2013 Big Year for Hockey Arena Construction

After a lawsuit over suburban taxes slowed the Phantoms Hockey Arena project in 2012, the construction is back on for a 2014 opening.

The countdown is on to the drop of the first puck in the Lehigh Valley's new hockey arena in 2014. The arena, which will become the home turf of a minor league team called the Phantoms, is projected to open in August 2014, with Phantoms training camp beginning in September, according to Robert Brooks, who is co-owner of the Phantoms with his brother Jim. Work is underway at the site at Seventh and Linden streets, Allentown.  “The arena will truly be a multi-use facility,” Robert Brooks said in an e-mail. “The arena will not only be the home of the Phantoms Hockey Team but it is planned to hold more than 140 events each year (hockey, concerts, family shows – like Disney on Ice, Harlem Globetrotters, trade shows, high school events, college …

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East Penn School District

East Penn to Lose $160,000 to Hockey Arena Project

East Penn Board of School Directors finally learn how much they will lose in tax revenue to Allentown's controversial Neighborhood Improvement Zone.

The East Penn Board of School Directors learned at Monday night’s school board meeting that East Penn stands to lose close to $160,000 this year in earned income tax money to Allentown’s controversial Neighborhood Improvement Zone. Lynn Glancy, East Penn’s operations director, reported to the board that the administration finally is able to put concrete numbers to the NIZ impact, thanks to a report released earlier this month by Berkheimer Associates, Allentown’s tax collector. That report says the city’s special downtown tax zone -- created to fund a $220 million hockey arena and other improvement projects -- will collect about $1.8 million from outside municipalities, according to The Morning Call. In East Penn, the quarterly breakdown …

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Ron Beitler

8:08 am on Thursday, June 21, 2012

Separate, but both have a % taken away by the NIZ   more ›

Questions on Arena Funding Still Need Answers

Taxing bodies still waiting for answers from Allentown on its Neighborhood Improvement Zone, which threatens flow of earned income taxes.

Editor's Note: Emmaus Patch editor Jennifer Marangos contributed to this report. Representatives of most of the municipalities and school boards of Lehigh and Northampton counties met last week for the second time in the past month to discuss Allentown’s new Neighborhood Improvement Zone and its impact on their earned income tax collections. But the discussion was short and uneventful because they are waiting for promised answers to questions submitted to Allentown officials last month. City officials have told leaders of the Tax Collection Committees of both counties that they are still trying to compile the necessary information. Upper Milford Township Manager Dan DeLong, who attended the meeting, reported to the Upper Milford Township …

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