In short
How Allentown, Pennsylvania rebuilt manufacturing after deindustrialization, using a “small-footprint manufacturing” strategy, industrial building reuse, and zoning reforms; how federal industrial policy (CHIPS/IRA and other grants) translates into local job access; and what kinds of light, high-value component manufacturing cities should target (plus how Allentown is handling data-center zoning).
Guest
Matt Turk, mayor of Allentown. Background: worked in regional economic development (including the Economic Development Corporation) starting in 2008; previously involved with the Urban Manufacturing Alliance; later became mayor in 2022. He describes Allentown’s manufacturing evolution from early cigar/silk to Mack Trucks and Western Electric transistors, then diversification into life sciences and industrial gases.
Key claims
Allentown kept manufacturing employment steadier than many places (about 17% of jobs). The region leveraged existing industrial “gravity-flow” building stock (40k–80k sq ft) to attract smaller manufacturers. COVID made onshoring/reshoring logic clearer by exposing supply-chain risks and IP theft. Cities should allow light industrial in residential areas via form-based zoning to bring manufacturing back into daily life.
Notable examples
Western Electric shutting down in the 1970s (later becoming Broadcom); Mack Trucks shifting production to a Mukwonago-area plant in the 1980s; repurposing old Mack plants into Bridgeworks manufacturing incubator; Olympus surgical-device HQ move (2006); Ocean Spray and Sam Adams production in the Lehigh Valley; Schlesz Bottle for beverage bottles; EDA strategic development grant ($20M) tied to prime-age employment gaps; Allentown’s 2026 form-based zoning reform and “data-center proofing” zoning requirements.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe Deindustrialization of Allentown
3:25 to 4:28
Understand the decline of manufacturing in Allentown and its cultural implications.
“So the reason I bring it up, though, is for kind of a serious point, not just to talk about Billy Joel music.”
A Historical Overview of Allentown's Industries
4:28 to 7:20
Explore the historical evolution of Allentown's key industries from cigar manufacturing to semiconductors.
“How do you actually go about implementing industrial policy on a local scale?”
Transitioning Through Economic Changes
7:20 to 10:34
Learn about the strategies Allentown used to adapt and diversify its economy post-industrialization.
“Yeah, I mean, so, I mean, the city was founded back in 1762.”
Innovative Manufacturing Strategies in Allentown
10:34 to 14:01
Discover how Allentown is positioning itself for a future in manufacturing and economic growth.
“When the steel shut down in Bethlehem in 1898, I think was when they did their last cast.”
Path to Reshoring Manufacturing
14:01 to 16:32
Exploration of the Lehigh Valley's potential for smaller footprint manufacturing.
“There was some concern about how we would recover economically, what we would do.”
Revival of the Maker Movement
19:33 to 21:31
Discussion on the resurgence of maker spaces and manufacturing trends post-COVID.
“At the region, we could see that manufacturing was still important.”
Reindustrialization Strategy Discussion
21:32 to 24:12
Insights into the reindustrialization strategy for Lehigh Valley and surrounding regions.
“Corporation was we recruited Ocean Spray to make most of its great cranberry juice in the Lehigh Valley.”
Zoning and Local Manufacturing
24:13 to 26:58
Analyzing the impact of zoning laws on local manufacturing opportunities.
“We were thinking about the logistics of making things close to the customer.”
Engaging Young People in Manufacturing
26:59 to 28:05
Discussing strategies to attract younger generations to manufacturing jobs.
“advantage on cost or quality of life can attract those industries if they set themselves up to do it.”
Reimagining Urban Manufacturing
28:05 to 30:26
Explore how cities can adapt zoning laws to encourage bespoke manufacturing and revitalize local economies.
“industrial, you were going to get like the tire manufacturing plant.”
Show all 20 chapters
The Disconnect in Manufacturing Perception
30:26 to 31:28
Discussion on how urban planning and cultural perceptions affect interest in manufacturing careers.
“Like people internalizing all these lessons from a video game.”
Navigating Federal Programs for Local Growth
31:28 to 35:30
Insights into how local governments can leverage federal initiatives for economic development and safety improvements.
“Now we saw like the federal government was pushing in a particular direction, right?”
Strategies for Employment and Economic Competitiveness
35:30 to 42:00
Strategies for ensuring local populations can access new manufacturing jobs through strategic planning and investment.
“we're able to, so we landed a strategic development grant in December of 23, and then we got a$20 million investment for implementation.”
Pennsylvania's Future in Defense Manufacturing
42:00 to 43:50
Learn about Pennsylvania's potential to become a center for defense manufacturing.
“We want to make sure that we're capable of connecting to that.”
Romanticizing Manufacturing vs. Reality
43:50 to 45:50
Explore the disconnect between romantic notions of manufacturing and its job realities.
“every national election is just geared towards making the citizens of Pennsylvania happy?”
The Dignity of Work in Manufacturing
45:50 to 48:00
Discuss the importance of preserving jobs and the dignity of labor amidst automation.
“I don't know if anybody, I don't know what the logical end to that is, but I think there's on the consumer side, there's still a desire.”
Data Centers: A Mixed Blessing
48:00 to 50:00
Understand the implications of data centers on urban planning and utility costs.
“Can you talk specifically about how you're thinking about data centers?”
The Yakos Controversy in Allentown
50:00 to 52:20
Learn about the local controversies surrounding Yakos hot dogs and demographic changes.
“As I understand the technology, and this is probably the less sophisticated side of the thought, it's getting smaller and smaller.”
Craft Manufacturing and Economic Trends
52:20 to 55:00
Reflect on the trends in craft manufacturing and the impact of 3D printing.
“If I Google Allentown controversy, Yakos comes up.”
Strategic Insights on Manufacturing and Urban Planning
56:03 to 57:02
Learn about the benefits of weight gaining manufacturing and mixed zoning in urban areas.
“Just generally, though, like I thought that was great.”
Transcript
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2:12Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News.
2:28Hello and welcome to another episode of the Oddbots Podcast. I'm Tracy Allaway.
2:32Tracy Alloway:And I'm Joe Weisenthal. Joe, do you ever discover little cultural blind spots that you had in your life? I'm sure. Like things you missed? Where are you going with this? So I discovered one recently and it kind of led to a minor epiphany for me. But I had heard the Billy Joel song, Allentown. I had never watched the video. And in preparation for this episode, I watched the video and suddenly a bunch of Simpsons references made sense to me. Interesting. And I don't mean to be very grand millennial by making Simpsons references here. Isn't it depressing how if you make a Simpsons reference to someone younger in the office, they look at you with a blank stare?
3:13Tracy Alloway:I know. It's really depressing. I just don't do it anymore because it's so depressing. I know. And here I am doing it on the podcast. But I actually... Because we're the same generation, so we can do it among each other. We can do it. This is a safe space. Our listeners might not get it. So the reason I bring it up, though, is for kind of a serious point, not just to talk about Billy Joel music. Although now that I think about it, he has a lot of songs about like the political economy of America. But it is because Allentown, Pennsylvania basically became a poster child for deindustrialization and the hollowing out of American manufacturing in the 1980s.
3:48Tracy Alloway:That was a great intro. Oh, thank you. And of course, right. So we know and obviously over the years on Odd Lots, we've talked a lot about industrialization, deindustrialization, reindustrialization. Great. All very interesting themes. Everyone maybe feels in their gut somehow that they're pro-reindustrialization, whatever that means, right? But then the gap between somehow we feel good about producing physical things, we want more of that. What does that actually look like in practice? What are these jobs? What are these potential industries? Then it suddenly gets much more hazy, right? People don't know what that actually looks like in practice.
4:28Right. How do you actually go about implementing industrial policy on a local scale? And I have to say, the other thing I found out in researching for this podcast, I had no idea, but Allentown, Pennsylvania was also the site of the first, some of the first mass produced transistors, which are like the precursor to semiconductors of today.
4:49Tracy Alloway:Can I say one random thing about Billy Joel before we go further? You know, because obviously you mentioned he talks about, you know, a lot of political economy things, including, of course, in We Didn't Start the Fire. The final line of that song is like something about the Cola Wars. And he's like, I can't take it anymore. And I just think it's really funny that the Cola Wars, Coke versus Pepsi, is the thing that tipped him over the edge. Like all the Vietnam War, all these things happened. And finally, the thing that tipped him over the edge was the Cola. Anyway, sidetrack. But I just had to get that out.
5:19We should do a whole episode on Billy Joel songs at some point, including my favorite karaoke standard, which is Downeaster Alexa, all about the decline of the fishing industry. But anyway, Allentown, Pennsylvania, let's focus. We do, in fact, have the perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with the mayor of Allentown, Matt Turk. So thank you so much for coming on All Thoughts. It's un gran placer. It's a huge pleasure to be here.
5:42Tracy Alloway:That actually helps because we are at the City Lab Conference in Madrid, right? And we just saw you have a medal from the marathon over the weekend. Tell us about that. I landed on Saturday, went right to the Marathon Expo, picked up my bib. 24 hours later, I was starting the Madrid 42K, not 26 miles, but 42 kilometers marathon. It was hot. It was hilly. It was beautiful. Great crowd support. Phenomenal marathon. Finished the marathon and then went right to a reception for Bloomberg City Lab. And I've been nonstop since then. That is dedication to both cardio and city planning. So congrats on that.
6:22I mentioned Allentown, the song and the video in the intro, and I discovered there's some controversy about this because apparently the steelmaking was more in Bethlehem rather than in Allentown. So should Billy Joel have been talking about semiconductors instead of steel? I mean, he could have been talking about Mack trucks. He could have been talking about silk manufacturing. That's like the local controversy is that like he's talking about, you know, Bethlehem, but he didn't rhyme as well with shutting factories down. But then there's, you know, I was surprised. I thought that everyone in the country felt like not great about the song Allentown.
7:00Then I met the mayor of Toledo and he was like, that's a great song. It's about the working man and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, what are you talking about? that like this is the song that like everybody in our region and the lehigh valley just like dreads hearing because it's about this like different era that maybe was like felt right in the moment in 1982 like that maybe kind of captured the moment but in 2026 it's like weak it doesn't sound further from it couldn't sound further from the truth give us like a little
7:30Tracy Alloway:ellentown history like what is the timeline when we talk about these sort of key industries that were once associated with the city of Allentown. What was the sort of peak of it? And when was the sort of trough? Yeah, I mean, so, I mean, the city was founded back in 1762. It had its revolutionary moment. We hit the Liberty Bell there, but it really picked up and incorporated in 1867 for the kind of reconstruction. And that's when the industry really started to, it started to industrialize like many American cities. Early industry was cigar manufacturing. So tobacco that was grown in Lancaster was shipped to Allentown for production into cigars.
8:11Silk manufacturing became a pretty big deal in that area. It was a place where silk could be brought in and then processed. In the early kind of 1910s, sort of around the First World War, Mack Truck moved to Allentown from Brooklyn. This was like 1915. And industrial production of those vehicles started. we manufactured uh volte bombers a particular type of bomber for world war ii this is all coincident with bethlem's steel industry rising up the industrial work continued through to i think you guys mentioned the transistor and western electric that was kind of a big story but then like a lot of places uh manufacturing started to decline not as strongly in allentown as other parts of the country but you know the western electric plant eventually shut down the what year are we talking about with that western electric was in the 70s it actually and it it morphed into something else that eventually became broadcom so there's still some manufacturing it didn't necessarily exist in the city it spread out into suburban parts of the region there's still some chip manufacturing occurring or wafer polishing occurring in the area we still have the kind of muscle memory of semiconductor manufacturing.
9:33But again, the industry evolved and changed. The Voltaire aircraft shut down when there was no need to produce bombers anymore. Mack trucks continued operations in Allentown, but in the 80s shifted most of its production to a plant in Mukunji that still operates today. A lot of those old Mack plants were acquired by an organization that I used to work for, the Allentown Economic 12 Incorporation, and repurposed. initially repurposed for the this is the 80s the thought at the time was that it could be an incubator facility a business incubator it it did become that but it was more of a manufacturing incubator these were old sawtooth roof buildings with 12 to 18 foot ceilings so some big spaces but not a lot of clearance they weren't suited for modern manufacturing that's what a lot of the building stock in Allentown looked like.
10:27But the production was still occurring in some capacity in the city, definitely in the region. When the steel shut down in Bethlehem in 1898, I think was when they did their last cast. That's when leading up to that, the region had already started to think about how to diversify, how to build on the Western Electric, the semiconductor manufacturer lehigh university was a source of engineering talent they started to diversify out into life sciences so there's there's some uh precursor drugs that are manufactured there some medical supplies that are still manufactured there bbron another one that i didn't mention was air products so it's an industrial gas manufacturer i know you guys were recently talking about helium yeah air products is like it's so fun talking to a listener that makes it so easy it's like helium i have helium uh so helium is something that air products manufacturers it's one of those like head scratchers when you're talking about a region's industrial output to say like we make like a an element like like an elemental element like the lowest yeah it's hard to describe like how that happens but that was founded in allentown actually was founded in tennessee and moved to allentown in the 50s but a lot of that production was still occurring, the kind of civic leaders of the time in the early 90s is they could foresee the end of Bethlehem Steel when it was acquired.
11:53I think it was acquired by Arsor Middle, but they could see the end in sight. And so they made a conscious effort to diversify, working with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to stand up some tech-led economic development, which had its, it was successful in a few places. The biggest success in attracting investment or the biggest kind of economic development story for the region was in 2006 when the region convinced Olympus, which is the manufacturer of surgical devices to relocate its North American headquarters to, they were out in suburban Bethlehem. But that's been the character, right? It's a very diversified economy.
12:32Today, it's still about 17 % of the jobs are manufacturing jobs. So it's much higher than many other parts of the country. And it's held pretty steady. So that's amazing. Well, that was a fantastic summary. But on that note, I mean, I think a lot of cities and towns in America, whether they're in the Rust Belt or Pennsylvania or the South or wherever, who have gone through this deindustrialization phase, they all say they want to build back their manufacturing sector in some way. But it feels like Allentown has kind of gone about it in a slightly different way in that you've had a sort of grand strategy or vision for how to do that rather than try to attract just like individual businesses in a piecemeal way.
13:19Can you talk about how you actually formulated that plan? Yeah. So I started working for the Economic Development Corporation in 2008, and we had the manufacturing incubator. It's called the Bridgeworks, the manufacturing incubator that was in place at that time. It was trying to pivot away from manufacturing when I got there. We also had an industrial building that sort of funded our existence where we had a t-shirt manufacturer, an industrial valves manufacturer, and somebody who is building large-scale tents as tenants. And they were kind of keeping the organization alive. There was this, you know, in 2008, it was right kind of in the early days of the global financial crisis.
14:01There was some concern about how we would recover economically, what we would do. But these early investments in manufacturing were, from what I could see, looking ahead, something we shouldn't turn our backs on. There was this seemingly healthy manufacturing economy in place in the Lehigh Valley. And it felt like there was an opportunity to build for the future. I worked with our CEO or executive director at that time to start thinking about how we might position the area as a place where you could bring smaller footprint manufacturing. We knew we had this building stock of buildings that were smaller than 100 ,000 square feet, sometimes on multiple stories.
14:45It was a kind of gravity flow model of manufacturing where you would load in raw material at the top of the building. And as it gained weight, it would drop down the building for final finishing on the ground floor and then shipping. We felt like there was an opportunity to kind of leverage the existing industrial inventory to attract manufacturers that were more boutique. I remember reading an article in the Wall Street Journal in maybe 2009 or 2010 about a bag manufacturer in San Francisco who was, like, very proud of being in San Francisco. I was like, this is, I think there's something here for us.
15:25I reached out to the manufacturer at the time. This was kind of around the same time as the rise of, like, makerspaces and 3D printing was kind of coming online. It looked like you could do some stuff in a smaller form factor. And we kept thinking, like, this is a chance for us with these strong roots in manufacturing to bring some of it back. We got deep into it and really explored. We formed something called the Urban Manufacturing Alliance in collaboration with San Francisco and the Pratt Institute in New York and our friends in the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation and in Detroit to just kind of bring cities who are interested in manufacturing together.
16:04We started talking about reshoring or onshoring at that time, but it felt distant.
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18:41Tracy Alloway:I'm glad you brought up this sort of maker 3D printing phenomenon. That was such a thing around that time. Yeah, it was, but it's forgotten, isn't it? Because when we talk generally about the tailwinds or the growth of the 2010s, it's almost entirely people talk about tech right software etc the internet and all that and then we talk about post-covid this re you know this new enthusiasm for reshoring but it was like this forgotten chapter that within particularly the first half of the 2010s the various maker spaces and the 3d printers and people were really excited about that kind of fizzled out like that like that mini movement you don't hear that that is about for sure but so we did a re-industrialization strategy in 2014.
19:23We worked with somebody to evaluate our total industrial stock. I had at that point moved on to work for the regional economic development corporation, but was still involved with this urban manufacturing alliance. At the region, we could see that manufacturing was still important. I had a better sense of what other types of manufacturing was occurring in the area. We developed a strategy, kept thinking. What I kept seeing at the region was that there is real demand to be in the Lehigh Valley and in these smaller footprint buildings. So we saw inquiries all the time for buildings between 40 and 80 ,000 square feet.
20:01But this was a time when the Lehigh Valley was pivoting its economy toward transportation and warehousing, building million square foot buildings with 24 to 36 foot ceilings. Really, as this other technological trend of the e-com started to show up. This was the high demand for industrial space. So we had lots of interest from small manufacturers, particularly coming out of places like Brooklyn, where maybe it was like not quite the place to be, who wanted to spread their arms a little bit and maybe have access to talent. They were trying to be in the Lehigh Valley, but we didn't have a ton of building space to meet their needs.
20:40So when we built that reindustrialization strategy, a big part of it was how do we position the built environment for this demand? And some of that is, you know, rehabbing existing industrial buildings as surprise, surprise, industrial buildings. So it's continued on from there. Yeah. So this is another thing I learned about Allentown. I'm full of Allentown facts at the moment, but apparently Allentown is within a day's drive of 40 percent of the population in the U.S. is that true? Yeah, it's over 100 million, many more than 100 million people. And that's what made it such a strong destination for some of the e-com.
21:21But it's also like that, you know, you go back to like why is a vibrant economic region is that it's a great place for weight gaining industries, right? So the other big thing we worked on at the Regional Economic Development Corporation was we recruited Ocean Spray to make most of its great cranberry juice in the Lehigh Valley. Sam Adams was brewing most of its beer in the Lehigh Valley.
21:46Tracy Alloway:Was it weight gaining industry? Yeah, anything you add water to basically, right? So you when you have the cranberries come into the plant, like to become cranberry juice, you add a ton of water. It doesn't make sense to produce that far away and then ship all that water. So because you're not just within a day's drive of 40 % of this population, you're also close to New York. So a lot of like Keurig, Dr. Pepper has a big production plant. There's a lot of food manufacturing that occurs there as well. And then on the manufacturing side, you also, because of the e-com, because of the food manufacturing, you saw a lot of packaging and bottling manufacturing show up.
22:29So one of our most recent in Allentown successes was recruiting a company called Schlesz Bottle that manufactures bottles for beverages. And they wanted to be close to the production point. So the manufacturing bottles in Allentown, filling it with beverages and shipping it back to New York.
22:46Tracy Alloway:This is so core, like Ricardo Hausman coded stuff. Like, okay, you have this one industry, and then you have innovation and an adjacent industry. Super... Monkeys swinging from trees. Yeah, I'm also just like learning all these terms. You know, gravity-based manufacturing or weight gaining. This is all fantastic stuff. Weight gain industry is, I think, what we're both doing in Madrid. That's what we're both doing in Madrid. That's really well done. That's jamon gaining. That's right. Yeah. We should have run a marathon, and then we could have compensated for all that. What are like, you know, obviously, this is all against the backdrop of this vortex of manufacturing going to China, largely, et cetera.
23:25Tracy Alloway:When people think, you know, you're at a conference like this and probably a lot of mayors are interested in reindustrialization, et cetera, what types of industries are good candidates generally for thinking of like what should be built locally? Like something like plastic bags or bags. It's like, well, I don't know. Maybe that could be offshore. What are like strong candidates for what is durable here? You mentioned plastic bags because one of the things we recruited as I was kind of leaving the world of economic development and going to politics was a Turkish plastic bag manufacturer. So that was kind of interesting.
24:02So one of the things that distinguished the region and I think is good for onshoring, and I want to go back on the onshoring thing for a second. When we developed this strategy, when we're talking about onshoring and reshoring back in the early 2010s, we didn't know a global pandemic was going to come and disrupt supply chains. We were thinking about the logistics of making things close to the customer. And I was thinking a lot about the theft of IP in China and how those components of globalism didn't make a ton of sense. You're kind of giving away your most precious resource. So a lot of it was driven by like, how do you kind of capture the spirit of American manufacturing?
Read the full transcript
24:48Now, COVID hit and all of a sudden, that's what brought into stark relief. That's what made it make sense. So one of the things that I think makes a ton of sense and we still see a lot of in Allentown, whether it's the transistors or it's the bag manufacturing or Westport axle manufacturers axles for Mack trucks in Allentown area, it's components, right? It's how do you, how do you de-risk the supply chain by diversifying your component manufacturing? That makes a lot of sense in cities because you're not building the whole truck there, right and to build the whole truck you need something like lord town or lordstown you need river rouge you need the enormous factories when you're building the components whatever those components might look like you can exist in a much smaller form factor something as small as 40 000 square feet but even like to get down to like what we were calling craft manufacturing at the time you might be able to exist in a much smaller space and perhaps the ground floor of a mixed-use building.
25:52And that's what the next step for us was, and what more cities should be doing, I think, is making sure that your zoning allows for light industrial to take place in residential neighborhoods so that you're not kind of, you have to make sure that you allow this stuff to happen in your city. And the new manufacturing, you know, we think about Pittsburgh in the early part of the 20th century as being so thick with smog that you couldn't even see across the river. we were, you know, you still see pictures of, I remember being in Tianjin in China in 2017, and like you couldn't see as you were going across the bridge.
26:30That's not what manufacturing really looks like anymore. So you can kind of do that in cities. So as cities are thinking about what type of manufacturing you might try to attract, I think high value component manufacturer, light touch, but high tech. Again, taking advantage of the resources that we have in American cities and taking advantage of the fact that people now are choosing where they're going to be first and then what they're going to do second. And the cities that have a locational advantage on cost or quality of life can attract those industries if they set themselves up to do it. Say more about the rezoning process, because if there's one thing I remember from playing Sim city for hours, you know, in the 19, late 1990s, it was that if you if you zone industry next to residential, your population is not going to be happy.
27:21So I'm very curious, like how much that has actually changed and what the rezoning process is like now versus, say, 10 years ago. So a lot of cities, because of the housing crisis, are exploring more aggressive zoning policy that allows for denser housing, allows for different types of housing. We just passed in the beginning of 2026 a reform to our zoning code and a reform to our zoning map that is a form-based code. So it's really focused less on what's happening inside the building and more on what the buildings look like. So that's the type of thing that can allow for, you know, in SimCity, when you zoned industrial, you were going to get like the tire manufacturing plant.
28:08Not a great idea for cities to have tire manufacturing plants in their downtowns, but great idea to have like craft brewing or like small garment assembly, something that is kind of like bespoke manufacturing. I think what cities can do as they're investigating the limitations of their zoning code to build toward the cities that they want to be is dig in and understand exactly what you might allow. I I mean, in zoning, you have to allow for all uses somewhere in the jurisdiction. So if you can allow for certain types of manufacturing uses, you create flexibility that can add some vibrancy to the neighborhood.
28:48I go back to like one of my big points when I was in the Urban Manufacturing Alliance that I don't know what it looks like now. But we talked about the lack of interest in young people working in manufacturing. And that's always been one of the challenges. And one thing that occurred to me is that when Mack Trucks moved to Allentown in 1923, they built a plant right next to – well, they built the plant and then they built the worker housing right next door to the plant. And people would walk to work all day. And what we knew then is that – it sounds amazing. And people would like to do that, whatever they're doing for work.
29:26when young when children saw people walking to work with the lunchbox and knew that that person was going to work on the in the silk plant or in the the truck plant they saw a person working and a person who was like connected to manufacturing when we moved all of the production out to the suburbs and people were getting in a car to drive to work the like rando kid on the street who's just, you know, hula hooping or whatever, doesn't get a chance to see workers and doesn't get a chance to see the dignity of work in manufacturing and loses interest in it. And so we're so far removed now. And we've tried to like do things, whether it was through 3D printing or like kind of get kids excited about manufacturing.
30:10But fundamentally, it's still the work is removed from everyday life. And so if you can get back to that point where you can add manufacturing back to everyday life, I think there's an opportunity to rekindle the interest in the careers.
30:25Tracy Alloway:We need to do an episode, How Sim City Destroyed, right? Like people internalizing all these lessons from a video game. And then, oh, then suddenly all of the manufacturing goes out into the exurbs and then no one sees the workers. And then suddenly - How Sim City Ruined America. How Sim City Ruined America. I would love to see that. Honestly, I think any mayor who has played SimCity, the minute you sit down at the desk, you're like, oh, my God, this is total BS. That's amazing. Now I really actually want to do this episode. Post-COVID, you get this re-enthusiasm for manufacturing, just supply chain reasons, also national security reasons.
31:07Tracy Alloway:We get the CHIPS Act. We get the Inflation Reduction Act. What did that look like from the perspective of these big programs, these sort of the Biden era programs? What did that look like from your perspective? So for us, one thing was it was like a return to an industrial policy, right? Like previously, the United States was like the industrial policy didn't make a lot of sense for an economic development professional. Now we saw like the federal government was pushing in a particular direction, right? And it was like, well, let's start making stuff again. And when I became mayor in 2022, when you are sworn in as mayor, you come in with a bunch of campaign promises.
31:45You sit in a seat and you realize like all of a sudden there's a completely new like set of challenges that you have to unlock. Right. So all this stuff you wanted to do in the campaign, it's nice, but there's more pressing needs. Among the things that I could see in the city was that we were well, we didn't know what we didn't know. So we had a lot to learn. We had to dig in and understand the city a little better and understand what was going on. We also didn't like we had to let some relationships fail. And so we needed to get back and make sure that our partners were on the same page as us.
32:20And we kind of lost the capacity to like innovate, to get creative and do new things. So I was grateful that I entered into the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative at just the right moment when I was feeling desperate. And they kind of invested in that capacity. Through doing that, I was able to attack one of the things that was clearly an issue, which was road safety. There was a federal grant, the Safe Streets for All program that was helping cities plan for safer streets. I'm going to get to the point, I promise. So we, I was, I'm a bicycling and running guy. So I wanted to like, and I felt like we could do better for our city if we had safer streets.
33:05Bloomberg stood up with some partners, the local infrastructure hub. It helped me teach my team how to use data to apply for federal funds. It helped us think about how we could work with partners to accomplish good outcomes for residents and try some new things. We were lucky. I also got right in Secretary Buttigieg's face and said, I need help. And we're lucky to get a planning grant through that program. That experience helped us understand how to, as a city, return to federal grants. At the same about right after we were awarded that Safe Streets grant, the Economic Development Administration announced its recompete pilot project.
33:48And it was focused on areas that were, I think this is June, June of 2023 is focused on areas that had a high prime age employment gap. And so prime age employment gap is people between the ages of 25 to 54 prime age employment gap is people who are either unemployed at higher than average rates or out of the labor force. We looked and saw that Allentown, in fact, had a high prime age employment gap. Ours was like at 6%. We dialed into a particular neighborhood and saw that in that area is about 12%. The region of about, or a neighborhood of about 23 ,000 people that were just disproportionately out of the labor force or unemployed.
34:29and we started to dig in on that group of people and how could we at the same time prepare as we're thinking about like the these changes and the changes to the demands of the workforce how can we make sure that our people could work right and that was where these two things came together is we knew that through working with our partners at the lehigh valley economic development corporation there's still a high demand for manufacturing labor as well as health care we knew that the barriers to getting people to good jobs sometimes were a lack of available resources, things like flexible and affordable childcare.
35:05We knew that people were sometimes challenged by transportation, that if those jobs are out in the suburbs and they didn't have a car, it was hard to get to them. And we also knew that if we wanted to make sure that people without cars could get to work, we wanted to build industrial sites in the city. So we put together an application and submitted it to EDA. And again, because of the work that we had done in the past, we're successful. And we're able to, so we landed a strategic development grant in December of 23, and then we got a$20 million investment for implementation. So our team right now is working to make sure that as we work to bring these manufacturing jobs to not just the city, but to the entire region, that Alantonians are well positioned to get to those jobs.
35:52And that is a big piece where cities have to be able to play a role is making sure that people have the tools they need to access the good things that are happening in their economy. Have you got all the grant money, the Biden era grant money? We did. All of it. So, okay, so there's nothing. We made sure as soon as the November 5th, 2024, for like we went into overdrive to just make sure that we weren't at risk of of losing anything yeah and that came through the chips and science act and it was a relatively small program so and and you know practically speaking our region is intensely political um so it would not make sense to roll back some of that i had to fight for some other stuff to make sure that we got it including us i wrote a letter to secretary rollins and the usda about how important trees were to cities across America.
36:49We've worked to make sure that we didn't lose the street funding. But, you know, for some of the funding for things that you do in cities, it's like very practical. It's good for residents. It should be nonpartisan as long as you are not exclusively focused on the various different things the administration is focused on.
37:41We'll see you next time.
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39:07Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage, proud partner of iHeart Podcast Network. So speaking of practicality, I sometimes get the sense that there's like a bit of a disconnect between how people in D.C. are thinking about industrial policy, whether it's Trump or the Biden administration versus like mayors such as yourself who actually have to implement the stuff and figure out exactly how to spend the money. Like what's the biggest area of, I guess, like tension that you see or what could DC actually do to make using those federal funds easier for you? Oh, wow. So there is tension for sure. Right. And I think that the recognition, like the biggest thing that DC could do is make sure that people are not worried about their health care or not worried about putting food on the table or not worried about a thousand other things and can worry about just like being part of this American dream and like and building towards something and that they could be part of the dignity of work.
40:10And so there's some things that they could just focus less on or like trying to cut less of. I think that cities probably don't think as much about immigration from that perspective as an economic driver, but I think that we have to continue to bring new people in, bring new ideas in, make American cities places that can receive investment. and knowing that somewhat that investment is like it's intellectual capital, right? So we want people to come in and feel comfortable making stuff and making new technology in our cities. I want to say I think it's not uncommon for mayors to be pretty bipartisan in Allentown where one of my senators is Senator Dave McCormick, who is on the he's the he's a Republican.
40:56I'm a Democrat, but I appreciate Senator McCormick's interest in competitiveness and trying to attract industry and particular manufacturing to Pennsylvania. And I think my conversations with Senator McCormick, he is somewhat agnostic about where that happens. I think he'd be happy if the manufacturing investments happen in the suburbs or in the cities. It doesn't matter to him as much as Pennsylvania remaining competitive. I know he was involved with one of the big kind of future thinking or future looking manufacturing investments that occurred in our area is Eli Lilly announced a three and a half billion dollar investment that is just outside of the city limits.
41:42But their three and a half billion dollar investment will create like 850 jobs. I want to make sure that all of the residents of the city of Allentown are capable of accessing those jobs. I also want to make sure that any of the supply chain that goes into that Lilly GLP-1 manufacturing can be produced in the city if it can be. We want to make sure that we're capable of connecting to that. So that's one thing. I think continuing to make sure that the country is competitive. The other thing is, and this is one that we're kind of going back and forth with. Like, we, you know, Governor Shapiro has launched a very aggressive economic development strategy that wants to attract more investment and lots of different types of investment.
42:30I think there's, and I've spoken with Bruce Katz, formerly at Brookings, about this, is that Pennsylvania seems like it's well situated to be a center of defense manufacturing in this new world. clearly like there's based on what's happening in iran there is a like there's still need for munitions right and how we can play a role in that is i think part of our future that was what we proudly tell the story of how bethlem steel helped win the war in world war ii by building the the the ships that that helped us win the war i talked about volti bomber is helping us win the war. I think that there is, we have, we're home to Mac defense in Allentown.
43:16Mac defense makes giant, like heavy duty trucks for the U S military. We can compete in that area as well. And that is manufacturing. So I think there's the, as if the federal government focuses on creating opportunities in cities and in States to host manufacturing and makes it easy for that to happen and makes it easy to hire people and train people to be ready for that work. I think that's where we need them to play.
43:44Tracy Alloway:You already sort of alluded to this, but does it feel good to be in a state where it's like every national election is just geared towards making the citizens of Pennsylvania happy? Like that is, you're talking to some mayor from another, you know, from Florida. It's like, try being a swing state. Try being the most important state for the electoral college. That must be nice. It can be. It also turns you into like, like I have given tours of my city to foreign press. Every country in the world. All the reporters that they go to the diner in Pennsylvania, right? That's the classic trope. Exactly.
44:22Tracy Alloway:Yeah. Then, so, I mean, it's, it's nice to be the center of attention that way, but in the, the like, in the politicians kind of want to make you happy. But practically speaking, you know, there's like, as a mayor, your job is to just meet the needs of your residents, right? Like that's what you dial in on. And so whatever they're doing nationally, like you're just worried about residents. One reason that people are very excited or that people have an affinity towards manufacturing is the jobs, right? And you mentioned the jobs and people seeing people go to work. Another reason, particularly over the last several years or the last post-COVID, is for national security reasons, not wanting to rely on China or other countries for really critical things.
45:06Tracy Alloway:However, some of these most advanced industries, they're not particularly going to be job heavy, right? There's a lot of robotics and increasing automation. Is there a disconnect between the sort of, again, maybe emotional, maybe like the sort of romantic notions that people have about manufacturing versus the reality of the actual labor intensivity of some of these industries? I think that from the mayor's perspective, i probably am more in that kind of romantic world right like where we're just kind of like yeah you know people we envision a world in which people will always be putting their hands on stuff right one way or another and when you get into a higher technology where like we already have robots doing like precision surgery presumably some of the precision manufacturing is going to be better done with a robotic hand than the steady hand or strong back of of uh somebody on the line i do think that as you like the there's still and this is a vibe that i'm starting to get mayors tend to pick up like because we're on the ground yeah we start to hear the vibes before they become national vibes but i think that there's there's a very strong at least in in my city and some other cities that have visited there's like a strong like handmade or like a rejection of the robots and AI, whether it's art or the produced goods.
46:29I don't know if anybody, I don't know what the logical end to that is, but I think there's on the consumer side, there's still a desire. I think people romanticize some of the product, right? And they'd rather have something that people have made on the jobs side of it. I think that there's still this belief that we need to preserve the dignity of work, that there's always going to be, that we're going to have to find some way to allow people to continue to work, that maybe you don't need the robots running the whole warehouse, right? That maybe you need, you know, somebody to be involved. And we've seen that, like this is, my first job at a grad school was working in the billboard industry in Panama.
47:13and I remember vividly talking to somebody who has, you know, I introduced myself. This is in my economic development days. And I was like, oh, you know, I first, I started in billboards and the guy was in private equity and he was like, that's great, man. Billboards are awesome. The only thing better than billboards is coin-op laundromats. And I was like, dude, you're in the wrong business now. Because like maybe in private equity, like that was a great idea. Like the fewer, fewer jobs, like down to self-storage, which I think is the worst thing in the city. But we're job creators. We have to find ways to create jobs, to create opportunities for people to be dignified by their work.
47:52So while there may be some value to squeezing out every single nickel of cost from some operation, there's a lot to benefit cities and to benefit society of having people actually putting their hands on things. Can you talk specifically about how you're thinking about data centers? Because this is like the example of what we're getting at. And in theory, you know, Allentown, you got a bunch of big warehouses and things like that.
48:19Tracy Alloway:Presumably access to that needed energy at one point. Yeah, I have lots of sophisticated and unsophisticated thoughts about data centers. We as a city and as a mayor, I'm thinking about them in a couple of ways. One, they're very clearly a political issue now. And they're a political issue for, I hate saying both sides, but for both sides, right? They really are. Yeah. It's kind of crazy. There's legislation. So I think that, so we amended our zoning, like right after we amended our zoning ordinance, We then we made an amendment to the ordinance with reference to data centers. The reality for a city like Allentown in most cities in the country is that we don't really have any space for data centers.
49:01It's unlikely that a hyperscaler, well, it's not just unlikely. A hyperscaler cannot locate in the city of Allentown unless they acquire a bunch of homes and demolish them. There's just no space for something like that. But it is reality in places like Phoenix, right? So we amended our zoning code to just set up certain requirements around the establishment of a data center just to make sure that our backs are covered. The worst thing that happens in any municipality is like something shows up that people don't want and your hands are tied because your zoning allows for it. So we made sure that we are covered in that respect.
49:40Tracy Alloway:Sorry, just to be clear, covered. Like you've data center proofed your zoning? Is that what that means? We're in the process of review right now to make sure that any proposed data center has to demonstrate not just the highway use or the water use, but also like energy sources. So we're making sure that data centers that are proposed for the city can demonstrate their compliance, basically. So it's political. As I understand the technology, and this is probably the less sophisticated side of the thought, it's getting smaller and smaller. right? The data centers do not have to exist at this incredible, you know, to take up lots and lots of land.
50:20They can exist perhaps in downtowns. I don't know what their energy needs are going to be. I know that most mayors are concerned about data centers, not because they're worried about land use or a lack of jobs, but because utility bills are significantly rising at the same time that food bills are rising, gas bills are rising, housing is getting more expensive. Now people are also seeing their utility bills rise. So that's what's driving a lot of the concern for mayors, I think.
50:48Tracy Alloway:You know, I know someone, I heard about it. There's a startup in New York City that is doing something with like, I don't know exactly what it is. I was hearing about it from a friend, but they're like training some NVIDIA chips or doing something. And it's just with like a normal, like sort of like residential connection to the electricity. It's fairly small scale. Yeah. It's not mega. But like, yeah, to your point, like it does feel like the footprint there, at least in some potentially niche applications, the footprints you hear about the giant things, but the footprints are also potentially coming down.
51:20that was what was what i was hearing you know i i'm an ai skeptic as a mayor um i've been talked back i keep like you know going back yeah we all do yeah yeah um but i was talking to somebody at hopkins at johns hopkins who was like hey you shouldn't be so skeptical because it's going to open it might result in some in somewhat fewer human human react interactions but it's going to open the door for humans and city government specifically to participate more and more in helping people out and she was the one who mentioned like and it's also like all of the like the furor about data center might be misplaced like there is we are i'm not necessarily a great believer in technology figuring out a way to get us to like save our bacon for forever but it does seem like this is one that there's short term concern about.
52:14And I don't know what it really stems from. But whenever politicians are involved, you have to raise an eyebrow. I have one more question. And it's a very important one. What's the deal with Yakos? If I Google Allentown controversy, Yakos comes up. Yeah, I think there's probably a couple of Yakos controversies. The very local one is like, you got to pick a choice you got to choose between yakko's or pots apparently they eat pots hot dogs in bethlehem i guess we should say yakko's is a hot dog it's a hot dog okay the folks in bethlehem like i love my neighbor but i would never eat a pot's dog um yakko is there's the one of the deals is like you have to know how to order it right so the order is like you just get two dogs i order two dogs with everything in a chocolate milk um some people get pierogies with it too So the one of the there was a few years ago, like a guy named Gary Iacocca, whose family owned Yaco's, talked about how his Yaco is on 7th Street, which is in Center City Allentown, couldn't exist anymore because of the demographic changes that we've seen in Allentown.
53:26So Yaco's, I think, is he and I went back and forth a little bit. We're very good friends now, but we were we struggled a little bit because I'm I'm the first Latino mayor of Allentown. So the other thing that makes the Billy Joel song so wrong in 2026 is that in 1982, it was like it was a very homogenous. Basically, everybody in Allentown was white, European. Today, we're 55 percent Latino. Like we are a very different city. And his his case was like, well, you know, it isn't it ain't like it was. And, you know, it was kind of it felt to me like kind of a rejection of our new city. that I just love.
54:09So we went back and forth a little bit on that. There's probably other Yakko's controversies out there. He has a big hot dog statue that's moved around a little bit. But it's a good hot dog. If you come to Allentown, I will treat you to a Yakko's hot dog. You'll teach us how to order it. I will teach you how to order it.
54:29Tracy Alloway:This is like one of those things like the politicians get a huge scandal. They order it the wrong way. You know, it's like John Kerry, like order it when you get like swiss cheese instead of something else yeah it's the it's our version i guess of the cheesesteak yeah and there's a special like lehigh valley version of the cheesesteak as well that um that philadelphians would want nothing to do with oh this is what makes america great he's like these niche these niche loyalties towards certain orders and certain hot dogs yeah all right uh mayor turk thank you so much for coming on all thoughts that was great Thank you.
55:00I really had a good time.
55:13So that was super interesting. There are a lot of things to pick out from there. But one thing that stood out was that sort of 2010s era of like made in America craft manufacturing. I remember that really well.
55:26Tracy Alloway:Yeah, no, totally. It's actually apparently kind of depressing because those MakerBot festivals, or the MakerBot, I think, is different than the Maker festivals. But there was that culture of people doing tinkering and 3D printing. Also the boom in 3D printing stocks. Remember that? Yeah, yeah. There was like a thing and it's like all sort of fizzled out. But there was, yeah, there's like a forgotten part of like post-GFC. Artisanal manufacturing, I guess. Artisanal manufacturing and people just building weird stuff. Things aren't weird enough anymore. But yeah. Well, they might get weird with AI.
55:57Tracy Alloway:No, they're going to get weird. But I'm glad he brought that up because it doesn't get discussed enough. Yeah. Just generally, though, like I thought that was great. And like, first of all, just learning a bunch of new things. You know, I hadn't heard of weight gaining manufacturing, but that makes a lot of sense, right? Like if there is some process that adds a lot of weight, such as water to a product, you want that to be at the last mile of the supply chain rather than early on. Also fascinating to think about like, okay, what a strategic advantage it is to be within a day's drive of 100 million people.
56:30Tracy Alloway:And so therefore it makes a lot of sense to put various e-commerce warehouses in. So much interesting stuff there. Also the mixed zoning I found really interesting. Because it is true, if you think about industry, even 10 or 20 years ago, it was much more polluting and noisy and disturbing than it is now. And so you can have, in an era of high-tech manufacturing, you absolutely could have mixed-use neighborhoods and buildings, like why not? Right. So you just have to update the zoning to reflect the reality that it's not going to be automatically repellent to the neighbors. And then everyone can walk to work with their lunchboxes.
57:06Tracy Alloway:Yeah. All right. Shall we leave it there? Or the bike to work. Or bike to work. Yeah. Okay. This has been another episode of the All Thoughts Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway. And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at The Stalwart. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Armand, Dashiell Bennett at Dashpot, Kale Brooks at Kale Brooks, and Kevin Lozano at Kevin Lloyd Lozano. And for more OddLots content, go to Bloomberg.com slash OddLots where the daily news learned all of our episodes. And you can chat about all these topics 24 seven in our discord, discord.gg slash OddLots.
57:39And if you enjoy OddLots, if you like it when we talk about weight gaining industry, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad-free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.
58:32We'll see you next time.
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59:13Tracy Alloway:That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity, which is way more than anyone can do on their own. If we find anything suspicious, like new loans or changes to your financial accounts, we alert you right away. All through text, phone, email, or the LifeLock app. Save up to 40 % your first year. Visit LifeLock.com slash iHeart. Terms apply. Garnier is proudly partnering with the National Park Foundation, the official nonprofit partner of the National Park Service. Garnier's support of the National Park Foundation's Service Corps program is enabling young adults and veterans to help care for and enhance the national parks that we all love.
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From the publisher
The residents of Allentown are still sore about that Billy Joel song. While it's true the Pennsylvania city became synonymous with deindustrialization after the US steel industry began its decline in the 1970s, Allentown should be known for more: In the 1950s, for instance, some of the first mass-produced transistors were made in the city, which were the precursor of today's semiconductors. The city is also a unique logistics and e-commerce hub — it's a day's drive from nearly 40 percent of the US population. Mayor Matthew Tuerk, who has held office since 2022, has made reindustrialization a focus of his mayorship. In today's episode, recorded in Madrid at the Bloomberg CityLab conference, we speak to Mayor Tuerk about the city's grand strategy for building back and sustaining its manufacturing base, implementing industrial policy on a local level, how rezoning has changed in the last decade, the political puzzle of data centers, recruiting companies to come to Allentown, de-risking the American supply chain, and our favorite new category of industry — weight-gaining industries — which Allentown specializes in.
Read more:
New Brookfield Venture May Restart Abandoned US Nuclear Project
Texas Ranch Lures Futuristic Startups to Revive US Manufacturing
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