WCI Partners may be interested in restoring and repurposing the historic Moose Lodge in Midtown Harrisburg.
WCI Partners is eyeing the former Ronald H. Brown Charter School site, which it would like to restore and convert to a mix of commercial and residential space.
WCI President David Butcher confirmed that the Harrisburg-based developer is interested in the property, but would offer few additional details, saying that a plan had not been finalized.
“We are looking at a potential mixed-use project there and are currently doing our due diligence,” said Butcher.
The property consists of four individual parcels along the 900-block of N. 3rd Street. It includes the 38,000-square-foot Moose Temple lodge at the corner of N. 3rd and Boas streets and three much smaller, dilapidated townhouses. According to a legal notice in PennLive, the sales price is $900,000.
For-profit charter school company Mosaica Education bought the property group in 2000 for $6.6 million, contracting with Ronald Brown to run the school. The buildings have been empty since 2005, after the Harrisburg school district’s Board of Control refused to reauthorize Ronald Brown’s five-year charter.
In 2010, local businessman Phil Dobson bought the properties at judicial tax sale for $188,000, flipping them back to Mosaica a few months later for $320,000.
The property group originally included the old Boas School at the corner of Forster and Boas streets. That parcel was sold in 2009 and now houses an executive-style apartment building.
In October 2014, a federal judge placed Atlanta-based Mosaica in receivership after the company defaulted on $20 million in debt. The receiver is now disposing of some of Mosaica’s real estate holdings in an attempt to turn around the ailing chain of charter schools.
A hearing on whether to approve the sale of the properties to WCI is slated for March 25 in U.S. District Court in Atlanta.
The Harrisburg Moose Temple lodge was built in 1924, designed in the Beaux Arts style by renowned Harrisburg architect Clayton J. Lappley.
Disclosure: Alex Hartzler, publisher of TheBurg, is a principal with WCI Partners LP.
