“You can’t go anywhere in Scranton without finding something awesome to eat. That’s why I love it.”
You’d be hard-pressed to find a more vocal supporter of Scranton and NEPA than Tom Borthwick. He’s West Side through and through – born and raised and never planning to leave. He’s a successful businessman of varied interests. And he also dons a litany of proverbial caps — educator, writer, Scranton School Board member, real estate entrepreneur, café and pizza shop and craft cidery owner.
He’s a man of many talents, trades and pursuits. All of which he devotes to enriching his community, his city – the one and only place he ever wants to call home. And none of which, he coincidentally concedes, would ever compete with his truest callings – loving husband and father of two boys.
Tom came this way via your standard, well-rounded West Scranton High School education. Add to that a BA with Teaching Certification from Marywood University. Pile on a few graduate degrees in Creative Writing from Wilkes University. Seems like a lot? Sure, but Tom, in his relatively short existence, tends to see it, as simply making a lifelong career of being a problem solver. And that, in his estimation is the NEPA way. It’s what makes it such a great place to be.
We caught up with Tom at Electric City Ciderworks, his craft cidery in Old Forge. And just as the little samples of his freshest batch of cider lined up on the bar, so, too, did our questions – most notably, Why NEPA?
How long have you lived in NEPA?
All my 42 years.
What do you love about your town?
I love the neighborhoods and the community. Actually, one of my favorite things about Scranton is that I can’t go anywhere without knowing somebody. And, even if I don’t, I know someone they know and we’re friends by the time they leave. That’s it. That’s definitely my favorite thing about Scranton.
What’s your favorite NEPA restaurant?
I guess favorite is the wrong word because there are things that you like for different reasons and at different times. The restaurant I enjoy the most, that I enjoy going to the most with my small family is Pronto in West Side. If I was going to have a big family dinner and like have just a quality meal that is unique and really well done, I’m going to AV Lounge. Those are probably my top two. If you ask my kids, “Hey, where do you want to go?” They’ll say, “Let’s go to Pronto.” They take care of us.
What’s your favorite thing to do in NEPA?
Whatever my favorite thing to do is going to be, it’s going to involve my kids. Honestly, it goes back to the last one. I’m going to say that my favorite thing to do is to go to a restaurant with my kids. There are no distractions like there would be at home. You can just sit there and have a conversation over a great meal. And I truly love doing that with my kids. That’s probably my favorite thing to do.
What’s next for you?
Ok. So, I semi-intentionally mixed my personal and professional life. So there really is no difference. The next thing for me is that we’re building some really nice apartments in Downtown Scranton. We bought three buildings on the square. And I’m really proud to be part of the revitalization of the city that I love. We’re going to put a second cidery location in Downtown Scranton. We have Chef Von in one of our buildings. We have DaVinci Pizza, our pizza place in our other building. We’ll have the cidery there as well. It’s on the same block where John Basalyga just opened A’tera 519. We just have a lot of really cool plans. And I’m really excited. Scranton is booming right now. You got all these new and old restaurants and businesses and they’re all successful and thriving right now.
Where do you see NEPA heading in the future?
I think it’s only getting better. And, in a weird way, I think the pandemic kind of accelerated Scranton’s growth and recovery. I’ve known some people from New York who moved here to what I would normally think were expensive apartments, and they were like, “Are you kidding me? This is like one-tenth of what my rent was in the city.” And they could still run to New York whenever they wanted in a matter of a few hours.
Then, when everybody started working from home, Scranton kind of became one of those cities that attracted people from all over. And it all just makes sense, because our standard of living is high, but our cost of living is low. And if you want to go to Philly. Go ahead. You could go to an Eagles game and come home that night. You’re two hours from New York City. You’re four and a half hours from Boston and D.C. You can live a good life here and still access anything you want to access. And that’s just one of the reasons I love it here.
Why NEPA?
There’s just no other community like it. My cousins come in from Boston and they load up on meat of all things (laughs). Because they can’t get anything like Murazzi up there. I have cousins from South Carlolina and when they come up, they load up on snack foods like pretzels. I mean Pennsylvania is like the pretzel capital of America and we don’t even think of that stuff. It’s just normal to us. And a lot of people don’t realize how good they had it until they leave. I’m happy to be here and to raise my family here. I’m excited to invest in what I see as a renaissance here because of the culture and the community.
