WILKES-BARRE -- Wilkes-Barre’s longtime mayor Tom Leighton was busy cleaning off his desk on Wednesday. He's leaving office at the end of the year after serving for more than a decade.
Something that he takes pride and joy in is the revitalization of the downtown during his 12 years as the city's top decision maker.
“If you look around Public Square, we have have a lot of office buildings here and there's a lot of working-class people that not only work in the downtown, but live in the downtown,” he said.
Photos snapped shortly after Leighton was sworn into the mayor's office in 2004 show how the downtown used to look: trash overflowing, few places for entertainment and a canopy that hung around the square.
Since then, there's been dramatic changes, including a city worker dedicated to cleaning up Public Square, new restaurants, a new movie theater, buses moved away from Public Square to the intermodal center, and no more canopy.
“It was a decision that had to be made. We made the decision,” he remembers. “It's the right decision. If you look around, you see all the storefronts that were vacant at the time. You know, you couldn't even get a cup of coffee downtown.”
“In 10 years, I’d like to see the interior [of Public Square] finished, the fountain back. I just want to make sure the city maintains the beautifulness of Public Square, of the downtown, as we have done, and encourage more working-class people to live downtown,” Leighton added.
But despite the beautification improvements, crime is still prevalent in the city, something that Lehighton says is more than an issue in Wilkes-Barre.
“There's been violent crime across this country. It's not a Wilkes-Barre problem, it's not a Wyoming Valley problem; it's a national problem that needs to be rectified,” he said.