Deadline Friday to bid on clean-up of long-abandoned Easton industrial site – lehighvalleylive.com

If you want to submit a bid to tear down a long abandoned industrial site on Eastons South Side, youre running out of time.

Bids are due Friday, Nov. 29, to tear down the Black Diamond Enterprises site at 430 W. Lincoln St. It once manufactured metal surfaces and tabletops for restaurants. Before that the plant was the Stewart Silk Mill.

By 2007 it was the repository for graffiti and in 2012 it made the citys blight list.

Now a developer plans to raze it and replace it with an affordable housing community. Lara Schwager said Nov. 29 is the deadline to submit bids to demolish the site. Shes the vice president of development with PIRHL, or Partners in Residential Housing Leadership of Cleveland, Ohio.

We hope to make an award mid-December and start construction soon thereafter, she said.

PIRHL is partnering with developer Tim Harrison. They plan to put in 55 homes and 27,000 square feet of commercial space.

Since the project is financed in part through tax credits, the homes must be rented to individuals who earn between 30 and 80 percent of the neighborhoods average median income, Schwager said.

The city has struggled for years and dangled economic incentives to get the property cleaned up and developed. The city secured $2 million in grants to help fund the cleanup.

The property caught fire in 2016 and has been crumbling steadily ever since.

Rudy Miller | For lehighvalleylive.com

Photo of the Black Diamond site, formerly the Stewart Silk Mill at 430 W. Lincoln St. in Easton on Nov. 21, 2019.

Rudy Miller | For lehighvalleylive.com

Photo of the Black Diamond site, formerly the Stewart Silk Mill at 430 W. Lincoln St. in Easton on Nov. 21, 2019.

Rudy Miller | For lehighvalleylive.com

Photo of the Black Diamond site, formerly the Stewart Silk Mill at 430 W. Lincoln St. in Easton on Nov. 21, 2019.

Rudy Miller | For lehighvalleylive.com

Photo of the Black Diamond site, formerly the Stewart Silk Mill at 430 W. Lincoln St. in Easton on Nov. 21, 2019.

Rudy Miller | For lehighvalleylive.com

Photo of the Black Diamond site, formerly the Stewart Silk Mill at 430 W. Lincoln St. in Easton on Nov. 21, 2019.

Rudy Miller | For lehighvalleylive.com

Photo of the Black Diamond site, formerly the Stewart Silk Mill at 430 W. Lincoln St. in Easton on Nov. 21, 2019.

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.

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Deadline Friday to bid on clean-up of long-abandoned Easton industrial site - lehighvalleylive.com