Catasauqua Borough Councilwoman Christine Weaver resigned from council last week. She was in the second year of her second term.

“When I ran the first time, I only expected to be on council for one term,” Weaver said. “I initially ran to work with the group interested in developing the brownfield site that we now call Iron Works. The first phase of the project is completed with the new municipal building.

“The endless hours working were exhausting and yet rewarding,” she said. “Getting all the approvals and working through all the concerns people had for the new municipal building made me a better negotiator.”

Weaver spearheaded the effort to get the municipal building from conception to completion.

“I was not the only one who advocated for the Iron Works project,” she said. “It would not have been done without the work of other members of council and (former borough manager) Gene Goldfeder.”

According to Weaver, the time commitment on the municipal building started to impact not only her real estate business, but also her personal life.

“We have a lot more details, decisions and ideas to go,” she said. “The plus part is we have a developer for the brownfield that shares our vision of what this project could be. Iron Works will be the project that impacts the future of the borough, and it needs to be developed with a plan that serves the people of the borough along with the developer.

“The borough has changed, and a lot of people in town want to go back to where Catasauqua was 20 years ago. But that is not an option. We need to create something familiar, but meeting the challenges of today,” she said. “It’s not often that someone who has not lived in the borough forever gets a chance to work on the future. I am grateful for the opportunity that was given to me.”

Weaver said she is willing to turn over the reins to someone else.

“In any major project like Iron Works, where the goal is to rejuvenate an area, it takes a lot of different looks from different people. Iron Works should bring the borough sustainable tax revenues that make us a better community,” she said. “We need to make sure that this is a project the community is proud of.”

Weaver realizes the final report on her efforts may be years in the making, but she is pleased with the effort she started.

“Many people in the borough helped me with this project. We all had fun at the Blast parties and celebrated our success. I got to meet a lot of nice people that I would never have met if I wasn’t on council,” she said. “A thank you to each and every one of them.”