The city of Hollywood, Fla., has voted to give a 90-day reprieve to a local Holocaust museum that is facing a foreclosure lawsuit.
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that in 2004, the city's Community Redevelopment Agency loaned the Holocaust Documentation & Education Center $1.2 million to purchase its building in the Hollywood's downtown district. The center originally was not required to begin loan payments until 2007, which was then extended to 2010. To date, however, the center has yet to repay any of the principal and interest it owes on the loan.
As part of the reprieve, the city instructed the center to get three appraisals and seek a mortgage from a private lender. However, Hollywood Mayor Peter Bober stressed that the center needs to meet its financial obligations.
‘People who want to pay try to pay,’ says Bober. ‘You have to accept the fact that the center doesn't want to pay. We have given them time, we have found them in default and they have come to us with an offer of nothing.’
The museum's collection includes thousands of artifacts, documents and photographs from the Nazi genocide era, along with 2,400 original oral histories of Holocaust survivors.
