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People in your neighborhood: Dino Riviello keeps busy

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Luzerne County committee preparing to accept blighted property database nominations

<p>DALLAS &#8212; Area residents enjoyed live music, games and food on Sunday, all in an effort to save one of downtown Wilkes-Barre&#8217;s skyline&#8217;s most prominent features.</p><p>The Luzerne Foundation held &#8220;Restore IT!&#8221; at the Irem Pavilion to raise funds to save the Irem Temple building.</p><p>The 1906 building, a large space on North Franklin Street in Wilkes-Barre with four iconic spires that reach into the city&#8217;s skyline, is one of the most nation&#8217;s most significant examples of Moorish revival architecture, according to the Foundation officials.</p><p>&#8220;The event today is to bring awareness primarily to what we&#8217;re trying to do with the Irem Temple building,&#8221; said Christian Wielage, president of the Irem Temple Restoration Project. &#8220;The project is to take the existing auditorium, which from the 1930s to the 1980s was the primary theater in Wilkes-Barre, and what we want to do is return the main auditorium to its original flat configuration so you have a big, open 6,000-square-foot room where you can have weddings, vendor events and bands that don&#8217;t want seats in a theater.&#8221;</p><p>Wilkes-Barre Councilman and local historian Tony Brooks is also a member of the project.</p><p>&#8220;The Irem Temple has to do with what my vision of what Wilkes-Barre and what a community should be like. Part of that is historic preservation,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Part of what separates Wilkes-Barre from Scranton, from Allentown, from Philadelphia, from any other city is its historic buildings. That&#8217;s what makes it unique.</p><p>&#8220;To make Wilkes-Barre a beautiful community is to preserve its uniqueness.&#8221;</p><p>Brooks added that saving the Irem Temple could help all of Wilkes-Barre.</p><p>&#8220;In the 1970s, you would not want to go to Jim Thorpe. Jim Thorpe is now the textbook case of the turnaround from a couple generations that is now a little town from a postcard. We can do that in Wilkes-Barre, there just has to be the willpower, the vision and the leadership to take it to the next level,&#8221; he said.</p><p>The Luzerne Foundation is accepting donations for the project at luzernefoundation.org.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">The Underground Saints opening the live entertainment for the Fest </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/web1_fullsizeoutput_2a4.jpeg</photo0><caption0>The Underground Saints opening the live entertainment for the Fest </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><subheadMeta>Luzerne Foundation holds &#8216;Restore IT!&#8217;</subheadMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Katie Pugh</p><p>For Times Leader</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach the Times Leader newsroom at 570-829-7242 or on Twitter @TLnews.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

‘Restore IT!’ event raises funds to save Irem Temple building