner of Perry Block is
Gregory Lull, my fiance, who also works in downtown Wilkes-Barre. I was
mentioned in your paper on Jan. 24 and may be mentioned again soon. I have
lived in many places, small towns and large cities, and never in my life have
I seen political shenanigans like those being portrayed in your paper. I have
lived here for only seven years, but in that time I have grown to love the his
toric downtown in Wilkes-Barre and my job as an architect. I have found that
the people here are honest, hard-working folks like me and the area is a
wholesome place to raise a family. I hope that I never have to change that
opinion. I believed so strongly in this image of a wonderful city that, when
a dilapidated building on Market Street was offered for sale, my future fiance
and I decided to purchase in November 1997 and save the building. We dreamed
of creating a home for ourselves in a loft apartment in the middle of the
downtown and offering apartments to anyone else who might enjoy loft-style
living. We immediately went to extraordinary lengths to physi cally secure the
building while trying to find financing for the project. It has been a
difficult process, which is not surpris ing. After all, if doing projects like
this were easy, our downtowns would be filled with rehabilitated buildings.
When we found that the mayor had listed our property as a KOZ site, we were
surprised and delighted. We weren’t sure what the importance of that
designation meant, but we thought it might help us to secure financing. Be
cause we never received official notifica tion or any instructions from the
city on how to apply for the KOZ status, we de cided to submit our application
to both John Matusek, head of the regional KOZ program at the time, and also
to the City of Wilkes-Barre, just to make sure all of our bases were covered.
I even wrote a summary of what we proposed to do with the buildings, and then
hand-deliv ered both applications to John Matusek and City Hall during my
lunch hour. Greg and I waited for a response. We hoped the city might call to
encourage us with our little piece of downtown re vitalization. We hoped that
they would send us information on the program or acknowledge they had received
our ap plication. There was no response. We had continued to hope for a re
sponse to our project, but never in our wildest dreams did we ever expect the
response to be an unprovoked, unin formed attack in the media by the may or. I
have studied and practiced architec ture for almost 20 years, and never in my
life have I seen a downtown develop ment strategy like the one being imple
mented by our mayor. The attack on us is based on inaccurate information that
could have been straightened out imme diately with one phone call to us. No
call has been made to date. I am not sure why the mayor decided to target
Greg and me in our efforts to renovate a small piece of downtown. We are
trying to do more than our share to help the city we love. We have paid our
taxes in 1997 and 1998 and held onto our tax payment in 1999 until we were
noti fied of our KOZ certification on Dec. 20. We pulled permits to do the
demoli tion and to do the work to make the building safe for passers-by,
changed the locks, and buttoned up the building so that it is safe until we
can start construc tion. Our KOZ application was filled out truthfully to the
best of our knowledge, and we were certified to receive KOZ tax benefits. All
we have done is to show that we believe in and are willing to in vest in the
future of downtown Wilkes-Barre. For some reason, that is being portrayed as a
crime. We are mystified.
Stephanie Jacobs
Wilkes-Barre