Good article in the Morning Call over the weekend. Lehigh Valley Hospital charitable giving questioned. In light of this I wanted to write again about the Farr Tract. Here were my initial thoughts. 

In the article LVHN CEO Brian Nester talks about the legacy of Leonard Pool. Pool of course was the founder of Air Products and provided the initial funding for LVHN’s flagship LVH-Cedar Crest campus.

Of Pools many legacies one is that of environmental stewardship. At the center of which is the 77.5-acre Pool Wildlife Sanctuary. Pool, bequeathed the sanctuary to Wildlands Conservancy in 1975.

Today, Mr. Pool’s ideals live on. You would think in light of his legacy of giving back to the community that he would be concerned with the manner LVHN is seemingly ignoring a very fair offer from the Wildlands Conservancy. One can only guess that LVHN’s submittal of a very impactful “shoe horn” development plan on such a constrained piece of land is an effort to drive up price.

I hope that at some point our community-oriented hospital network decides to get out of the land development business, hear township concerns and reconsider the offer to preserve this land.

This would still allow substantial benefit to be recognized by the network, do no harm to it’s neighbors and honor Mr. Pools legacy in his vision for the Pool Wildlife Sanctuary.