As taken from pottstowncitizens.org https://sites.google.com/view/pottstowncitizens/home
“Pottstown Citizens seeks ways we can best manage our resources for the common good…Pottstown Citizens for Enlightened Leadership was established to 1.) Provide information and analysis to help inform readers about local issues; 2.) Advocate for traditional neighborhoods which house people of all ages, races and incomes, with walkable neighborhood schools and tree-lined streets — safe and attractive for pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists. 3.) Encourage Pottstown Borough and the Pottstown School District to conduct their business in an open and professional manner; 4.) Make the best and most efficient use of community assets. We do this through our Web site and through biweekly columns published in The Mercury as paid advertisements. Note: Pottstown Citizens for Enlightened Government was created as a community service in 2007. It is financed entirely by Tom Hylton. In the interests of transparency, we file annual financial reports with the Montgomery County.” To learn more visit pottstowncitizens.org https://sites.google.com/view/pottstowncitizens/home
The following essay, written by Tom Hylton, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, has recently appeared as a paid advertisement in the Pottstown Mercury:
The two greatest shocks to Pottstown’s fiscal health and self-image in the last 50 years were the closing of Bethlehem Steel in 1975 and Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. in 1980. The closures cost the borough more than 3,000 good-paying jobs, and Pottstown began the difficult transition from a manufacturing powerhouse into an agglomeration of small, widely diverse industries. In 1965, Pottstown Area Industrial Development Inc. (PAID) was chartered as an off-shoot of the Pottstown Area Chamber of Commerce to promote industrial development in the area. (PAID changed its name to PAED in 2021). In 1973, the non-profit, led by then-Borough Manager Joseph Banta, worked with Borough Council to acquire 85 acres from the former Clow-Robinson Clay Pipe Co. just east of Glasgow Street, and built Shoemaker Road west of Route 100, to create the borough’s first industrial park. Today it is home to businesses such as U.S. Axle and Eastwood Co. Ten years later, another borough manager, Eugene Moody, worked with PAID to acquire 50 acres north of the Pottstown Airport to create the Airport Business Campus. Using $3.2 million in state and federal funds, PAID laid out 32 lots ranging in size from one to six acres around a loop road called Circle of Progress. Proceeds from the sales of the lots were used to support PAID’s activities for many years afterwards. All the lots are now privately owned, with restrictive covenants for their use written by PAID. Perhaps the campus’s best known business is the Sly Fox Brewing Co. The following year, the borough contracted with Duro Development Co. to develop another 35 acres of former Clow Robinson land, on the north side of Shoemaker Road, to create the Tri-County Business Campus. The campus is home to the only stainless steel beer keg manufacturer in America, American Keg. Meanwhile, the former Bethlehem Steel property, which had been vacant for nearly a decade after its closing, was purchased in 1984 by John Bown, owner of Industrial Investments Inc. Rechristened the Pottstown Industrial Complex, the site has 1.35 million square feet under roof. John Bown III, grandson of the founder, serves on the current PAED board. Another 225 acres of developable land became available with the completion of Keystone Boulevard in 2003. It will soon be home to the $142 million Pottstown Sustainable Energy Plant…”
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