plans for the historic five-story property to become a boutique hotel <\/a>last fall. But those plans were scrapped, and the Elks building was put on the market. <\/p>\nIn June, King bought the building for around $3 million in cash, and now he says he has some big plans for the property. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to do a lot of commercial space and help small businesses. So, any small business owners, we\u2019ll try to help those guys out. We\u2019re growing and providing job opportunities for the community,\u201d King said. <\/p>\n
King also plans on adding residential space and even an upscale steakhouse that will be located on the first floor, he says. <\/p>\n
But he and his general contractor, Jay Ammon, say there\u2019s a lot of work that needs to be done first inside, which is why they have a $30 million budget. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a mess, an absolute mess. There\u2019s a lot of work to be done. Structurally, it\u2019s decent, but we\u2019re going to have to do a lot of structural stuff in there,\u201d Ammon said. <\/p>\n
Both say they have no plans on changing the exterior of the building and wish to preserve the historical building.<\/p>\n
The reason King says he bought the Elks Temple building is so he can help bridge a gap in the community. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn this neighborhood, I used to pass the building all the time. I was considered low-class and barely branching into the middle class. I want to actually provide opportunities for people coming out of these lower-income communities,\u201d King said. <\/p>\n
King says he hopes to finish the project in the next three years and is also looking at other properties in New Bern with plans on building a western-style speakeasy. <\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 WITN. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CRAVEN COUNTY, N.C. (WITN) – From a bold belt buckle to his signature cowboy hat, Deion King knows…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[104,108,6013,4338,6014,6015,107,6016,105,106],"class_list":{"0":"post-7647","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bern","8":"tag-bern","9":"tag-craven-county","10":"tag-deion-king","11":"tag-economic-impact","12":"tag-elks-building","13":"tag-elks-temple-building","14":"tag-new-bern","15":"tag-property","16":"tag-witn","17":"tag-witn-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}