Hershey School seeks to develop chocolate factory

The Hershey School, whose recent land acquisitions include a golf course and a roadside attraction called Pumpkin World, now has designs on acquiring the world's largest chocolate factory for redevelopment into condos, retail stores, a retirement community, and a boutique hotel.

The ambitious project would beautify the bucolic central Pennsylvania town of Hershey but also would divert tens of millions of dollars, perhaps more than $100 million, away from the school's core mission of educating poor U.S. children.

The so-called downtown project has advanced quietly even as the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office is pursuing an investigation into prior land purchases by the officers responsible for the Hershey School, headed by one of the state's most powerful Republicans, LeRoy S. Zimmerman.

The school is the charitable legacy of candy company founder Milton S. Hershey and his wife, Catherine, who planned for the company's profits to fund the charitable trust for the education and lodging of impoverished children from Pennsylvania and beyond.

Zimmerman, the $500,000-a-year chairman of the Hershey charitable organization, is the leading advocate for the redevelopment project, and a possible land deal was disclosed in a public regulatory filing by the Hershey Co. in March. The charity confirmed its interest Friday. The factory is scheduled to close next year, and production is shifting to newer plants.

No developer has been named, though one of the firms retained to develop a revitalization plan for Hershey in recent years was Delta Development Group Inc., which is partially owned by Zimmerman's son-in-law Anthony Seitz.

The lobbying and government-affairs firm in Mechanicsburg was paid $290,000 in fees by companies controlled by the Hershey charity, according to the charity's 990 IRS tax form last year.

Seitz also briefed high-level managers in the Hershey charity on redevelopment options in a several-hour meeting organized by Zimmerman at the Hershey Lodge in early 2009, according to two people with direct knowledge of the meeting.

Seitz said in an e-mail Friday that Delta Development had not been retained by the charity to provide planning services or a report for any of the "current efforts with regard to downtown parcels, including the Hershey Company property, the post office site, or any other location."