Nearly three years ago, Wells Fargo & Co. completed its move out of downtown Reading. At the time, the San Francisco\u2011based bank said it simply had more real estate than it needed in Berks County.<\/p>\n
Employees were shifted from 600 Penn St. to the sprawling former Meridian Bank building on Meridian Boulevard in Spring Township.<\/p>\n
Last week, the Berks County commissioners announced their intention to buy that now underutilized Penn Street building and convert it into a new downtown government center.<\/p>\n
The move would free up the existing Berks County Services Center for the court system. Court\u2011related offices \u2014 the sheriff, clerk of courts and others \u2014 would relocate from the nearly century\u2011old courthouse next door into the more modern services center.<\/p>\n
Officials say renovating the 18\u2011story courthouse, built in 1931 and lacking the infrastructure required for today\u2019s technology, would cost upward of $100 million. By comparison, converting the four\u2011story former Wells Fargo building would cost a fraction of that.<\/p>\n
On paper, the plan seems logical. But Reading officials were not pleased. They said they were blindsided by the announcement, especially because the building is a key piece of their downtown revitalization strategy.<\/p>\n
One of their biggest concerns is the loss of another Penn Street property from the tax rolls.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve spoken with several people who have no stake in the matter, and they all said essentially the same thing: the city should be grateful that someone wants to occupy such a substantial building on Penn Street. It\u2019s not as if businesses are lining up to move in.<\/p>\n
The offices that are occupied are largely home health\u2011care agencies and nonprofits such as the Berks Coalition to End Homelessness.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s not the only underused office building downtown. Right across the street sits 645 Penn St., the former General Battery Corp. headquarters.<\/p>\n
How much commercial office space does Reading realistically need when so many companies have employees working remotely at least part of the week?<\/p>\n
As has long been the case in Reading, City Council and the mayor seem to be chasing rainbows. Buildings have deteriorated and even fallen down because of decades of indecision and missed opportunities.<\/p>\n
Having 300 nonjudicial county employees spending eight hours a day at Sixth and Penn would seem to strengthen the downtown economy, not weaken it. A worker on lunch break might be more inclined to walk a couple of blocks to the Reading Public Library or grab a meal at Ugly Oyster Drafthaus.<\/p>\n
And let\u2019s not forget: these county employees don\u2019t have to be in Reading at all. The county recently opened its South Campus in Mohnton and already had what it refers to as its North Campus, where the jail, Berks Heim and Agricultural Center are located.<\/p>\n
If the county wants to keep its workforce downtown \u2014 and fill a major building while doing it \u2014 that sounds like an opportunity the city should embrace, not resist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly three years ago, Wells Fargo & Co. completed its move out of downtown Reading. At the time,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1559,1560,128,130,129,706],"class_list":["post-193404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-opinion","tag-opinion-columnists","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-top-stories-reg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193404","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=193404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}