Click here to subscribe today or Login.
Sunday, February 06, 2000 Page: 6
HAZLETON DOWNTOWN property owner and developer Michael Greco gave area
residents a reason for optimism when he alluded to his plan for a downtown
complex of retail shops, professional offices and entertainment – with
parking. Greco’s words are even more encouraging in light of the upbeat
attitude of Andrea Kosko and her colleagues on the Chamber of Commerce’s
Downtown Committee during an interview on Jan. 23 in seeing a viable, even
perhaps rosy, future for the city’s commercial heart.
We hope that soon Greco’s vision and the committee’s goals soon can provide
the agenda for meetings between the two boosters.
For an undertaking so large with such high stakes, cooperation and
brainstorming will make the project more manageable, generate wide public
support and hold the greatest promise for success.
Sometimes walking along Broad Street to the crosswalk at Laurel on a
Saturday afternoon or Friday night, one despairs of the empty storefronts,
whose dirty or boarded up windows mock the lone passerby on what should be a
bustling, generously peopled thoroughfare.
Anyone who remembers downtown Hazleton of 25 or 30 years ago or anyone who
makes a point of coming downtown for the September FunFest knows how alluring
and wonderful and enriching a city with a discernible, visible, walkable,
shopable heart can be.
It seems that Mr. Greco’s commitment to revitalizing downtown will be a
timely, extensive and expensive one. And Hazleton is so very lucky to have
such a concerned and generous proponent of center-city renewal.
We hope that his largess will extend to embracing the other downtown
business owners who have a real and devoted stake in a vibrant downtown and in
listening to the hopes and ideas of the Downtown Committee.
Furthermore, we hope that he and others involved in the project will be
open to the dreams and expectations of the citizens and consumers of all that
an expanded, energized, reconstructed downtown Hazleton offers southern
Luzerne County.