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maker eyeing city site, council hears that deal - and
other development - depend on reorganizing Reading's community
development department, Albert R. Boscov tells officials.
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The following article was published on Feb. 20, 2002 Reading
Times.
By Jason Brudereck, Eagle/Times
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A
fuel-cell battery manufacturer might build a 38,000-square-foot
plant on Morgantown Road, Albert R. Boscov told City Council
on Tuesday. The chairman of Boscov's Inc. added that Mayor
Joseph D. Eppihimer's dream of building a hotel across
from the Sovereign Center is not dead. But for proposals
such as these to continue to develop in Reading, he said,
council must approve a proposal from Eppihimer's
administration to create two economic and neighborhood
development positions in the city community development
department. These initiatives and a plan to put an office
building in the 400 block of Penn Street are all proposed
for Reading's Keystone Opportunity Zones, in which property
owners don't have to pay state or local taxes through
2013. Nan F. Balmer, community development director, said
the proposals would require council to transfer some grants
to the Greater Berks Development Fund and make other approvals.
The plant would be built by Powerzinc Electric Inc., a
California-based battery manufacturer that focuses on
Electric scooters used primarily in China and Taiwan,
according to the company's Web site. The company must
determine if the batteries can be made at a competitive
cost in Reading, Boscov said. The plant would be built
on land owned by Greater Berks next to a Brentwood Industries
facility that received $3.9 million in federal funding
for expansion projects last year in an opportunity zone.
The plan to build the hotel stalled last year after Harrisburg-area
developer John O. Vartan scaled it back. Also, city officials
had questioned if it would be wise to have another hotel
so close to the LIncoln Plaza Hotel & Conference Center
at Fifth and Washington streets. The city will pay almost
$300,000 annually of the LIncoln's debt until the hotel
makes a profit because the LIncoln received about $6.45
million in loans from the city's federal Community Development
funds before it opened in 1998. "The mayor still
feels another hotel is critical to bringing conventions
to the Sovereign Center," Boscov told council. Boscov
said he and Eppihimer plan to reopen meetings with Vartan.
Eppihimer did not attend the meeting Tuesday. Even if
the hotel isn't built, another company is interested in
building a small office building there, Boscov said. That
property is now a parking lot owned by the Reading Redevelopment
Authority, which would need to agree to transfer the land
for anything to be built there. For these and other projects
to move forward, council must support a reorganization
of Balmer's department, Boscov said. "It's impossible
for her staff to do it all," he said. The proposal
could cost $120,000 in annual salaries, or $32,000 more
than the city paid for two vacant positions that would
be eliminated under the proposal. Council President Vaughn
D. Spencer said council would support some sort of reorganization.
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