A 175-foot crack in the floor at Penn House concerns Andy Brown, director of Human Service Programs, enough to close the community center at 1035 Pa. for 10 days for repairs.

To ensure the safety of its 900 monthly visitors, a noted community center will be shutting down temporarily.

Penn House, 1035 Pa., will be closing for seven to 10 days while repairs are completed on a 175-foot meandering crack caused by shifting in the 25-year-old concrete slab foundation.

“We don’t want anybody to get hurt or accidentally interfere with the repair,” said Andy Brown, director of Human Service Programs at Penn House. “It will actually be easier for us to shut down.”

To prevent the shifting, Concrete Inc. of Lawrence, chosen from seven other bidders, will place 4- to 6-foot metal reinforcement bars, before pouring the concrete, said Tracy Dover, a supervisor at the company.

The $5,000 repairs were made possible by a city-grant announced in September.

Penn House, which volunteers built in a day in 1981 after dismantling its rundown predecessor, assists the needy with clothes, food, utility bills and prescription drug payments.

Brown said that staff would still be at Penn House to redirect people to other centers, such as the Social Service League Store at 905 R.I., and the Ballard Community Center at 708 Elm St.

But the social character of Penn House familiar to so many will be missed – if only briefly.

“It’s not an enormous big deal,” said Linda Clark, 45, a musician who has lived out of her 1974 Ford truck off and on for the last several years. “But it’s a support system. It’s an addiction. They do so much just by acknowledgment.”