Planners OK Medical Offices at Jack Jones Site

The Bethlehem Planning Commission on Thursday approved plans to build a three-story medical office building on the site where the vacant currently stands.

Developers plan to , which developer Ed Novak said has deteriorated too much to be repurposed. There has been at least one instance when bricks from the building’s façade have come crashing down onto W. Broad St.

But at the request of the city’s Planning Office, developers have designed a new building that shares a similar profile to the original, according to Darlene Heller, the city’s Planning Director.

“This is a pretty significant building as you are coming off of Route 378 at Third Avenue. It’s a gateway building,” she said.

In-fill development in and near the Historic Downtown has been a signature of Novak’s development partner, Lou Pektor, who built both structures on the east side corners of Main and Broad streets and repurposed the old Orr’s department store into the Shoppes at .

The development is expected to cost about $5 million, which includes the costs of purchase and demolition, Novak said. All 17,040 square feet of office space will be leased by the to provide office space for its affiliated physicians.

The hope is to have the building completed and ready to open by May or June of 2013, Novak said.

Plans call for the building to go up right at the property line and not at all set back from the sidewalk, which is how the current building sits. However, the new building won’t be as wide or as deep, providing developers with room to install 38 parking spaces in the back – primarily for patient use.

In a separate, but related plan, the Planning Commission also approved a plan from the same developers to pave a gravel parking lot a block away at 532 Fourth Ave. for employee use. That same lot was once used Jack Jones Buick for vehicle storage.

The commission approvals are conditioned on Zoning Hearing Board approval of variances at both properties. Among the requested variances:

• Having 38-off street parking spaces instead of the required 40.
• One off-street loading space.
• A variance from a required 2-foot buffer yard
• A variance to allow the new building to encroach into an 8-foot site triangle at the corner of W. Broad Street and Third Avenue.
• A variance to allow more impervious cover than allowed, though the proposal calls for less impervious cover than the existing building has.

The hearing is scheduled on July 26.