615 Waterfront Opens on the Lehigh River

On October 11, 2023, The Waterfront Development Company opened the doors of 615 Waterfront, the first commercial building completed at The Waterfront in Allentown, Pennsylvania. More than a decade of planning culminated that afternoon, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., in a 180-person riverside amphitheater that did not exist a few years ago. The building had been finished in March 2023. The celebration made it official.

615 Waterfront is a six-story Class A office building of roughly 120,000 square feet. Floors two through six hold about 100,000 square feet of office space, and the ground floor holds 20,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space. Nelson Architects of Philadelphia designed it. High Construction of Lancaster built it. The result reads as a true riverfront building: open river views, direct access to a half-mile River Walk, and outdoor amenity spaces that pull the workday outside.

State Representative Michael Schlossberg framed the stakes plainly. “We all know what COVID has done to the workplace, and we all know that to get people out of their home office and pajamas and into the office requires something a little bit special,” he said. “If you’re going to work in an office, it can’t be a cube. It has to have something really, really phenomenal. That’s what this does.”

State Representative Josh Siegel saw a city in motion. “We’re remaking what cities can be right here,” he said. “We are building the city of tomorrow that offers workers and residents the sort of amenities and access that they need, not only to return to the office but to continue to choose to live in our city.”

The site has a long memory. In 2012, The Waterfront Development Company announced plans to redevelop the former Lehigh Structural Steel site into a 29-acre mixed-use campus along the Lehigh River, running from the river east to the railroad west, and from the Wells Warehouse north to the American Parkway Bridge. The company cleared six former steel buildings, laid several miles of underground conduit, built roadways across the southern half of the site, and secured blanket Final Plan Approval.

Mayor Matt Tuerk named the moment. “It’s a truly astounding amount of work that was done to bring us to the point that we’re at today, but you did what we’ve been talking about for a really long time in the city,” he said. “You unlocked the waterfront, and you took the first steps to make this waterfront truly accessible to all of the residents of the City of Allentown.”

Zachary Jaindl, COO and co-founder of The Waterfront Development Company, drew on examples from other riverfront cities and on the river that links Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton. “Today, what we’re really celebrating is a return to that river,” he said. “Something we lost along the way in the age of industrialization that shaped our city, we’re now able to come back in the form of new jobs and new living opportunities.” He credited the Neighborhood Improvement Zone (NIZ), the Pennsylvania taxing district created in 2012 that makes projects like this one possible. Ellen Kern, former chief of staff to Senator Pat Browne, put it best from the amphitheater stage: “The NIZ is the door to opportunity. But it takes people of courage and vision and entrepreneurialism to walk through that door.”

Access shaped the plan from the start. In 2015, the company negotiated the acquisition of 3.5 miles of railroad to create Riverside Drive, a two-lane roadway that eases congestion and connects part of the Delaware and Lehigh (D&L) Trail. “It really creates an environment for our children,” said CEO and co-founder Mark Jaindl, picturing kids from the First and Sixth Wards taking the trail down to Bucky Boyle Park.

The Waterfront also strengthens Allentown’s tax base. When the company first took over the property, it paid approximately $120,000 in real estate taxes each year. At full build-out, the district is projected to generate about $4 million annually for the city, the school district, and Lehigh County.

615 Waterfront is the first chapter of that future. See the building and the river that anchors it. Offices. Schedule a visit.