Tall & Urban News

It’s been 75 months since the Allentown Planning Commission blessed Bruce Loch’s plan to build the 33-story Landmark Tower on a small South Ninth Street lot downtown.

Standing 420 feet (128 meters) above a 5,200-square-foot lot, the skinny skyscraper would eclipse the 322-foot (98-meter) PPL Tower.

But reality hasn’t yet caught up with Loch’s lofty ambitions. The northwest corner of the South Ninth and Walnut street intersection remains a tidy grassy square near a slew of other construction sites.

The planning commission on Tuesday reluctantly granted Ascot Circle Realty a fourth, and apparently final, extension of its plan approval. Commissioners vowed to reject a request for another extension if they haven’t seen progress by June 2023.

“There is an end to everything,” planner Oldrich Foucek said. “At a certain point, you know whether or not you’re going to do it. ... At a certain point, we get the feeling we are being strung along.”

Reached after the meeting, Loch, president of Ascot Circle, remained unperturbed and optimistic.

“We know it will happen,” he said. “You just need persistence, and I have lots of that.”

Loch is trying to lock in a tenant to occupy at least 20 of 24 office floors in the skinny, pencil-like structure. New opportunities emerge on an almost weekly basis, he said.

Like other city developers and officials, Loch believes Allentown’s office market will thrive post-pandemic. The region is booming, he said, and Fortune 500 companies with major back-office operations in New York will look to downsize to the roughly 170,000 square feet (15,793 square meters) of office space he’s offering at a fraction of the cost.

Office space costs more than US$90 per square foot in certain sections of Manhattan. The Landmark Tower is in Allentown’s tax-subsidized Neighborhood Improvement Zone, where some Class A office space developed in recent years is rented for less than $25.

“It’s not exactly brain surgery,” Loch said. “We just need to match up with the right tenant.”

The top seven floors of The Landmark would still feature condominiums with 360-degree views, Loch said. A financial institution would occupy the ground floor, and a restaurant would operate on the second floor.

Loch noted that Jaindl Enterprises only recently began construction of its first Waterfront office building, nearly a decade in the making.
“Big deals take time,” Loch said. “At the end of the day, I think they ultimately will win, and so will we.”

Loch has yet to submit plans to ANIZDA. But engineer Art Swallow last month submitted revised land development plans to the city that he said satisfy conditions of the 2015 approval.

The redevelopment of the adjacent Allentown Parking Authority garage won’t require changes to the Landmark development plan, he said.

The planning commission has previously issued ultimatums to Loch. When it granted an extension in June 2020, Foucek said Loch “needs to know this commission will look at it differently a year from now,” according to meeting minutes.

“Give us something that shows there is real negotiating, like a letter of intent,” Foucek said at the time. “Otherwise, we are going in circles.”

But with the year come and gone, other planning commissioners demurred.

“Mr. Loch owns the property. He spent a ton of money to try and develop this,” Richard Button said. “If he doesn’t end up doing anything with it, it’s his money. We’re not losing anything,”

As is, the lot, about the size of a fast-food restaurant, offers some rare green space in downtown Allentown, City Controller and Planning Commissioner Jeff Glazier noted.

“Even if it’s not developed for a period of time, it’s not an eyesore,” he said.

For more on this story, go to The Morning Call.