Hispanic Center to own Elks hall - The organization is expected to take over payments on a mortgage that will finance a $3.7 million renovation of the historic building at Fifth and Franklin streets

The Daniel Torres Hispanic Center will own and use the former Elks Club at Fifth and Franklin streets after the deteriorating mansion gets a $3.7 million renovation, officials said Monday.

The center won't have to move far: It rents space in The Berkshire building at Fifth and Washington streets. The center will use the $130,000 it pays annually in rent to pay off a mortgage on the Elks building, Adam Mukerji, city economic development manager, told City Council.

First the building must be renovated, beginning with a new roof.

"If we have a severe winter, that roof will come down," Mukerji said. "We want to put a new roof on it before winter."

Council unanimously agreed to take back the building from the Greater Berks Development Fund, which bought the building in 1993 with a $123,000 loan from the city.

That contract required Greater Berks to keep the building in good repair, which it claims it has. Council has charged for two years, however, that Greater Berks has let the building rot by not fixing the badly leaking roof until city inspectors forced it to do so.

Under an agreement with Greater Berks, the city will transfer ownership of the building to the nonprofit agency Our City Reading, which will seek grants and a mortgage for the renovations.

Once those are complete, the Hispanic Center will buy the building by taking over the mortgage payments, Mukerji said.

The city loan had come from a bond issue. The contract required the city, rather than Greater Berks, to make the loan payments. Mukerji said that loan is down to $110,000 and that the city payoff will continue.

Council members said that although the city probably should take Greater Berks to court for breaching the maintenance clause, their priority was getting the building renovated rather than starting a yearslong court battle.

Businessman Horatio Trexler had the building constructed as a home in 1869. In 1906 it was bought by the Elks, who added ballrooms, a rooftop garden and basement bowling alley.