Category:Parking in Allentown, Pennsylvania

Park & Shop was a concept to bring people into the Allentown Central Business and Shopping District was invented by Donald Miller, Allentown businessman and former owner of The Morning Call.

Park & Shop's origins date to 1947, when Miller and other businessmen devised a way to bring crowds back to downtown Allentown after World War II. Park & Shop wad based on the then-novel idea proposed by Miller and other Allentown businessmen that shoppers who got their parking ticket validated at a store could park free at nearby parking lots.

It started with four lots, grew to a system of 21 lots, two parking decks and 14 rented tracts. It served more than 25 million shoppers over its lifetime. The current small parking deck at 10th and Hamilton, above the current uptown police substation, was the first deck in the country. To make the parking lots, older buildings and homes close to Hamilton Street (but not always) were purchased and torn down. In particular, with the decline of motion picture theaters in the 1950s due to the popularity of television, several theaters closed (State, The Cinema (Strand), Earle) and were torn down for Park & Shop lots.

During the 1950s, the concept took off and became a model known as the "Allentown Plan" that was copied across the nation. The Allentown Park & Shop system was the subject of stories in the Wall Street Journal, Life magazine, Reader's Digest and the Saturday Evening Post.

The viability of the Park And Shop enterprise declined along with the intercity shopping in the 1970s and 1980s, Park & Shop began to lose money. The Allentown Parking Authority, which was formed in 1964, purchased the assets of Park & Shop in December 1991. Today, most of the old Park & Shop lots have been sold off for redevelopment, and municipal parking in the downtown area is primarily available either through street parking meters, or APA parking decks.

APA Parking Decks:

• Walnut and 9th Street Desk
• Spiral Deck (Former Hess Brothers Parking Deck), On Linden Street between 8th and 9th Street
• Allentown Transportation Center, 6th and Linden Streets
• Government Deck, 4th and Hamilton Streets
• Community Deck, 6th & Walnut Streets

The NIZ along with the new buildings it is erecting, is also creating public parking decks in the Hamilton Street area to accommodate the new office workers in the downtown area.