The development of the old Reinhard School site in Hellertown into what looks and feels more and more like a new park wasn’t an accident. It’s easy to forget the bitter, sometimes personal, and at times ferocious arguments that went into making what you see today between East Saucon and Magnolia streets.
Ever since the Reinhard school’s closure in 1999 and its demolishment in 2012, there were rumblings about how to best use the school district land that was eventually sold to Hellertown Borough. It had become a kind of no-man’s land of old pavement and cement staircases to nowhere. It had a certain quiet beauty, but it wasn’t practical.
For a few years, the idea of a new Hellertown police department being built there was floated. More fanciful ideas came and went. Eventually, the borough proposed a new public works facility–smack dab in the middle of a quiet residential neighborhood previously used as the location of an elementary school…