Elks, Builder OK Lease for Hotel, Lodge

An agreement has been signed between the Glendale Elks and a local developer to build a five-story hotel and lodge on the site of the club’s historic building, which was destroyed by arson more than four years ago.

A signing ceremony was held last Thursday after almost two years of negotiations.

The agreement grants the developer, the Howard-Platz Group of Glendale, a long-term lease on the property at 120 E. Colorado St., said P. Dennis Keenan, the club’s attorney. Terms of the agreement and financial arrangements have not been disclosed.

The developer plans to build a 162-room business-class hotel on the Colorado Street frontage and a three-story lodge to the rear, on Elk Street. A single 240-space garage with one level of subterranean parking will serve both facilities, Keenan said.

Only the gutted remnant of the 1917 lodge, which was listed on the city’s roster of historic places and had one of the largest auditoriums of any Elks facility in the nation, has occupied the site since the $2-million blaze in January, 1986.

Since the fire, the Elks operated out of a 1940s-era addition at the rear of the property until May, when they moved to rented quarters at the Pasadena Elks Lodge.

Demolition at the Glendale site is scheduled for mid-October. Excavation and construction is to begin early next year, with completion expected in the spring of 1992, said a spokeswoman for Michael Howard, project director.

The hotel will be a franchise of Compri, a nationwide chain based in Phoenix.

Before the fire, some members of the 122-year-old patriotic fraternal organization complained that the dilapidated old lodge was too large and too expensive for the club’s dwindling membership to maintain.

Cost of renovation was estimated at more than $1 million. The club had sought to have the building’s historic status removed so that it could be razed.