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Diamonds to D&D Realty. The developers plan to soon renovate a second building in Wilkes-Barre’s hub, adding another 16 apartments to an apparently coveted stock of downtown living spaces. Renovation is expected to begin next month on the Alleghany Building, a South Main Street property near Wilkes University’s new campus gateway. The $1.75 million project also involves the refurbishing of retail space. D&D previously acquired and redid the Hampton Park Building, at East Northampton and South Washington streets. “Downtown Wilkes-Barre is quickly becoming a living destination not only for students, but for young professionals and empty nesters alike,” D&D principal Casey Donahue told the Times Leader. Lately, five building conversions by private developers have resulted in more than 80 new units downtown. You go, Diamond City!
Coal to the Reading Co., owner of a Luzerne County site listed on the National Register of Historic Places and long hoped to become a heritage park. The 112-acre tract, known as the Ashley Planes, covers portions of Hanover Township and Ashley. It once held a marvel of transportation engineering – a network of steam engine-powered equipment and rail lines that lugged anthracite out of the Wyoming Valley and over the mountain to East Coast markets. Rather than help to preserve this piece of regional, coal-mining history, the California-based company appears poised to let the land be sold at an upcoming back-tax auction. That’s just cold.
Diamonds to Eugene Lewis. Recruited to play football at Penn State University, the former Wyoming Valley West student hasn’t squandered his potentially life-changing opportunity. Yes, he’s made sensational catches on the field. But the wide receiver, now entering his red-shirt junior season, apparently kept his eye on what’s truly important. He is on track to snag a diploma in December. “The classroom, that’s the number-one thing,” he told the Times Leader.
Coal to the elected overseers of the Wilkes-Barre Area Career and Technical Center. A majority of the center’s joint operating committee members have failed to adopt a no-nepotism policy, leaving the door wide open for icky situations like the one that unfolded earlier this week. Committee Member John Quinn’s son, hired as a long-term substitute in November, was approved for a newly created, full-time post. Perhaps the younger Quinn is imminently qualified and deserving. But family ties cloud the whole scenario. Daddy shouldn’t have been serving on the committee.
Diamonds to the area’s generous gardeners. At this time of year, they’re sharing vegetable harvests with food banks as well as neighbors, passing fresh, jarred, pickled and otherwise preserved goodies over the backyard fence. Tastes like summer!