State Sen. David Argall wasn’t inside the Asa Packer Mansion for very long on July 28 when its curator, Ava Bretzik, cut right to the chase.

“Senator, we need a new roof,” Bretzik said.

Argall was in Jim Thorpe as part of a tour of his new district, which now includes Carbon County following boundaries defined by the Pennsylvania Legislative Reapportionment Committee and approved by the state Supreme Court.

Jim Thorpe Borough Council approved an application in March for a new statewide Local Share Account grant with funding slated to go toward repairs at the 1860s Italianate Villa style mansion, home to Asa Packer, founder of the of the Lehigh Valley Railroad and Lehigh University.

The municipality also plans on applying for an LSA grant, made up of gaming fees from Mount Airy Casino Resort, only available to economic development, community development and public interest projects in Monroe and contiguous counties.

“I’m really looking forward to working with you on this as your passion for the home and its history really comes through,” Argall told Bretzik and other Jim Thorpe officials on the tour. “When they were redoing the maps they were only going to give me half of Carbon County and I said, I want Jim Thorpe. Then they gave me the whole thing and I said, much better.”

Argall said when he started discussions about what he needed to learn more about during his late July trip to Carbon County, the Asa Packer Mansion came up very quickly.

According to estimates from engineering firm Barry Isett Associates, the mansion needs around $650,000 of capital improvement work, and when you factor in project contingencies and engineering costs, the total rises to $762,500.

The roof replacement, pegged at $320,000, makes up the biggest chunk of the project.

“When Mary Packer Cummings left the town the home in 1912 after she died, she didn’t really look down the road and into the future when it came to costs,” Bretzik said. “We’ll take anything we can get in terms of help for the upkeep. Yes, the borough owns the mansion, but it’s not fair to keep going to them for more and more. We are a nonprofit, so if organizations do want to contribute, they can write it off on their taxes.”

Still, help has been hard to come by, even from the university Packer started in 1865.

“We’ve asked Lehigh for financial help and we’ve been unsuccessful with that,” Bretzik said. “When we needed a roof in the 1970s, Lee Iacocca came here and told us, Lehigh is not in the business of fixing up old houses.”

Beyond the roof, the mansion also needs heating improvements including a gas furnace and heat pump replacement; decking replacement; and electrical upgrades.

“The house essentially needs to be rewired,” Bretzik said. “When we had someone come in and look at it, ‘oh my God’ was their response. That’s never a good sign.”

Statewide LSA money is being made available for the first time. Up until now only counties with gaming facilities, and those contiguous to it, were eligible for LSA grants.

“I understand there is going to be a lot more competition for those statewide grants than the local LSA grant,” Argall said. “One of reasons we now have a statewide program is that many counties weren’t eligible for anything.”

Jim Thorpe Borough Manager Maureen Sterner said the funding commitment letter approved by council in March for the statewide grant is made up of an $80,000 match from the borough, which will come out of its Mary Packer Cummings trust, and a $20,000 match from Jim Thorpe Lions Club, which will come out of revenues the organization receives from operating the mansion.

“We don’t expect to hear if we were successful with that grant until the fall,” Sterner said.

Greg Strubinger, council president, said at the time that he is very hopeful the grant will come through.

“Ava is starting her 46th year there and she has done so much for the home,” he said. “It goes without saying that she has a passion for the home and it’s more than just the physical attributes. She has looked into the family’s history and what they have done and shared all of that with the many folks who go there. This clearly means a lot to her.”

Bretzik said the mansion currently uses the money it makes off tour admission to do upgrades, but numbers have been skewed the past few years due to COVID-19.

The mansion was closed for tours in 2020 at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic and reopened last summer for weekend tours only.

“We’d have to do a lot of tours to pay for what we need to do right now,” she said. “This is a jewel of Pennsylvania, not just Carbon County. I traveled everywhere. You don’t see houses in tact like this. Unfortunately, people don’t miss something until it’s gone so I’m hoping that isn’t the case here.”