$5½M for New Visitor Center 'Worth It,' Mayor Says

“It cost an awful lot of money” to take the old Bethlehem Steel Stock House and convert it to a 21st Century visitor center, “but it was worth it,” said Mayor John Callahan as he led the ceremonial opening of the new Bethlehem Visitor Center Friday afternoon.

Four years ago, the Stock House was a building with crumbling stone masonry walls, broken windows and rusted metal trusses supporting a rusting sheet metal roof.

Some saw just another piece of the crumbling ruins of a dead industrial giant. But others, like Callahan and ArtsQuest President Jeff Parks, saw great potential.

“Most of us thought [Callahan] was nuts when he showed us what the building looked like and he told us what he thought it could become,” said Mike Stershic, president of Discover Lehigh Valley, the two-county region’s tourism promotion agency.

What it has become is a modern visitor center with three giant touch-screen computer kiosks that can help visitors find attractions, restaurants and hotels. The center is not meant to be merely a gateway to the developing SteelStacks arts and entertainment area or even Bethlehem, but all of the Lehigh Valley, Callahan said.

The center also includes a box office to buy tickets to ArtsQuest events, a small gift shop, a lounge with a giant screen television where visitors can watch a short documentary on the history of Bethlehem Steel, some office space for ArtsQuest staff and “the best bathrooms in the Lehigh Valley,” the mayor said.

The center will be staffed from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily and longer during festivals, Parks said.

Callahan called it a “world class building” that has been recognized by the Website Masonry Construction as one of its “Masonry Construction Projects of the Year.”

“It exceeded even my highest expectations that I had for this project,” Callahan said.

Building restoration, along with the internal construction and furnishing cost about $5½ million, said Tony Hanna, executive director of the Bethlehem Redevelopment Authority, which is overseeing redevelopment of the western 160 acres of Bethlehem Steel into an arts and entertainment district.

The Stock House redevelopment was paid for through the $27 million Tax Increment Financing bond that the city, Northampton County and the Bethlehem Area School District agreed to fund three years ago.

The investment in the Stock House makes a statement about Bethlehem’s “relentless commitment to preservation,” Callahan said.

Sitting right at the base on the western side of the massive blast furnaces, the Stock House was built during the Civil War in 1863 and is the oldest surviving structure in the Bethlehem Steel complex.

The 3,000-square-foot building was first used to store iron ore, which the original Bethlehem Iron Works forged into train rails. Later, it became a place to make alloys and a tool and dye operation. Finally, at the end of the corporation’s history, the Stock House was used to store spare parts for the blast furnace.