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By Evan Jones | The Morning Call | Jun 13, 2022 There’s a long family history behind Jaindl Enterprises’ Waterfront project along the Lehigh River in Allentown. Giving members of the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce a sneak peek into the development’s first building, Zac Jaindl, the company’s chief operating officer, said reinvigorating the neighborhood is part of a personal mission to give back to the community that welcomed his family over a century ago. Jaindl’s great-great-grandfather, Janos Jaindl, came to Allentown from Austria in 1904 and lived three blocks from the waterfront site. He likely fished the Lehigh at the future site of The Waterfront project. In remarks to Chamber members and later to Morning Call reporters, Jaindl said that while the family has different business interests in and around the city, it wants to be part of Allentown’s comeback. “The reason we chose downtown is because we’ve been here for so long,” he said. “John Jaindl started a baby shoe factory back in the ‘20s, ultimately got into the restaurant business and basically bought a turkey farm. So we had family businesses all over the spectrum, a lot of different industries. And quite frankly, our goal right now is to help Allentown come back and realize its potential.” Mark Jaindl, Zac’s father, is president and CEO of the company that has redeveloped other properties in the city, including Vault 634. Tony Iannelli, president and CEO of the Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce, said he appreciates the family’s loyalty to the Lehigh Valley. “These people are incredible,” Iannelli said. “This family, they could go anywhere and do development across this United States. But they decided to make the commitment here in the Lehigh Valley. And I am so thankful because when they do it, they do it right. You see what we have here and you see the future.” ‘Taking a while’ The first building, 615 Waterfront, is expected to be completed in October, but Zac Jaindl proudly showed it off Thursday. It is six stories, 125,000 square feet and will house offices and businesses. It is still a skeleton with no windows, walls or doors. A construction elevator is the only way to move between floors. But more than half the space, when the building is complete, is spoken for, Jaindl said. An announcement regarding tenants will be made as the opening approaches, he said. In about eight years, the $425 million project is expected to be finished, with 12 structures. There will be four more office buildings, four apartment buildings and three parking structures stretching along 29 acres. Jaindl said a lot of land preparation work on the project, which was proposed almost a decade ago, has been done. “So it seems like it’s taking a while,” Jaindl said, “but by the time you buy the land, we had to basically raise it up to get it out of the floodplain, because we don’t want any risk of flooding. We remediated everything and it is an old steel site. “Now we’re up to residential standards,” he said. “We’re up above the 500-year floodplain. So while it seems like it’s been a long time making it, there’s been a lot of work that’s been accomplished.” It should breathe life into the west bank of the river adjacent to the Tilghman Street Bridge. The former site of Lehigh Structural Steel and later a scrapyard, it had mostly been a brownfield for years. “Our mission statement was really focused on underutilized, underdeveloped areas and bringing it back to life in order to really push Allentown into the place to be and make it into a destination,” Jaindl said. Becky Bradley, executive director of the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission, said reuse of former industrial land is a “net good” and that redeveloping this part of Allentown will be a boon to local residents. “It’s now cleaned up and publicly accessible,” Bradley said. “The project will bring accelerated opportunities. It’s important for the neighborhood, and the region. It’s a way to minimize the development of open space.” The project is in Allentown’s Neighborhood Improvement Zone, which allows developers to tap virtually all state and local tax revenue (excluding property taxes) created by projects to pay off construction loans. The company received $5.1 million out of the NIZ’s 2021 revenue. According to Jaindl, the city’s real estate tax on the land before development was $120,000. “When we’re done, it can be worth over $4 million,” he said. “That’s going to go back to benefit the community, the school district. We’re going to start seeing, just like [City Center developer] J.B. Reilly did downtown, a huge rise in the quality of life with just the additional tax revenue being generated. And we’re going to introduce new concepts, new working opportunities and new living opportunities for people downtown and people looking to relocate to our region.”