Concerts are held at SteelStacks, an eight-acre arts complex, photo by Frank Smith
Christmas City USA
For obvious reasons, Bethlehem is also known as the Christmas City. Moravians established their mission there on Christmas Eve in 1741 and named the town after the biblical Bethlehem.
Starting in early November, the hotel begins to gussy up for the holidays, and by Thanksgiving, Christmas has emerged, with two huge trees in the lobby.
Outside, the city is alive with lights. Horse and carriage rides ply Church Street, and a star of Bethlehem shines down from South Mountain.
Over the river
Across the Lehigh River, a few minutes’ drive from the hotel, Bethlehem is repurposing the old Bethlehem Steel Co. site in cooperation with Las Vegas Sands Corp., which bought 124 acres of the property in 2007 and opened a casino there in 2009.
The Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem has 3,000 slot machines, 150 table games, 36 poker tables, eight restaurants and an outlet mall.
It also has 12,000 square feet of meeting space and a 14,000-square-foot event center that will handle trade shows for up to 75 booths. A long hallway links the casino to a 15-floor, 300-room hotel.
Tax revenue from the casino has been used to develop SteelStacks, an eight-acre arts complex that has concerts three nights a week, historical walking tours and an independent cinema.
In August, Musikfest, the nation’s largest nongated music festival, is held at SteelStacks and other locations around the city. Many of the concerts are free.
Plans are afoot to convert a trestle once used by ore cars to feed the still-standing blast furnaces into a pathway park like New York’s High Line.
Industrious for nearly 300 years, Bethlehem is finding ways to mix old and new into a blend that works.
www.hotelbethlehem.com
