Jan. 6, 2026
— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs
Will some social media posts and maybe a few billboards restore downtown Allentown to the 1970s? Can a couple not-for-profit appointees with big salaries make a difference?
This comes up after the Da Vinci Science Center had a disastrous first year, reaching only 160,000 people when it had projected 400,000 in downtown Allentown. It is enlisting Discover Lehigh Valley, which promotes the region, to bring people downtown.
Da Vinci’s projections were ridiculous but they helped sell the project and bring in taxpayers’ money. Da Vinci left Cedar Crest College and wound up at 815 W. Hamilton St. after playing footsie with the City of Easton for about three years. See Bernie O’Hare’s Lehigh Valley Ramblings blog for that story. After that debacle, Allentown still wanted Da Vinci.
I’ve posted before about the big shortfall at the Da Vinci Science Center at PPL Pavilion. It could turn into a $75 million boondoggle.
The plan to work with Discover Lehigh Valley to bring foot traffic to Hamilton Street is going to be interesting, because people started avoiding downtown Allentown in the 1970s and the flight accelerated in the 1980s. Shopping malls and development in townships drew people away.
Fair or not, a lot of people don’t want to go to downtown because of concern about crime, parking and a lack of places to go. I go to the Allentown Art Museum, but I haven’t been downtown at night in many years.
So I don’t think positive thinking from two not-for-profit outfits will bring back the glory days, which officially ended when the old Hess’s/Bon-Ton department store closed in 1996.
I think the idea of promotion making a big difference downtown is ridiculous, but that’s how things work in the Lehigh Valley non-profit world.
Say anything, pretend for a while, then move on to the next dodge. Get on some boards of directors, vote on raises, give out some awards, and keep the right people happy.
That’s the main thing: keep the right people happy. In the Lehigh Valley, there are just a few dozen people you really need on your side because almost nobody else is paying attention.
Is putting out a study every few years or designing a new logo making a difference? Do website hits really mean much? If everything these groups said were true, we’d be living in paradise.
We aren’t.
As taxpayers, we support both organizations and can see the salaries at Da Vinci and Discover Lehigh Valley:
— Da Vinci promotes science education and holds an ice cream tasting and no doubt does many wondrous things. Executive Director Linda Erickson was paid $197,852 for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2024. That’s from the center’s Form 990. She is retiring in June after years of “transformative” leadership.
That salary wouldn’t be high at a flourishing private business or a big non-profit group that was actually performing. Da Vinci missed its target by 60%. That’s a disaster.
— Discover Lehigh Valley is also a good place to work. President Alex Michaels was paid $241,141 in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2024. In case you don’t recognize the organization’s name, Discover Lehigh Valley is also the Lehigh Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau. The latter name is more meaningful but the first was no doubt deemed more “catchy.”
As for the salary, I can’t say if it’s fair. I can’t measure that and I don’t think hits on websites can either. Again, that salary would be no big deal at many places, but this is in part public money.
The appropriate pay is up to the organization’s board of directors to determine. They can be found at this link.
Again though, are all these organizations doing what they claim to do? How did Da Vinci miss by 60% in its first year? What was its board thinking? Was the Da Vinci board doing its job? Were they gullible? See the current board at this link.
How do we measure the value provided by these groups that take public money?
Not well enough. Remember, just because something is not-for-profit does not mean it has a noble goal or that it is managed well. Outfits that benefit from public money need more scrutiny than they’re getting.
More on Da Vinci later, including some background on the name and the noble but not perhaps not entirely successful story behind it.
Lehigh Valley News Briefs 