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 Post subject: Future of "Concrete City" in Jepordy
PostPosted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 9:49 pm 
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Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2005 2:34 pm
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Location: Within 60 Miles of the Northern Anthracite Field
For sale: 40 acres in Nanticoke and Hanover Township containing a 97-year-old historic landmark.

The nonprofit Regional Equipment Center is giving Concrete City, located off Front Street in the Hanover section of Nanticoke, to the Nanticoke General Municipal Authority to sell for economic development. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission designated the experimental former coal-mine housing community a historic site and erected a marker in 1998.

The property consists of seven acres in Nanticoke and 33 acres in Hanover Township.

“You’re going to have property in Hanover Township?” Nanticoke Mayor John Bushko asked the night the authority voted to accept it.

If we can sell it, John, I don’t care if it’s in Russia,” municipal authority chairman Ronald Kamowski said.

The municipal authority is broke, and needs money for maintenance on the mostly-vacant Kanjorski Center on East Main Street — at least until it can be sold to Luzerne County Community College.

The Regional Equipment Center, which was created to allow municipalities to borrow heavy equipment, is closing by the end of the year. Executive Director Joseph Yudichak offered Concrete City for a token payment of $10, Kamowski said.

We were negotiating with the (Nanticoke) historical society at one time, and they wanted to save one building, fence it in,” Yudichak said. “The cost of maintaining one building, and fencing and insurance was just too much for us.”

Municipal authority solicitor Joseph Lach will do a title search on the property. Once the ownership is clarified, authority members hope they can find someone to buy it, Kamowski said. He’s not sure what the authority will do with the concrete structures.

We really have no plans right now,” Kamowski said. “The property became available to us, and we figured it was the last piece of developable land left in the city limits, so we took it.”

Concrete City in wilderness

At the end of a deeply-rutted rocky dirt road loom the shells of what were once considered a unique marvel of company housing for coal miners.

Paintball players, target practicers and partiers have littered the once-immaculate grounds with beer containers, spray paint cans and assorted types of spent ammunition.

Tangles of overgrown foliage give no hint of the lush lawns and gardens residents once cultivated. Graffiti-covered bare concrete is devoid of any trace of the white paint with green trim that once graced the homes.

Concrete City’s 20 two-family residences were built in 1911 by Delaware, Lackawanna and Western railroad’s coal division to house 40 favored employees of Truesdale Colliery. Each house, made entirely of poured concrete, rented for $8 a month — but only to English-speaking, high-level mine employees.

Glen Alden Coal Co. took over Concrete City in 1921. The company didn’t want to put in a required sewer system — each residence had a concrete outhouse — and abandoned the housing complex in 1924.

As legend has it, Glen Alden Coal Co. tried to demolish it, but gave up when they discovered even 100 sticks of dynamite didn’t dent the buildings.

“Well, they could today,” Yudichak said.

The houses are weathered and crumbling, and years of use as a training ground and shooting range by firefighters, police and the military — as well as damage by vandals — have taken their toll.

“The problem with it is, the buildings are a disaster waiting to happen. Someone has to take it over and do something,” Yudichak said. “Someday there will be a major accident there.”

eskrapits@citizensvoice.com, 570-821-2072

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Oct 30, 2007 6:39 pm 
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Joined: Fri Jul 08, 2005 12:41 pm
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Location: Hard coal region, PA
too bad... ;( we have an old video filmed by Glen Alden in the early 1920s at Concrete City. They filmed a miner leaving his house for work in the morning. When the houses were used and cared for it was a nice place! Hard to believe that it was the concrete city we know today...

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Oct 30, 2007 10:24 pm 
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Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2005 2:34 pm
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Location: Within 60 Miles of the Northern Anthracite Field
yea they are destroying, or have destroyed everything else of anthracite heritage up here, why not destroy this too :? (sarcastic)

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Oct 30, 2007 10:57 pm 
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Joined: Tue Dec 05, 2006 1:50 pm
Posts: 34
Location: Lancaster/ Cranford
ooh, I know. Industrial preservation costs a heck of a lot more money than some historic home or farming museum. Someday things might change. In most people's eyes a museum is a historic home or some sort of fine art. Who wants to go to a steel mill, mine or some other dirty place when you can go see those other things? Sure, the biggest hobbies are modeling trains, mines, mills, and the military but those are the most expensive things on a one-to-one scale. A paint job for a locomotive can easily cost over $25,000. I am sure keeping a mine up to safety standards for the touring public isn't cheap either, especially when you factor in insurance. And besides who wants to live next to that kind of "eyesore". The transportation museum site in NJ was scuttled because the town decided they could make more money by building condos on the site chosen. I am terribly glad that my adopted state has done something for industrial heritage. Luzerne and Lackawanna Counties have done a heck of a lot more than what you find in New Jersey. The state, through the PHMC, funds a museum on railroading, two on coal, lumber, oil, and through grants, many others. At this point we almost have to stop looking at what we could have had and think what we might not have because it could be a whole lot worse. There simply are not enough resources to save everything. There are private collections but those are not permanent. Many times those interested in saving something only have sweat equity but not cash money and that hurts too. End Rant.

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