Controversy brewing over hospital plans to demolish Allentown mansion for medical building

St. Luke's University Health Network has indicated it plans to go through with the demolition of its former Annex Building, also known as the Donecker Mansion, at 1801 Hamilton St. in Allentown, despite protests from a local neighborhood group.

The hospital intends to build a 30,000-square-foot, $8 million medical office building that would house primary care and specialty medical practices.

The West Park Civic Association has begun an online petition asking the health network to change its plan to demolition the colonial revival-style property that is considered part of Allentown’s “Millionaires Row.”

The group is asking that the hospital, instead, incorporate the structure, built in 1925, into the overall design of the planned medical center.

Tom Yuracka, president of the association, acknowledged that the association has no authority over the property. It is not in the West Park Historic District, which ends at 17th and Hamilton streets. The building is at 18th and Hamilton streets. There are no historical protections on the building.

Yuracka suggested that St. Luke’s take an example from Lehigh Valley Health Network, which repurposed the Inn at Moselem Springs in Berks County to a similar medical center.

“They did a beautiful job on a similar building, architecturally speaking,” Yuracka said. “There are always creative ways of doing things.”

Mariella Miller, senior director of corporate communications for St. Luke’s, said the hospital did initially look to include the building’s existing structure into the planned medical center.

“We had an architect, EwingCole of Philadelphia, look at the building to see if we could repurpose the building or incorporate it into a medical building,” she said.

She said the architect determined that the project would cost more than $1 million more to incorporate the existing building.

“In this economic climate, we thought that money would be better spent on people,” Miller said. “We like the building, but we like people more.”

The civic association, however, countered that $1 million are only between 10 percent and 12 percent of the total cost of the project, which members considered a worthwhile expense to preserve a piece of Allentown’s history.

Yuracka said the property was built by the Donecker family. The Bronstein family, which ran Trojan Powder, lived in the mansion from 1936 until what was then Allentown Osteopathic Hospital bought the property in 1984.

In 1987, Yuracka said, the mansion was on the West Park Civic Association’s annual house tour.

While it had been used since the late 1980s as office and meeting space, the building has been sitting vacant for more than a year, Miller said. Offices that had been in the building had to be moved out after the boiler broke down and couldn’t be replaced.

Miller noted that the health network tried to sell the building, but had no takers.

Yuracka said most people were unaware the building was slated to be taken down.

He said the association’s hope is to raise awareness of the plan and gather support from the community to preserve the building.

Yuracka said his hope is that public outcry will be enough to show the health network that the building is worth preserving, and that the petition on Change.org will be influential in the network’s plans for the property.

“We’re still hoping to have an effect on them [St. Luke’s],” Yuracka said. “Our position is that we’ll have a positive outcome.”

Miller said the demolition could happen “in the next 30 to 60 days.”

Source: LVB