Jan. 17--Reading Hospital, two women's shelters and the Reading School District want the right to use the Naval & Marine Reserve Center on Kenhorst Boulevard when it's abandoned next year.

To help decide who gets it, a newly formed city board called the Local Redevelopment Authority will conduct a public meeting on Jan. 28 to see what neighbors want.

That meeting will begin at 7 p.m. at the Seventh-day Adventist Church, 333 Kenhorst Blvd. The public can use the church parking lot at the rear, and the meeting will be conducted in the fellowship room on the lower level.

The reserve units are building a new center in Lehigh County that is expected to be complete by late 2010, when they will abandon the center and its nearly eight acres of land at 615 Kenhorst Blvd.

Federal law outlines a complex process to determine who gets an abandoned military facility, including creating a local redevelopment authority to make the decision, and seeking so-called notices of interest from local groups.

According to City Clerk Linda A. Kelleher, four groups have said they're interested in the site:

Reading Hospital wants the facility to house some of its administrative offi ces.

The Reading School District wants to create kindergarten cottages there and use the site for storage. School district offi cials could not be reached to comment on the idea.

Berks Women in Crisis and Mary's Shelter have filed a joint application to move their facilities there.

Kelleher said the authority is conducting the public meeting to see what future uses neighbors would support, and what uses they believe would serve the neighborhood.

The seven-member authority will use those ideas, the applications from interested groups and its own ideas to make its fi nal recommendation to the federal departments of Defense and Housing and Urban Development.

At that point, she said, it will conduct another public meeting to go over those ideas and its recommendation, but the federal agencies make the fi nal decision.

Members of the local redevelopment authority are City Council President Vaughn D. Spencer and Councilman Stephen P. Fuhs and Stratton P. Marmarou; Jack Knockstead, Maria Ballas, Ermete Raffaelli and Phillip C. Coles.

The authority has hired an adviser, Swiger Consulting Inc. of Stroudsburg, to help it in the process.

Contact reporter Don Spatz at 610-371-5027 or dspatz@readingeagle.com

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