On the Mark

First Posted: 4/4/2014 WILKES-BARRE &#8212; What the city can&#8217;t do, the owners of the Jewelcor property want to with the extension of Coal Street for development.
Plans are to continue the street west at the intersection with Wilkes-Barre Boulevard by constructing a five-lane roadway, said Joe Lakowski, project manager with Jewelcor Inc.
&#8220;We have two potential companies that want to go on the corners,&#8221; Lakowski said Friday.
Jewelcor president and chief executive officer Seymour Holtzman and his wife, Evelyn, who own the property, are seeking a construction easement to build the roadway on city property. The easement is listed on the agenda for City Council&#8217;s work session Tuesday night.
Lakowski said he foresees no problem getting it approved.
&#8220;We talked to the city about this over the years,&#8221; he said.
The potential tenants are eager to get going and one of them has been on board even before Coal Street was straightened out and widened.
The nearly $14 million project was completed on time and under budget early last year with a combination of federal, state and local funds.
But it stopped short of continuing on to Union Street due to the lack of funds.
That phase of the project is on hold until the money is allocated and that could take another three to four years, Lakowski said.
Rather than wait, plans are in the works to add a left-turn lane on the boulevard for traffic traveling north on the boulevard, Lakowski said. The new roadway, roughly 280 feet long, would be on city property and the land on both sides is owned by Jewelcor, he said.
Lakowski declined to identify the tenants, saying &#8220;the deals are not inked.&#8221;
But they are well known locally and would build additional stores on the sites, he said.
Once the easement is granted, permits would be needed from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and others and take between four to six months, Lakowski said.
Preliminary work has already been done, he said.

Jewelcor wants to extend W-B’s Coal St.