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While Edwardsville is by no means a paradise, I think that people here are overstating its level of "danger". I've walked up and down Main Street Edwardsville many times. There are a lot of dumps, but I've never felt unsafe. Konefals and Vic Mars are good restaurants on Main Street. Some of the bars have some real scum in them, yet some others are OK. Some of the places off Main Street I really like (Flaherty's is a good place to throw a few back). And I definitely have never felt like I was in any sort of danger.
While Edwardsville is by no means a paradise, I think that people here are overstating its level of "danger". I've walked up and down Main Street Edwardsville many times. There are a lot of dumps, but I've never felt unsafe. Konefals and Vic Mars are good restaurants on Main Street. Some of the bars have some real scum in them, yet some others are OK. Some of the places off Main Street I really like (Flaherty's is a good place to throw a few back). And I definitely have never felt like I was in any sort of danger.
To be fair the crimes in Edwardsville usually only occur at night (although the assaults on the King's student and Wilkes coach both happened in broad daylight). I think one thing that Edwardsville should consider would be to apply for a state grant for a new StreetScape along Main Street. I'd love to see those utility wires moved underground, shade trees planted, Victorian-era street lights installed with "Welcome to Edwardsville" banners perched on them, benches, rubbish bins, recycling bins, etc., along with freshly-poured sidewalks. In order to revitalize Downtown Edwardsville, you must give people an attractive and aesthetically-appealing environment for them to window-shop in. I'll agree that Konefal's and Vic-Mar's are nice places to catch a bit to eat, but Edwardsville Borough Council truly needs to get its priorities straightened out. It's apparent that they thought Lowe's Home Improvement was going to be the lone savior to bring the entire borough up from despair, but as the first anniversary of the store's opening draws nearer and the town still looks like a dump, it has become apparent that they erred greatly in putting all of their eggs in one basket. People from Edwardsville and Kingston don't even shop at that Lowe's. Until a few weeks ago I was employed at the Lowe's in Wilkes-Barre Township, and the amount of people who shopped at our store who hailed from the Valley West area dumbfounded me. I kept on thinking to myself "Why don't you people shop at your own store to make our store less busy?" Lowe's didn't swoon in to "save" Edwardsville, so now it's time for borough officials to go back to the drawing board.
ScrantonWB, you are all over this board and I appreciate all your posts and your dedication but I also am starting to think that the detail you provide and your high level of enthusiasm are giving a false sense of validity to everything you say. I say this because I AM an expert on Edwardsville. I grew up there and I stay in the same house whenever I visit PA. I was one of the kids hanging out smoking on Main St and I even knew and still know some of the riff raff that adorns its bars.
Edwardsville definitely has more than its share of crime and drugs. Honestly, the drug scene in the 80s and how it impacted those around me is what drove me out of town. However, all this is limited to Main St and the bars in on it. If the Main St bars (including a gay bar by the way) were closed the crime and drugs would be gone. This I know as fact. The Glass Bar which is the worst of the bunch and the only one that has anything close to stabbings etc is actually full of people who DONT live in Edwardsville. It is notorious for drugs and African American patrons who hale from WB. THIS IS EDWARDSVILLE’S REAL PROBLEM. Just as everyone on this board says NY & NJ ship theirs to NEPA, all of NEPA shoves them in the Edwardsville and WB corner of the room. The undesirables flock to it, they don’t live there. Don't stereotype. There are 4000 respectable people and families that call Edwardsville home who work hard, go to church, don’t do drugs and don't rape women.
That being said, there certainly are undesirables living in Edwardsville. Unfortunately, our parents and grandparents screwed up and let two low income housing projects and a half way house be developed that draw them there. I guess if they wanted to clean this up so you and others wouldn’t look down on it so much they could change their laws and drive out the bar, halfway house and Section 8 housing owners but I am afraid that wouldn’t be legal.
I also have first hand knowledge of the Borough Counsel as my brother is a member and I probably went to school with 2-3 others and I can tell you some of them are not pee brains as you suggest. There is, in fact, an effort to get grant money, there are long range plans for Edwardsville if and when the dam happens and there has been meetings taken with Kanjorski specifically about Edwardsville. The counsel isn't stupid enough to hang hopes on a single chain store but they were smart enough to identify a rare opportunity to redevelop a large parcel at their doorstep that was in disrepair and abandoned. One critique I WOULD offer would be to the County and State and not the borough. VDOT and the County missed the opportunity to require proffers of Lowe's to improve Main St, the Narrows intersection and the intersection leading to Kingston corners. Remember, I work for a development company. I advised my brother of this when it was happening. The state and county government having jurisdiction over right of ways and permitting failed big-time THEY are the pee brains.
I am not angry with you just a little let down now that I know some of your posts are merely speculation and opinion rather than fact. Please don’t take this personally. Everyone loves a good debate. You just hit a personal nerve. Rest assured, I will be relocating in 3-8 years back to NEPA and hope to play a role it matters such as this both on a personal level and as part of my continued career. Its people like you and I that may actually be able to overcome the real pee brained decision makers and crooked politicians.
..........and when you do your photo tour, dont leave out the half dozen empty lots up and down the side streets. Lots that once had abandoned, condemned homes on them. It was the counsel who recognized the need to spend a few $s to tear them down rather than leave them up to draw more biased generalizations and opinions. I would suggest you also don't shoot the worst of the sunken and leaning homes. Once again, state and county government dropped the ball decades ago when they let the miining companies run away after having caved in literally every house on the street(s) most of which could not be leveled ever again. Now thats a sad story.
Don't leave out the well maintained roads either. Compare Main St, Hillside Ave, and Zerby Ave which are the main arteries to the Plymouths, COurtdales, Larksville, and Nanticokes of the valley.
Main St doesn't define Edwardsville, the people who live there do and the majority of them aren't the ones partonizing its bars OR commiting crimes.
I'd like to see someone snag the old Myer Saba junk yard at the top of Hillside facing the valley as well as the private road that serves it off of Route 11 and develop it. Its currently on the market and owned by DeNaple. The result would be some awesome views of the valley i enjoyed all my life. With the private road off Route 11 those who lived there could avoid Main St and some pretty expensive homes could be sold which would help the tax base.
Oh, one more thing. The North side of Main St starting at Center St (Turkey Hill) across from the borough building and clear to the shopping center is actually KINGSTON. The large parcel that used to be the Roundhouse is atually owned by Wyoming Seminary. When do you think the beloved Kingston will condemn the homes adorning Main St directly across from the new Lowe's? I was in those homes in the 70s and they should have been condemned then. What an eyesore and right at the door to Edwardsville. I guarantee a building inspector would be forced to have them vacated if he were to enter them.
I obviously did apparently touch a nerve with you. All in all though the fact that you still hold Edwardsville so near and dear to your heart for all of the fond, sentimental memories you had there in the past is irrelevant to my position on the problems plaguing the borough in 2007. A major drug bust several months ago lead to the arrest of around two dozen local residents, a significant number of whom resided in Edwardsville. There was just another major drug bust today in the Wyoming Valley, and once again several of these people hailed from Edwardsville (and Greater Pittston had a large concentration of them as well to be fair, but I'm already aware of this community's major drug problem as I am a resident here). It would be nice if there was just a finite number of drug addicts and Section 8 lowlives in Edwardsville to be "weeded out," but unfortunately it seems as if when five of them are arrested, five more just move in to take their place.
I can tell you did take a great deal of offense to my opinions on Edwardsville, as you even made it a point to clarify that there are good, decent, hard-working people in Edwardsville (I never said there weren't). A former high school teacher of mine and his wife reside in Edwardsville, as does a guy from Church Street I used to date (sadly he was into drugs also, as were his rowdy housemates, which is why I haven't been in contact with him since I discovered this). I've just had a number of bad experiences in this town that have turned my stomach sour, as have others I have spoken with. Edwardsville's largest obstacle to overcome in its path to recovery will be to somehow put a large dent into the nefarious image it currently has to not only myself but also to many others as well. When I think of Edwardsville, the words "Section 8" and "Dive Bar" immediately come to mind, which is sad considering when I think of Kingston, the first thing that pops into my head are "tree-lined streets." When I think of Dallas, the first thing that pops into my mind is "wealth." When I think of Wilkes-Barre, the first thing that pops into my mind is "rebirth." I have developed positive connotations for many towns in our region (Hell, I even see hope for Nanticoke now that LCCC is expanding into its downtown business district), but Edwardsville is just one of those towns that I've had a hard time putting on the rose-colored glasses for (along with Pittston and Plymouth).
Perhaps you're more of an optimist than I am, but when I travel to Edwardsville, Plymouth, or Pittston and just see block after block of run-down homes, vacant storefronts, and shady-looking characters wandering the streets I just feel depressed. I think about how beautiful all three towns might have been back in their heydays and how far removed they are from their former grandeur. I truly can see Scranton and Wilkes-Barre making strong comebacks, but I just don't see anyone stepping forward to invest in any of these three cities. Siniawa Associates announced plans years ago to transform Pittston's waterfront into an upscale residential area with two high-end condo towers that would have provided much-needed foot traffic to Main Street, but this project has since fallen through, and an inquiry I sent to the company about the project months ago was fobbed off. The much-anticipated Riverfront Park in Pittston was never completed, and it is now home to vandalism, weeds, and foul-mouthed punk pre-teens on skateboards. Plymouth and Edwardsville are in the same boat---I just haven't heard anything promising about either community. The last I heard, Plymouth was chomping at the bit to tear down a few older buildings along Main Street to make way for a new free-standing chain pharmacy, which, in my eyes, is an abomination when Rite-Aids and CVS Pharmacies have managed to assimilate tastefully in many other communities' Main Streets by restoring older buildings. The fact that Jackson Hill Estates has only sold roughly half of its building lots in the years it has been on the market also makes me leery of Edwardsville's future.
I didn't mean to demean or belittle your brother, and I apologize for coming off that way. I just fail to see a connection between how revitalizing the West Side Mall is supposed to spread to likewise improve the established parts of the borough. If borough officials were hoping that the increase in tax revenues the would arise from the new businesses in the West Side Mall would permit them to make much-needed improvements in other parts of the borough (which I believe is the case), then I'm concerned that they don't realize that these new businesses in the West Side Mall will likely require an increase in services that will nearly wipe out the increased tax revenues (an additional police officer and firefighter should each be hired, for example, along with other necessary expenditures). From my experience working at the Arena Hub Plaza, I could tell that Wilkes-Barre Township's police force was often strained due to the high volume of calls for shoplifters, car accidents, attempted break-ins, etc., and if Edwardsville plans to use the new tax revenues to revitalize other parts of the town instead of increasing its municipal services to correspond to the retail growth in the borough, then that's very irresponsible on their behalves. If they hope that a state grant will miraculously come through to help them to revitalize the town, then they better start to pray; Pittston StreetScape program was never finished because it ran out of grant funding. Now our downtown looks awful because Kennedy Boulevard has Victorian-era streetlights while Main Street has old, outdated lights. With how strapped for cash PA currently is, I wouldn't get my hopes up about the state coming to Edwardsville's rescue, much like it never helped Pittston.
I'm trying to be a realist here. There are some on this forum like WeLuvPA who will take anything nice I say about Scranton and flush it down the toilet because he thinks his city's average property taxes are oppressive for the working-class (which they are not). Then there are people like me who like to look on the bright side of things, but even trying to envision a grandiose, quaint, friendly Edwardsville is something that I find to be impossible. I suppose you can fault me for just not having the same sort of ultra-idealism that you apparently possess. If you plan to move back to Edwardsville and further it along on its efforts in recovery, then I wholeheartedly respect and support you. As for me, even I can't find a pair of rose-colored glasses thick enough to overlook the problems the borough has today in order to see the borough of 2030.
"There are some on this forum like WeLuvPA who will take anything nice I say about Scranton and flush it down the toilet because he thinks his city's average property taxes are oppressive for the working-class (which they are not). "
Paul how would you know what is oppressive or not to a family? What do you know what its like to be working class? You live at home and as far as I know you do not have a job anymore, so tell me what you think gives you the knowledge or understanding at 20 to determine what is a hardship on a family and what is not? Remember we are going to get hit with two more 25% increases that total up to a 93.4% increase in 3 years. Not to mention that we just recieved two 50%+ increases in sewer and water increase as well this year alone. I respect your ideals about the city but when you claim to be a realist, you have no idea what the reality of these tax increases is and it will be along time before you do young man. You should really put more thought into your thoughtless and baseless comments about what you know nothing of.
Re: Edwardsville. For the sake of accuracy, the drug bust of yesterday included 4 Edwardsvillians with the rest hailing from Kingston, Shavertown, Pittston, Dallas, Hazleton, Hanover, Jenkins Township, Wilkes-Barre, Harvey's lake as per this newspaper account....... The Citizens Voice - Kingston cops arrest 18 alleged street-level dealers
It would seem that tsedeski's insider insights into Edwardsville are well rounded, detailed and a matter of setting the record straight/ clarification, not umbrage.......
Last edited by WasPA; 10-12-2007 at 08:22 AM..
Reason: spell/ adjust
Again, the redevelopment of the West Side Mall was a VERY rare opportunity that luckily wasn't passed up. The dilapidated preceding development would have stood for years if not decades before another opportunity arose so I applaud it. That being said, I would have done it somewhat differently. I would have required improvements along the frontage on Main St as well as a visual barrier to somewhat hide the sea of asphalt and concrete. I also would not have relocated the church where they did with nothing but asphalt between it and the road. Instead, I would have demolished the "needing-to-be-condemned" homes across the St on the angled intersection. They could have turned that whole corner into a nice park and church site all the way to the retirement home.
I come from humble background and thankfully do very well today but I would NEVER generalize as you do the people who live in Section 8 housing. Many of them (and perhaps the majority) are abandoned single mom's just trying to get by or older citizens who simply never had the opportunity for a career that afforded them a chance to save for their future. Sure, I am just like the next guy wishing the housing could be somewhere other than near my home but I would never term the occupants as low lives. You have some growing up to do.
Will I move back to Edwardsville? Likely not, unless I can acquire the entire top of Hillside but I believe that was donated by Munson to some sort of halfway house for boys or something. The whole wooded area is actually Larksville by the way.
Thanks for the article link. It’s apparent that the drug problem is rampant throughout the valley by the wide sampling of towns listed. This supports my claim that others from outside Edwardsville tend to flock there worsening the reputation. True, some hale from Edwardsville. They are the 500 I didn’t mention when I more properly described the other 4000 residents. And lets not forget ALL OF THEM were arrested in Kingston not Edwardsville.
keyword is "homeless" not resident of Edwardsville and Munson Field House is barely Edwardsville as many look at the border being Route 11 and everythign East as Kingston.
Also, a timely article supporting my comments from yesterday.
I found it funny that the one druggie chick worked at Kingston's "gentlemen's club". I assume they are referring to the Cabaret, as I don't know of any other such places in Kingston. That place is by far the worst "gentlemen's club" that I've ever been to. I've seen hotter chicks at the nursing home.
And I agree with what was said earlier about that angled intersection near the mall. Those houses probably should go. Eliminate that small section and you eliminate the worst of Edwardsville.
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Lowe's didn't swoon in to "save" Edwardsville, so now it's time for borough officials to go back to the drawing board.
