{"id":165841,"date":"2026-04-14T22:16:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T22:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/165841\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T22:16:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T22:16:12","slug":"reading-zoners-ok-plan-to-convert-historic-hawthorne-mansion-into-apartments-reading-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/165841\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading zoners OK plan to convert historic Hawthorne Mansion into apartments | Reading Area"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>READING, Pa. \u2013\u00a0The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.readingpa.gov\/images\/ZHB_decisions_agendas\/November_Agenda.pdf?6734d611\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Reading Zoning Hearing Board<\/a> voted Wednesday night to grant a special exception to allow the adaptive reuse of an historic property at 1501 Mineral Spring Road.<\/p>\n<p>The building, which is known as the Hawthorne Mansion, sits on 3.22 acres at the corner of Clymer Street and Mineral Spring Road.<\/p>\n<p>The mansion was built in 1878 by George Frederick Baer and was turned into an assisted living facility in the 1960s.<\/p>\n<p>The co-owners of record are Yellow Smidgen LLC, One Frog LLC and The Governors LLC.<\/p>\n<p>Dominic DeStefano with Yellow Smidgen testified during a hearing last month that he was seeking zoning relief to convert the 22,684-square-foot building into 19 apartment units.<\/p>\n<p>The property is in the R-3 Residential zone.<\/p>\n<p>Former Brewery Inn<\/p>\n<p>In another matter, the board voted to deny zoning relief for The Ace Lounge, LLC, 546 S. Ninth\u00a0St.<\/p>\n<p>Owners Adalbertos Acevedo and Hector Colon had asked for a special exception to allow a former non-conforming restaurant to operate as a bottle club, or BYOB, until a liquor license can be obtained.<\/p>\n<p>A special exception was also sought from parking requirements since the former use did not have any parking.<\/p>\n<p>The former restaurant was the Brewery Inn, a longtime popular dining location in the city.<\/p>\n<p>Rancho Merengue<\/p>\n<p>In new hearings, the board heard a request for a special exception from the owners of Rancho Merengue Inc., 101 and 103 S. 10th St.,\u00a0to expand the existing lounge use to allow a 100-seat restaurant in addition to the current use.<\/p>\n<p>The applicant also requested a variance to permit leased off-street parking spaces to be greater than 300 feet from the property.<\/p>\n<p>Attorney for the applicant Joan London said the business has operated as a lounge with a liquor license since 2006.<\/p>\n<p>London said the expanded use would include a rooftop deck, which would operate during the dining hours, which are expected to be 4 p.m. until 9 p.m., seven days per week.<\/p>\n<p>A decision is expected Dec. 9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013\u00a0The Reading Zoning Hearing Board voted Wednesday night to grant a special exception to allow the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[74724,74723,74728,74729,74726,74725,74727,308,62738,8891,74722,128,130,129,43515,74730],"class_list":{"0":"post-165841","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-ace-lounge","9":"tag-adalbertos-acevedo","10":"tag-brewery-inn","11":"tag-dominic-destefano","12":"tag-george-frederick-baer","13":"tag-hawthorne-mansion","14":"tag-hector-colon","15":"tag-inc","16":"tag-joan-london","17":"tag-llc","18":"tag-rancho-merengue","19":"tag-reading-city","20":"tag-reading-city-headlines","21":"tag-reading-city-news","22":"tag-reading-zoning-hearing-board","23":"tag-yellow-smidgen-llc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}