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While the trend over the past few decades ha been
for industry to move out of Hamburg, a few companies in recent years
have moved into the borough.
Companies like Quaker Maid Cabinetry and Wissahickon Spring Water
are the latest additions to the Hamburg industrial scene. Attracted
to the area's affordable property values, location, and pool of
viable workers, the two companies chose to make Hamburg home. Jay
Land, president of Wissahickon, said he moved his production facility
out of Kutztown and into the former Coca-Cola bottling plant to
accommodate the growing operation.
"Kutztown and Hamburg are similar in a lot of ways," Land
said. "They're both great communities."
Wissahickon's move started in April and by the end of their move,
a majority of the corporate office will also move to Hamburg from
their former headquarters in Philadelphia.
Because supermarkets like Wal-Mart are the company's
major customer, Land said Hamburg's location is within reasonable
shipping distance of the major population centers on the east coast.
Quaker Maid Cabinetry moved into its 87,000 square-foot facility
on South Third Street in 2003 from its previous location in Bernville.
"The building was priced right and it was the size we were
looking for," Timothy Muller, an engineer and designer with
the company, said. Muller also said Hamburg's location in close
proximity to Route 61 and Interstate 78 made it appealing and they
have had no trouble finding qualified employees from the local area.
Unlike downtown retailers, attracting new industry to the borough
has not been a priority for public officials.
Seeing the writing on the wall, borough officials have sought alternative
avenues of economic recovery.
"It's not that we're not looking to attract new industry to
the borough," Lynda Albright, borough manager, said, "but
the fact that so many have moved overseas, organizations like Our
Town Foundation are looking for new ways to develop the borough
economically."
In Hamburg, the Our Town Foundation, an organization
armed with millions of dollars in state grant money, has been organizing
the downtown revitalization strategy mapped out by places like Jim
Thorpe, which has provided the model to which many small, former
industrial towns aspire. In fact, the Carbon County borough has
provided a virtual blueprint for small towns in their quest for
post-industrial recovery.
As program manager of Hamburg's Main Street agency,
Deena Kershner and OTF's board of directors believe the future of
the borough's economic life lies in marketing its past. "Hamburg
is no different than anywhere else in the United States," Kershner
said of the demise of Hamburg's industrial base. "There isn't
any industry left in the U.S., it all went to China." OTF's
strategy, based on the state's Main Street Program, focuses on attracting
new retail and restaurant owners who hope to cash in on the influx
of visitors seeking a slice of old-town life.
To accomplish such a transformation, the state provides money for
streetscape schemes and other façade improvements to lay
the foundation to market a town's historical charm. Such a charm
offensive, in turn, depends on a marketing strategy focused on selling
the town's promise of quaint shops, passenger rail rides, hometown
festivals and a congenial atmosphere for antique hunters. To seal
the fate of the industrial sector of the borough where knitting
mills and factories once dominated, borough officials have sought
and received a designation of blight. The designation is the first
step in the Second Street Revitalization Plan that hopes to one
day transform that section of town into an entertainment and shopping
district alongside any remaining industrial operations.
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