An 85-year-old downtown State College apartment and office building is likely to be purchased and converted into a boutique hotel.
State College Borough Planning Director Ed LeClear said at Monday night’s borough council meeting that a company from the Midwest that purchases historic buildings and converts them into hotels is expected to buy the Glennland Building, 205 E. Beaver Ave.
The company, which has not been named, specializes in maintaining the façades of historic buildings and retrofitting the inside for boutique hotels.
‘They would be preserving the Glennland as a structure then changing its use from apartment to hotel,’ LeClear said.
No plan has yet to be submitted for the building but borough staff have met with the prospective buyers and discussed zoning requirements.
When it opened in 1933, the Glennland Building was the largest apartment building in State College with 40 units and housed the area’s first indoor pool and first residential elevator. The pool closed in 1967 and was converted into offices.
Listed in the National Register of Historic places, the building rents apartments to graduate students and professionals and office space. Residents were recently notified their leases would not be renewed because the owners were selling the property.
In May 2017, borough council approved a zoning ordinance amendment to reduce the area for non-owner occupied housing in the Signature Property Development area of the Commercial Incentive District. The amendment essentially narrowed the area where large, primarily student-occupied housing complexes could be built.
The Glennland’s location was left outside that area, though building co-owner Nancy Slagle spoke in opposition to the amendment. She said the building has deteriorated over the years and the cost of fending off that deterioration and ultimate obsolescence was prohibitive.
She and property appraiser Chris Aumiller said at the time that the owners and the borough would benefit if the existing building could be torn down and a new one built to the maximum, with student housing in mind.
“One of the last things I want to do is see it torn down.” Slagle said. ‘The building is deteriorating and it’s just going to keep going that way and you’re not going to like what you see.’
With the expected new owners, the Glennland Building may no longer house apartments for the first time in its history, but would avoid the fate of being razed.
