How an American City Can Become a Manufacturing Hub

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 ProjectTexas Ranch Lures Futuristic Startups to Revive US ManufacturingSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Joe Weisenthal?

  There are some market stories where you want every detail. Tracy and I have made quite a few podcasts on that basis, but sometimes you've only got 10 minutes and need to know what's moving markets and why. That's the Barclays Brief Podcast. Every week, experts from Barclays Markets and research get you up to speed on what matters and what to watch next, about the time it takes to grab a coffee. So, search Barclays Brief wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. I'm Carol Muster. Getting hired at SpaceX requires exceptional ability and may include having Elon Musk review a candidate's resume. So writes Bloomberg Business Week's Lauren Grush. She reports that the company culture is defined by Musk, and job candidates must understand that a commitment to SpaceX means adhering to this culture and exhibiting loyalty to Elon Musk. To get hired, candidates must demonstrate their achievements from past jobs, and hands-on experience matters more to recruiters than advanced degrees, with the company looking for people with raw, innate intelligence. A spokesperson for SpaceX didn't respond to a request for comment on its recruiting and hiring practices, but according to recruiters, advisors,

• 1:11Speaker 01

  and those who've interviewed for jobs there, it's the space exploration dream that draws people to the company, and Musk invokes that dream regularly to remind workers why they're there. Prospective hires are told that the job will require stamina, including in job ads that candidates, quote, "must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed." One major perk for all that hard work? Employees' access to equity, either the right to buy shares or payment in the form of restricted stock units that vest over time. That's the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. Get started at chatgpt.com.

• 1:48Speaker 02

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• 2:23Speaker 03

  Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

• 2:39Tracy Alloway?

  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

• 2:43Joe Weisenthal?

  And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

• 2:44Tracy Alloway?

  Joe, do you ever discover little cultural blind spots that you had in your life?

• 2:51Joe Weisenthal?

  I'm sure.

• 2:52Tracy Alloway?

  Like things you missed?

• 2:53Joe Weisenthal?

  Where are you going with this?

• 2:54Tracy Alloway?

  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.

• 3:12Joe Weisenthal?

  Interesting.

• 3:13Tracy Alloway?

  And I don't mean to be, I don't mean to be very grand millennial by making Simpsons references here.

• 3:18Joe Weisenthal?

  Isn't it depressing how if you make a Simpsons reference to like someone younger in the office, they look at you with a blank stare?

• 3:23Tracy Alloway?

  I know.

• 3:24Joe Weisenthal?

  It's really depressing. I just don't do it anymore because it's so depressing.

• 3:28Tracy Alloway?

  I know. And here I am doing it on the podcast, but I actually...

• 3:31Joe Weisenthal?

  Because we're, you know, we're the same generation, so we can do it among each other.

• 3:34Tracy Alloway?

  We can do it. This is a safe space.

• 3:35Joe Weisenthal?

  Our listeners might not get it.

• 3:36Tracy Alloway?

  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.

• 3:58Joe Weisenthal?

  That was a great intro.

• 3:59Tracy Alloway?

  Oh, thank you.

• 4:00Joe Weisenthal?

  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 like feels in their gut somehow that they're like pro reindustrialization, whatever that means, right? But then the gap between like somehow like 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.

• 4:38Tracy Alloway?

  Right. 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.

• 4:55Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 4:55Tracy Alloway?

  Which are like the precursor to semiconductors of today.

• 4:59Joe Weisenthal?

  Can I say one random thing about Billy Joel before we go further? You know, because obviously you mentioned he talks about a lot of political economy things, including, of course, and 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 Vietnam War, all these things happened. And finally, the thing that tipped him over the edge was the cola. Anyway, side trip, but I just had to get that out.

• 5:29Tracy Alloway?

  We should do a whole episode on Billy Joel songs at some point, including my favorite karaoke standard, which is Down Easter, 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.

• 5:50Speaker 05

  It's a grand place. It's a huge pleasure to be here.

• 5:53Joe Weisenthal?

  That actually helps because we are, we are at the City Lab conference in Madrid, right?

• 5:56Tracy Alloway?

  And we just saw you have a medal from the, from the marathon over the weekend. Tell us about that.

• 6:02Speaker 05

  It 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.

• 6:28Tracy Alloway?

  That is dedication to both cardio and city planning. So congrats on that. I 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?

• 6:49Speaker 05

  I mean, he, there's, 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. Then 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. Cause it's about this like different era that maybe was like felt right in the moment in 1982.

• 7:31Speaker 05

  Like that maybe kind of captured the moment, but in 2026, it's like we, it doesn't sound further from, it couldn't sound further from the truth.

• 7:39Joe Weisenthal?

  Give us like a little Allentown 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?

• 7:53Speaker 05

  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. Silk 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.

• 8:38Speaker 05

  This was like 1915 and industrial production of those vehicles started. We manufactured Volti bombers, a particular type of bomber for World War II. This is all coincident with Bethlehem'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, 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.

• 9:15Joe Weisenthal?

  What year were we talking about with that?

• 9:17Speaker 05

  Western Electric was in the seventies. It actually, and 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. But again, the industry evolved and changed. The Volti aircraft shut down when there was no need to produce bombers anymore. Mack Trucks continued operations in Allentown, but in the eighties shifted most of its production to a plant in McConaughey that still operates today.

• 10:00Speaker 05

  A lot of those old Mack plants were acquired by an organization that I used to work for, the Allentown Economic Club Incorporated, and repurposed initially repurposed for the, this is the eighties. The thought at the time was that it could be an incubator facility, a business incubator. 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. But the production was still occurring in some capacity in the city, definitely in the region.

• 10:44Speaker 05

  When the steel shut down in Bethlehem in 1898, I think was when they did their last cast. That's when, you know, 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 precursor drugs that are manufactured there. Some medical supplies that are still manufactured there, B. Braun. 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.

• 11:25Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah.

• 11:25Speaker 05

  Air Products is like. It's so fun talking to a listener. That makes it so easy.

• 11:30Tracy Alloway?

  It's like helium.

• 11:31Speaker 05

  I had helium. So helium is something that Air Products manufactures. It's one of those like head scratchers when you're talking about a region's industrial output to say like, we make like an element. Like, and like an elemental element, like the lowest. It's on the periodic table. Yeah. It's hard to describe like how that happens, but that was founded in Allentown. Actually, it was founded in Tennessee and moved to Allentown in the 50s. But a lot of that production was still occurring, the, the, 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. I think it was acquired by Arstor Middle. But they could see the end in sight and so they made a conscious effort to diversify.

• 12:11Speaker 05

  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, uh, which is the manufacturer of surgical devices to relocate its North American headquarters to, they were out in suburban Bethlehem. But, but that's been the character, right? There's, there's, it's a very diversified economy. Today, 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. That was great.

• 12:55Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah.

• 12:56Speaker 05

  That's amazing.

• 12:57Tracy Alloway?

  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. Can you talk about how you actually formulated that plan?

• 13:32Speaker 05

  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 was 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. There was some concern about how we would recover economically, what we would do.

• 14:15Speaker 05

  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 healthy, seemingly healthy manufacturing economy in place in the Lehigh Valley. And it felt like, 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.

• 14:55Speaker 05

  There 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. I reached out to the manufacturer at the time. This was kind of around the same time

• 15:40Speaker 05

  as the rise of like maker spaces 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 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. We started talking about reshoring or onshoring at that time, but it felt distant.

• 16:35Tracy Alloway?

  There are some market stories where you want every detail. Joe and I have made quite a few podcasts on that basis, but sometimes you've only got 10 minutes and just want to know what's moving markets fast. That's the Barclays Brief Podcast. Every week, experts from Barclays Markets and Research get you up to speed on what's happening and what to watch next. Concise, focused, and brief. Search Barclays Brief wherever you get your podcasts.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. I'm Carol Muster. Getting hired at SpaceX requires exceptional ability and may include having Elon Musk review a candidate's resume. So writes Bloomberg Businessweek's Lauren Grush. She reports that the company culture is defined by Musk and job candidates must understand that a commitment to SpaceX means adhering to this culture and exhibiting loyalty to Elon Musk. To get hired, candidates Candidates must demonstrate their achievements from past jobs and hands-on experience matters more to recruiters than advanced degrees, with the company looking for people with raw, innate intelligence. A spokesperson for SpaceX didn't respond to a request for

• 17:42Speaker 01

  comment on its recruiting and hiring practices, but according to recruiters, advisors, and those who've interviewed for jobs there, it's the space exploration dream that draws people to the company, and Musk invokes that dream regularly to remind workers why they're there. Prospective hires are told that the job will require stamina, including in job ads that candidates "must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed." One major perk for all that hard work? Employees' access to equity, either the right to buy shares or payment in the form of restricted stock units that vest over time. That's the Bloomberg Tech Minute, brought to you by ChatGPT. Get started at ChatGPT.com.

• 18:24Joe Weisenthal?

  I'm glad you brought up this sort of maker 3D printing phenomenon because-

• 18:28Tracy Alloway?

  That was such a thing around that time.

• 18:29Joe Weisenthal?

  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? And software, et cetera, 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 as much about it.

• 19:01Speaker 05

  That fizzled out for sure, but so we did a re-industrialization strategy in 2014. We 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.

• 19:38Speaker 05

  So we saw inquiries all the time for buildings between forty and eighty thousand square feet. But this is a time when the Wehave Valley is pivoting its economy toward transportation and warehousing, building million square foot buildings with twenty four to thirty six foot ceilings. Really, as this other technological trend of the e-comm.

• 19:59Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 20:00Speaker 05

  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 Wehave Valley, but we didn't have a ton of building space to meet their needs. So 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 rehabbing existing industrial buildings as, surprise, surprise, industrial buildings. So it's continued on from there.

• 20:44Tracy Alloway?

  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 forty percent of the population in the US. Is that true?

• 20:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's over a hundred million, many more than a hundred million people. And that's what made it such a strong destination for some of the e-comm. But 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 cranberry juice in the Wehave Valley. Sam Adams was brewing most of its beer in the Wehave Valley.

• 21:29Joe Weisenthal?

  Was it weight gaining industry?

• 21:31Speaker 05

  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, you know, within a day's Drive of forty percent of the US 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-comm, because of the food manufacturing, you saw a lot of packaging and bottling manufacturing show up.

• 22:12Speaker 05

  So one of our most recent in Allentown successes was recruiting a company called Schlesbottle. They manufacture 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.

• 22:29Joe Weisenthal?

  This is so core, like Ricardo Hausmann coded stuff. Like, okay, you have this one industry and then you have innovation in an adjacent industry. Super.

• 22:38Tracy Alloway?

  Monkey swinging from trees.

• 22:40Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, I'm also just like learning all these terms, you know, gravity based manufacturing. I hadn't or weight gain. This is all fantastic stuff.

• 22:48Tracy Alloway?

  Weight gain industry is, I think, what we're both doing in Madrid.

• 22:51Joe Weisenthal?

  That's what we're both doing in Madrid. That was really well done.

• 22:55Joe Weisenthal?

  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. 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 bag 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?

• 23:31Speaker 05

  It's odd that 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.

• 23:40Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 23:40Speaker 05

  Was a Turkish plastic bag manufacturer. So that was kind of interesting. So 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, there was no, like, we didn't know a global pandemic was going to come and disrupt supply chains. We were thinking about like the logistics of making things in close to the customer. And I was, I was thinking a lot about the theft of IP in China and how it was kind of like those. Components to globalism didn't make a ton of sense. You're like kind of giving away

• 24:22Speaker 05

  your most precious resource. So a lot of it was driven by like, how do you kind of capture the spirit of American manufacturing? Now, COVID hit and all of a sudden, that's what brought it 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

• 25:02Speaker 05

  in cities because you're not building the whole truck there, right? And to build the whole truck, you need something like Lordstown 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 the, 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. And that's where the next step for us was, and what more cities should be doing, I think, is making sure that your

• 25:42Speaker 05

  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're going across the bridge. That's not what manufacturing really looks like anymore. So you can, you can kind of do that in cities. So as cities are thinking about what type of manufacturing you might try to attract,

• 26:23Speaker 05

  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 You know, 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.

• 26:50Tracy Alloway?

  Right. Say more about the rezoning process because if there's one thing I remember from playing SimCity for hours, you know, in the nineteen, late nineteen nineties, it was that if you, if you zone industry next to residential, your population is not going to be happy. So I'm very curious like how much that has actually changed and what the rezoning process is like now versus say 10 years ago.

• 27:12Speaker 05

  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 will look like.

• 27:41Tracy Alloway?

  Interesting.

• 27:42Speaker 05

  So that can allow, that's the type of thing that can allow for, now in SimCity, when you built, when you zoned industrial, you were going to get like the tire manufacturing plant. Not 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 is 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 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,

• 28:28Speaker 05

  you create flexibility that can add some vibrancy to the neighborhood. I 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.

• 28:45Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 28:46Speaker 05

  And one thing that occurred to me is that when, so 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 that's, people would like to do that, whatever they're doing for work. When young, when children saw people walking to work with a lunchbox and knew that that person was going to work on the, in the silk plant, or in 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

• 29:31Speaker 05

  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, but 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.

• 30:08Joe Weisenthal?

  We need to do an episode, How SimCity Destroyed, right? Like people internalizing all these lessons from a video game. Right. And then, oh, then suddenly all of the manufacturing goes out into the excerpts and then no one sees the workers, then suddenly. How SimCity ruined America. How SimCity ruined.

• 30:26Speaker 05

  I would love, I would love to see that. Honestly, like the, I think the mayor, like any mayor who has played SimCity, like the minute you sit down at the desk, you're like, oh my God, this is total BS.

• 30:36Joe Weisenthal?

  This is amazing. Now I really actually want to do this episode. Post-COVID, you get this re-enthusiasm for manufacturing, just, you know, supply chain reasons, also national security reasons. 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-Euro programs? What did that look like from your perspective?

• 31:00Speaker 05

  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 this, the federal government was pushing in a particular direction, right? And it was like, let's start making stuff again. When I I became mayor in two thousand twenty two, when you are sworn in as mayor, you come in with a bunch of campaign promises, you 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.

• 31:41Speaker 05

  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. And we kind of lost the capacity to like innovate, to get creative and do new things. So I was grateful that, you know, I entered into the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative at just the right moment when when I was feeling desperate and they kind of invested in that capacity.

• 32:22Speaker 05

  Through doing that, I was able to attack one of the things that was clearly clearly an issue, which was road safety. We had, 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 a, I'm a bicycling and running guy, so I wanted to like, and I I felt like we could do better for our city if we had safer streets. Bloomberg 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, you know, good outcomes for residents and try some new things.

• 33:06Speaker 05

  We were lucky, I also got right in Secretary Buttigieg's face and said, I need help. And we're, we're lucky to get a planning grant through that program.

• 33:17Speaker 05

  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 Recompute Pilot Project. And it was focused on areas that were, I think it was June of 2023. It was 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%.

• 34:00Speaker 05

  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. And 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 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, that the Weah Valley Economic Development Corporation, there's still a high demand for manufacturing labor as well as healthcare. We knew that the barriers to getting people to good jobs sometimes were a lack of available

• 34:44Speaker 05

  resources, things like flexible and affordable childcare. We 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's 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

• 35:27Speaker 05

  jobs to not just the city, but to the entire region, that Allentonians are well positioned to get to those jobs. And that's, that is, you know, The big, a big piece where, where cities have to be able to play a role is making sure that, that people have the, the tools they need to access the good things that are happening in their economy.

• 35:47Tracy Alloway?

  Hmm. Have you got all the grant money, the Biden era grant money?

• 35:52Speaker 05

  We did.

• 35:53Tracy Alloway?

  All of it. So, okay, so there's nothing.

• 35:56Speaker 05

  We made sure, or like, as soon as the, the November 5th, 2024, like, we went into overdrive to just make sure that we weren't at risk of, of losing anything.

• 36:06Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah.

• 36:06Speaker 05

  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. 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 USDA, I wrote a letter to Secretary Rollins and the USDA about how important trees were to cities across America. We've worked to make sure that we didn't lose the, the street funding. But, you know, we're, for some of the funding for things that you do in cities, it's like very practical. It's, it's good for residents. It's, it should be nonpartisan, as long as

• 36:47Speaker 05

  you, like, are not exclusively focused on the various different things the administration's focused on.

• 37:10Speaker 01

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• 37:54Speaker 01

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• 38:33Tracy Alloway?

  So speaking of practicality, I sometimes get the sense that there's like a bit of a disconnect between how people in DC 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?

• 39:01Speaker 05

  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 healthcare 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, you know, be part of the dignity of work. And 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,

• 39:45Speaker 05

  bring new ideas and 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 in Allentown where one of my senators is Senator Dave McCormick, who is on the he's the he's a Republican, I'm a Democrat, but I appreciate Senator McCormick's interest in competitiveness and trying to attract industry and particularly manufacturing

• 40:25Speaker 05

  to Pennsylvania. And I think my conversation with Senator McCormick, he is somewhat agnostic about where that happens. I think he's, you know, 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. He I know he was involved with one of the the big kind of future thinking or future looking manufacturing investments that occurred in our area is Eli Lilly. Oh, yeah. announced a three and a half billion dollar investment that is just outside of the city limits. But their three and a half billion dollar investment will create like eight hundred and fifty jobs. I want to make sure that all of the residents of the city

• 41:08Speaker 05

  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 one manufacturing is can be produced in the city if it can be. We want to make sure that we're that we're capable of connecting to that. So that's one thing. I think continuing to make sure that that the the country is competitive. The other thing is, and this is one that we're kind of going back and forth with, 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.

• 41:50Speaker 05

  I 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, we proudly tell the story of how Bethlehem Steel helped win the war in World War II by building the ships that helped us win the war. I talked about Volte bombers helping us win the war. I think that there is, we have, we're home to Mac Defense in Allentown.

• 42:35Speaker 05

  Mac Defense makes giant, like, heavy-duty trucks for the US military. We can compete in that area as well, and that is manufacturing. So I think there's, if the federal government focuses on creating opportunities in cities and in states to host manufacturing and it 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.

• 43:04Joe Weisenthal?

  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.

• 43:27Speaker 05

  It can be. It also turns you into like, I have given tours of my city to foreign press. Every country in the world.

• 43:37Joe Weisenthal?

  All right, and all the reporters that they go to the diner in Pennsylvania, right? That's the classic trope.

• 43:41Speaker 05

  Exactly. Then, so, I mean, it's nice to be the center of attention in that way, but in 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.

• 44:03Joe Weisenthal?

  One reason that people are very excited or that people are, 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. However, some of these most advanced industries, they're not, 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.

• 44:48Speaker 05

  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, this, you know, 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 somebody on a 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.

• 45:25Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 45:25Speaker 05

  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 I've visited, there's like a strong like handmade or like a rejection of the robots and AI, whether it's art or like the the produced goods. I don't know if anybody, I don't know what the the logical end to that is, but I think there's on on the consumer side, there's there's still a desire. I think people romanticize some of the product, right? And they'd rather have something that that people have made on the jobs side of it. I think that there's, there's still this belief

• 46:09Speaker 05

  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 like, 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, I, my first job at a grad school was working in the billboard industry and in Panama. And I remember vividly talking to somebody who was, 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 up laundromats. I was like,

• 46:52Speaker 05

  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 yeah, I think is the worst thing in cities. But like we're job creators, like we have to find ways to to create jobs, to to create opportunities for people to be dignified by their work. So while there may be some value to like squeezing out every single nickel of a cost from some operation, there's a lot to benefit cities and to benefit society of having people, you know, actually putting their hands on things.

• 47:27Tracy Alloway?

  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.

• 47:38Joe Weisenthal?

  Presumably access to that needed energy at one point, right?

• 47:42Speaker 05

  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, like 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? Like we.

• 47:59Tracy Alloway?

  They really are.

• 48:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:00Tracy Alloway?

  It's kind of crazy.

• 48:01Speaker 05

  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 and most cities in the country is that we don't really have any space for data centers. It's unlikely that a hyperscale, 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 but it's it is reality in places like Phoenix, right? So we amended our zoning code to just set up certain requirements around the establishment

• 48:43Speaker 05

  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.

• 48:59Joe Weisenthal?

  Sorry, just to be clear, cover.

• 49:00Tracy Alloway?

  Like you've data center proofed your zoning? Is that what that means?

• 49:04Speaker 05

  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, we're making sure that data centers that are proposed for the city have, can demonstrate their compliance, basically. So it's, it's political. As I understand the technology, and this is probably the less sophisticated side of the, 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. They 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

• 49:47Speaker 05

  about land use or a lack of jobs, but because utility bills are

• 49:52Joe Weisenthal?

  Right.

• 49:53Speaker 05

  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, that's what's driving a lot of the concern for mayors, I think.

• 50:07Joe Weisenthal?

  You know, I know someone, I heard about, 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 grid.

• 50:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:26Joe Weisenthal?

  It's fairly small scale.

• 50:27Tracy Alloway?

  Oh, interesting.

• 50:28Joe Weisenthal?

  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.

• 50:39Speaker 05

  That was what was, what I was hearing. You know, I, I'm an AI skeptic as a mayor. I've been talked back. I keep like, you know, going back and forth on this.

• 50:49Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 50:49Speaker 05

  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 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 fear about data center might be misplaced. Like, there is, we are, I 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, and I don't know

• 51:34Speaker 05

  what what it really stems from, but whenever politicians are involved, you have to raise an eyebrow.

• 51:40Tracy Alloway?

  I have one more question, and it's a very important one. What's the deal with Yacos? If I Google Allentown controversy, like, Yacos comes up.

• 51:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think there's probably a couple of Yacos controversies. The the very local one is, like, you got to pick a, you got to choose between Yacos or Potts. Apparently, they eat Potts hot dogs in Bethlehem. I guess we should say, Yacos is a hot dog.

• 52:07Tracy Alloway?

  It's a hot dog rivalry, okay.

• 52:09Speaker 05

  The folks in Bethlehem, like, I love my neighbor, but I would never eat a Potts dog. Yacos, there's, 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 ordered two dogs with everything and a chocolate milk. Some people get pierogies with it, too. The one of the, there was a few years ago, like, a guy named Gary Iacocca, whose family owned Yacos, talked about how his Yacos on Seventh Street, which is in the center of the city of Allentown, couldn't exist anymore because of the demographic changes that we've seen in Allentown. So Yacos, I think, is, he and I went back and forth a little bit. We're very good friends now, but we we we're, we struggled a little bit because I'm, I'm

• 52:54Speaker 05

  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 homogeneous, basically, everybody in Allentown was white, European. Today, we're 55% 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, I just love. Um, so we went back and forth a little bit on that. There's probably other Yakuza's controversies out there. Um, there's like, he's, he has like a, a big hot dog statue

• 53:38Speaker 05

  that's been drowned a little bit. Um, but it's a good hot dog. I mean, if you come to Allentown, I will treat you to a Yakuza's hot dog.

• 53:45Tracy Alloway?

  You'll teach us how to order it.

• 53:47Speaker 05

  I'll teach you how to order.

• 53:48Joe Weisenthal?

  This is like one of those things like the politicians get a huge scandal. They order it the wrong way. Like, you know, it was like John Kerry, like order it, whether you get like Swiss cheese instead of something else.

• 53:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, it's our version, I guess, of the cheesesteak. And there's a special, like Lehigh Valley version of the cheesesteak as well, that, um, that Philadelphians would want nothing to do with.

• 54:07Joe Weisenthal?

  Huh. This is what makes America great. He's like these niche, these niche loyalties towards certain orders and certain hot dog.

• 54:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 54:15Tracy Alloway?

  All right. Uh, Mayor Turk, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots. That was great.

• 54:18Speaker 05

  Thank you. I really had a good time.

• 54:32Tracy Alloway?

  So 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 2010's era of like made in America, craft manufacturing. I remember that really well.

• 54:45Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, no, totally. It's actually apparently kind of depressing because those Maker Bot Festival or the Maker Bot, I think is different than the Maker Festivals, but there was that culture of people doing tinkering and 3D printing.

• 54:58Tracy Alloway?

  Also the boom in 3D printing stocks, remember that?

• 55:00Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, yeah. There was like a thing and it was like all sort of fizzled out, but there was, yeah, it's like a forgotten part of like post-GFC.

• 55:08Tracy Alloway?

  Artisanal manufacturing.

• 55:09Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, artisanal manufacturing and people are just building weird stuff. Things aren't weird enough anymore. But yeah, I'm glad.

• 55:15Tracy Alloway?

  Well, they might get weird with AI.

• 55:16Joe Weisenthal?

  No, they're gonna get weird. But I'm glad he brought that up because I, I, it doesn't get discussed enough.

• 55:22Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah.

• 55:22Joe Weisenthal?

  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. And so therefore, it makes a lot of sense to put various, you know, e-commerce warehouses in. So much interesting stuff there.

• 55:55Tracy Alloway?

  Also, the mixed zoning, I found really interesting. But because it is true, if you think about industry, you know, 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?

• 56:15Joe Weisenthal?

  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.

• 56:22Tracy Alloway?

  And then everyone can walk to work with their lunchboxes.

• 56:25Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 56:26Tracy Alloway?

  All right. Shall we leave it there?

• 56:27Joe Weisenthal?

  Or the bike to work, yeah.

• 56:28Tracy Alloway?

  Or bike to work, yeah. Okay. This has been another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.

• 56:35Joe Weisenthal?

  And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at TheStalwart. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez at CarmenArmin, Dashell Bennett at Dashbot, Kale Brooks at KaleBrooks, and Kevin Lozano at KevinLloydLozano. And for more Odd Lots content, go to Bloomberg.com/oddlots, where the daily newsletter and all of our episodes. And you can chat about all these topics 24/7 in our Discord, discord.gg/oddlots.

• 56:58Tracy Alloway?

  And if you enjoy Odd Lots, 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.

• 57:49Speaker 06

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