The Express-Times reports that Five Guys Burgers and Fries will open in Lower Nazareth in the Target/Sports Authority shopping center (read the article here).
The store is scheduled to open in December. The chain opened its first store locally in Hanover Township earlier this year.
9 comments:
AWESOME - have you been to Five Guys yet? Best burgers around.
Ahh, another chain fast food joint, just what we need.
If I were a cardiologist, I would be looking at this area as a great place with lots of soon to be customers.
Downtown Bethlehem is exploding with great unique places to eat, and they always seem to be packed, even on week nights. I would love to see some of that happen in our little ville. Rio is a great example, and unfortunately, our only one.
Actually, there's a Five Guys on Tilghman St. in Allentown across the street from Wegman's. That's been there for a couple of years now. This will be the third one in the valley.
And the economic development juggernaut rocks on.
Is there the slightest chance that any of the rapidly disappearing open space might yield anything other than low wage retail/burger flipper/warehousemen jobs?
Just askin...
Fourth,
Great question, and agree. The LN supervisors seem content to keep filling up land these days with either fast food joints and mega truck warehouses, neither of which are brining high wage jobs or drawing business from outside the area.
As I said in my first post, Bethlehem has drawn in some very unique, and quite good, businesses and restaurants. It is a draw to go downtown and have a nice dinner then be able to walk the streets and stop into various stores and art galleries.
We have none of that.
The Main Street area in the borough has the potential, but for some reason is the kiss of death for new establishments (with the exception of Rio).
Instead of turning our area into a great place to live and play, they are turning it into just another services exit off the highway.
The problem with Main Street is parking.
I've never had a problem finding parking on main street.
We actually have plenty of parking, we simply need to use it more efficiently.
There are lots at the banks, why not allow non-business parking from 6:00 p.m. until 1:00 a.m.? In this way residents can't park their all night, but someone going to Insomniak or getting something to eat can.
I have never had a problem with parking either, even if it meant I had to walk a couple blocks, which is actually enjoyable.
I don't think we need more parking, and yes, NOC is right we should use what we have smarter.
However, something needs to be done to first attract new and innovative businesses to the area, and then we have to support them to keep them here and increase them.
We have had one restaurant (Rios) open in the borough in recent months, but have seen a lot of businesses close their doors. Yes, businesses do fail, but they seem to do so at a much higher rate in Nazareth.
Not sure what the solution is, but adding yet another low wage chain fast food place is not the way.
Maybe the leaders of the local municipalities should actually go to some of these areas that are booming and talk to those leaders to find out what they did to make it happen.
But that will never happen as our local leaders a just so much smarter than anyone else.
Preface by saying revitalization is difficult for a variety of reasons.
Insomniak and the Center for the Arts are a good first step. So too are the many festivals and block parties.
Now we need to get enough restaurants and delis (a restaurant row type setup) that people will stop in and browse to determine where to go before or after the show or performance.
Our biggest problem is we don't have enough big employers in downtown to support breakfast and lunch.
We have some banks and services, but a building with 100+ employees doesn't exist - like a county court house or corporate offices.
These have moved to the LVIP parks and similar suburban office buildings, as they have so too have the retail and fast food, etc.
When office businesses move back to downtown, then restaurants will have daytime clients, and the nighttime will take care of itself.
Having office based businesses in downtown will create a parking problem - but that would be a good problem to have!
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