Why Young People Are Moving to the Lehigh Valley

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Why Young People Are Moving to the Lehigh Valley

Meet newcomers to the Lehigh Valley. For a fresh perspective, these Valley transplants share their impressions since making the area their home.

Krishan & Manasa

Living in Washington, D.C., Krishan Thakker and Manasa Kamineni were confirmed city people before moving to the Lehigh Valley last year. When Krishan took a position in the legal department at Lutron Electronics Co., Inc. at the end of 2017, the couple began their search for their home in the Valley. Krishan looked forward to life with a definitive commute instead of the boundary-blurring, seven-minute walk to work, while Manasa, working from home for a start-up, had reservations about how much life would slow down.

“We didn’t know much about the area,” Manasa says, “but we fell in love with it.”

The history and architecture of historic Bethlehem, where the couple lives just a short walk from Main Street, charmed them right away. “It was the first neighborhood we stayed at,” Krishan says, “and I thought, this doesn’t feel suburban or rural. It’s like a neighborhood of New York or D.C.” It also reminds him, originally from London, of an English town, and provides the tastes of home at McCarthy’s Red Stag where British biscuits and beer are sold.

In the early days, when the two didn’t know anyone yet, the friendly owners of Tre Scalini took them in with warm hospitality and delicious pasta. Now the streets of Bethlehem are full of chance encounters with neighbors and business owners they know by name. Krishan and Manasa like to stock their bar with locally crafted beer and liquor from Bonn Place and Social Still, and pick up cheese at Kavva’s Polish Market, run by the same family that produced Krishan’s barber at Steel District.

Whether it’s flitting to Morocco over the holidays or to dance classes in the Dominican Republic, they love to travel spontaneously, seeking out authentic experiences, and that’s balanced with a zest for more domestic activities like hosting a book club or taking piano lessons. As a home base, the Valley offers fun, comfort and an international airport that continues to add new routes!

The proximity of major metropolises is an obvious plus for Valley denizens, but Manasa and Krishan also love the access to Bethlehem’s neighboring cities. Their historic home was built in 1755, so their taste for industrial modern décor had to be tweaked. “We went to all the antique stores in Easton,” Manasa says, “because there are so many and they’re so good.” Easton’s vibrant downtown quickly became a favorite stomping ground.

The Lehigh Valley is also small enough to allow the average person a say in local civics. In D.C., unless you’re part of the political bubble, it’s next to impossible to feel involved. Here, Manasa joined a friend at a reelection campaign happy hour and met the mayor of Bethlehem. “In D.C., you just don’t have that kind of access. Here, certain things seem more conquerable, and I love that,” she says.

Their skeptical city friends have visited and become converts, calling the Valley a “hidden gem.” Whether it’s the mayhem of Musikfest, the storybook colors of fall or the snow globe quality of Christmastime, Bethlehem is beautiful, and always offering new things. On the agenda: hiking, learning to ski and exploring local theater.

Their young Siberian husky, Rex, also loves going on walks in historic Bethlehem, and has brought their family a sense of stability and responsibility to temper younger, more carefree days in D.C.

Their Wish List: When it comes to young people enjoying and investing in the Lehigh Valley, the attitude is: the more the merrier. Clue them in and keep them coming.

Nic & Megan

Megan Braemore and Nic Fulton live in a brand-new apartment building in Downtown Allentown, in a high-ceilinged, window-walled space overlooking the busy office buildings of the city. Though Nic grew up in Allentown and Megan in Nazareth, the two haven’t lived here for the past 15 years, so the Lehigh Valley they returned to last year was almost unrecognizable.

Megan was a high-end wedding photographer in Boston, while Nic made his way to Southern California by way of a two-year stint in Thailand, teaching scuba diving. Visiting family for Christmas one year, the two linked up on Tinder and were amazed at how gratifying it was to have shared history. “You don’t meet people in San Diego who know what the Great Allentown Fair is,” Nic says.

The two work from home: Nic is North American Sales Director for a Swedish acoustical plaster company, while Megan is a doula and yoga instructor. She recently trained in myofascial release therapy, a kind of self-massage she can tutor clients in to help work out tight muscles. It feels amazing.

“My first job was at Easton Yoga when I was 15 years old,” Megan says. “I didn’t even know what an avocado was. I remember people being like, ‘Yoga? What are you doing? That must be a cult.’” Now, the Valley offers activities like barre and Muay Thai, and is more than welcoming to yoga expertise or Nic’s specialties: samurai sword, jiu-jitsu and aikido, which he offers lessons in locally. They came back to be close to family, but have found fertile ground to grow professionally.

Cost of living had been exorbitant in San Diego, and even though they loved scuba diving with sea lions and octopi and bopping down to Tijuana, they found clearer water in Bethlehem’s spring-fed Dutch Springs. “They have buses, boats, trains, planes; all sorts of things are sunken, and they’re all dive-friendly,” Nic says. “You can swim through a school bus.”

The lush green of summer in Pennsylvania was a welcome change from ocean and desert terrain. “It was almost overwhelming,” Nic says, “driving down 78 with green everywhere, assaulting you with its beauty.”

Socially, too, they say Allentown is refreshingly earnest. “Everyone’s excited to be here,” Megan says. In their parents’ generation, people seemed bent on leaving the city for a suburban lifestyle with the corporate homogeneity of the mall as their shopping hub. Now, many young people are more interested in supporting locally owned businesses they can walk to.

Organic everything feels like the default in California, and that’s tough for a foodie to leave behind for an area where that’s harder to find. Their freezer is stocked with grass-fed meats from Hershberger’s in Sellersville and their apartment building is served by Local Food Market LV, an enterprise delivering fare from local farms ordered online.

With restaurants like The Dime—“on the record, best cheeseburger in the Lehigh Valley,” says Megan—or Nic’s favorite menswear store, assembly88, Allentown is providing its people with the modern lifestyle that young professionals want, and keeping traditions like the Amish breakfast at the Farmers’ Market that takes Megan back to her childhood.

“We want to invest in Downtown Allentown,” Megan says. “People have taken so much initiative already—you just have to plug into it.”

Their Wish List: Every downtown is a bit of a food desert, its denizens crying out for a grocery store. The ideal: hubs for local and organic groceries, like the long-awaited Bethlehem Food Co-Op.

Learn About LINC

Moving to a new town is never easy, especially for someone with a family and its attendant needs. For those employed by LINC’s clients, though, there’s a welcome wagon to ease the transition. Started in May of 2015, Lehigh Valley Inter-Regional Networking & Connecting Consortium (LINC) steps in for businesses who’ve hired in from out of town and helps connect those hires with the resources to start building a life here.

More than half of LINC’s clients are moving here with a partner, and 25 percent of those partners are also looking for work, so the Partner Career Services program strives to make sure that partner can settle in, too. With LINC’s help, these folks are finding jobs 39 percent faster than the national average. Social and professional networking is also facilitated through LINC, whether it be casual introductions or fun events.

From 38 clients in its first year, LINC grew to work with 128 in 2018, and doubled its stable of volunteer ambassadors from 10 or 15 to 30 people ready to show a new face or family the ropes.

From imparting the definition and function of a Wawa, to finding a language tutor, to pinpointing the best store for a certain ingredient, LINC takes the wide-eyed wandering out of relocation to make sure these much-needed skilled workers and their families feel good about coming to the Lehigh Valley—and staying.