HUNTINGTON BEACH : Elks Coming Home, Sell Lodge Building
After 19 years in Fountain Valley, the Huntington Beach Elks Lodge will finally be coming home.
The two-story building that housed the lodge at the southwest corner of Talbert Avenue and Ward Street was recently purchased by Burnham USA for about $5 million, said Bob Cooley, secretary of the lodge.
The 791-member group has until June 30 to leave Fountain Valley.
The Elks are building a 13,000-square-foot, multipurpose facility at 7711 Talbert Ave., three miles from the present building. Construction is scheduled to be completed by early fall.
Cooley said members of Local 1959 are glad the new lodge will finally be in Huntington Beach. Fountain Valley has been the home of the Huntington Beach Elks since 1971.
“We feel we made a good deal,” Cooley said, indicating that the new facility will be debt-free. “There isn’t anybody who’s not happy with the sale.”
The 3.7 acres the lodge owned are a “prime location,” said Scott T. Burnham, president of Burnham USA, a Newport Beach-based development and investment firm. Declining to give the company’s exact plans for the property, Burnham said the Elks Lodge will be razed in anticipation of another building’s being constructed there. The site would be suitable for either office or retail use, he said.
The Huntington Beach Elks will be meeting at the Westminster Elks Lodge until the new site is completed, Cooley said.
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