The long-planned 220-room Doubletree Convention Center Hotel on Penn Street has received a $500,000 bolster from the state.
The developers, led by retailer Albert R. Boscov, had applied for an additional $2.5 million state grant.
“The governor came in with $3 million,” Boscov said Thursday.
He said the project earlier had been approved for $14 million in grants from the state’s Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program, but the developers applied for more.
A 1947 topographic map of the Reading, Pennsylvania area. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
At the request of retailer Albert R. Boscov, City Council on Monday approved adding a $1 million city loan to the financing package for the $59 million Doubletree Hotel that Boscov’s nonprofit agency is trying to bring downtown.
Boscov’s Our City Reading is planning the 200-room hotel to be built in the 700 block of Penn Street opposite the Sovereign Center.
The city loan would not come from local tax revenues but from federal funds – so-called Section 108 money – that the city gets to fund development projects.
Boscov’s nonprofit has borrowed millions of dollars in Section 108 funds in the past. Boscov noted that it’s always paid off the loans early, never taking the allowed 20 years, and this year will make a $1.5 million early repayment of another Section 108 loan.
