The holiday season in Happy Valley is one of our annual downtimes – those weeks or months every year when the 45,000 Penn State students mostly leave the area and we find ourselves back to small-town, middle-of-nowhere status. Fall commencement was held on Saturday, Dec. 17 (Penn State graciously delayed the start that morning due to some hazardous travel conditions in the area), and classes for spring semester don’t begin until Monday, Jan. 9. Three full weeks of downtime.
That downtime is helped this year by an additional exodus of local Penn State fans headed to Los Angeles for the Penn State football team’s Jan. 2 game in the Rose Bowl. And there are others like my family and I who are spending the holidays in slightly-colder-than-normal Orlando. I ask you, what kind of holiday season are you having if you’re not jockeying tens of thousands of others inside the amusement parks some consider the happiest places on earth?
Of course that’s assuming you can even get a reservation to enter the parks in Disney World in Florida (I can’t speak for the Penn State fans in L.A. trying to get into Disneyland). The days of just showing up whenever you want, parking your car in the Hook lot and riding the monorail to the entrance to the Magic Kingdom are long gone. We made reservations for one day. (Not everyone in our family appreciates spending time at the Mouse’s house.) And no, for those thinking it, I do not get a discount to park in the Hook lot (shocking, I know). Although Peter Pan does find it troubling that we named our son James!
In any case, while I’m sitting here in Orlando gazing out at the palm trees and EPCOT’s Spaceship Earth in the distance, reflecting on these changes that have made our vacation a little more work, I’m also reflecting on the last year in State College and looking forward to what the year 2023 will bring to Happy Valley. And, as usual, in my best “Bob the Builder” mode, I’m mainly thinking of those things about State College that make me say, “Can we fix it? Yes, we can!”
Therefore, here is a list of the three items I’d like to “Bob the Builder” to make Happy Valley a better place.
First, Atherton Street has been getting a facelift for the last several years and construction on the section from Curtin Road to Westerly Parkway has stopped until spring. As most of the previous construction took place on North Atherton Street, which I generally avoid, I hadn’t noticed this little issue in past years. The road is in really nasty shape in several spots and we’re heading into the depths of winter, especially at the heavily traveled intersection with College Ave. Could PennDOT lay down one layer of asphalt – or something — over the road, to help both those of us driving on it and the snowplows? Maybe it’s too late to do now, but since this construction won’t be complete until 2024 I would suggest PennDOT consider it for next winter’s work stoppage.
Second, when my wife and I bought our first home in Orlando in the late 1980s we were thrilled to have this great Bob the Builder-ish store nearby: Home Depot. We’d never heard of it before, but it was a fantastic place for homeowners. Since then the company has grown to be the largest home improvement retailer by sales in the country. Fast forward 20 years and in 2008 Home Depot made its arrival here in State College. Ever since then, I’ve wondered what they did to anger Patton Township. Making a left turn from Valley Vista Drive onto Green Tech Drive and into the Home Depot parking lot requires sitting at what has to be the slowest red left-turn light in all of Happy Valley. I’ve sat there countless times with no other cars in sight, and waited what felt like minutes just to get a green turn signal. And, in what seems to me to be a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face, the Patton Township Municipal Building and Police Station have to wait to exit Green Tech Drive at that same light. Could Patton Township flip that red turn signal to a flashing yellow left-turn arrow as many other intersections around the area have done?
Third, the first time I ever ate at a Chick-fil-A was in early 1986 in the Florida Mall in Orlando. Back then they were primarily a mall-based eatery, and in the almost 40 years since they’ve grown into the largest fast-food chicken chain in the country by sales. During those years I’ve stopped at CFAs up and down the East Coast and seen their popularity. When they opened their first free-standing store in State College, I thought it might be busy but we’ve seen they’ve been more than busy. So busy they closed for months to renovate and alleviate the traffic issues that resulted from being so busy. Except the best laid plans don’t always work and in the immortal words from Field of Dreams, “If you build it, he will come.” Since Chick-fil-A reopened recently I’ve driven by a few times and found the lines sometimes still out onto Atherton Street. So here’s my fix: build a second location on the south side of town. There are four McDonald’s in town. Two Wendy’s. Three Taco Bells. Why not two Chick-fil-As? Somebody at CFA headquarters in Atlanta should make this a reality.
As Bob the Builder and the Can-Do Crew show that “The Fun Is In Getting It Done!”, it would be nice to have these fixes to make Happy Valley more fun in 2023. Happy New Year!
