DAYTON — Benham’s Restaurant and Catering intends to continue operating despite a mortgage foreclosure and upcoming sheriff sale of its building at 209 Warren St.

The holder of the mortgage is Goodwill Easter Seals of Miami Valley, which initiated the foreclosure in December and which is interested in bidding on the property at the sheriff sale, Steven Goubeaux, Goodwill Easter Seals’ director of marketing and communications, said Tuesday.

The nonprofit organization that serves people with disabilities in a 23-county area owns nearby property and wants to buy the Benham’s property to accommodate long-term expansion plans, Goubeaux said.

Goubeaux said Goodwill Easter Seals officials have been working in cooperation with Benham’s owners Bill and Becky Howser and if the organization is the successful bidder at sheriff’s sale auction, it would allow the restaurant and catering company to continue to operate at the location, perhaps for several years.

“Our goal is for them to do exactly what they do best, which is to run a great restaurant and to serve incredible food,” Goubeaux said.

But Goubeaux cautioned there is no guarantee that Goodwill Easter Seals will be the winning bidder. “If someone is in there to run up the price, we won’t do it,” he said of the purchase. That would leave the Howsers in the position of negotiating with a new landlord about remaining open at that location.

Howser, whose catering company traces its Dayton-area roots to 1934, said the poor economy and changes in the catering industry have combined to hurt his business for the last several years.

For now says Howser, “It’s business as usual. ... We’re not going out of business.”

According to the mortgage foreclosure filed by Goodwill Easter Seals against Benham’s, the Howsers and other creditors in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court, the restaurant and catering company is at least $93,600 behind on its mortgage payments.

The mortgage began in 1998 as a $220,000 promissory note borrowed by the Howsers from National City Bank (now PNC Bank). PNC Bank sold the mortgage to Goodwill Easter Seals in December, after the Howsers had fallen behind on their payments. Goubeaux said the organization purchased the mortgage from the bank because it was interested in the property. Judge Timothy N. O’Connell issued a default judgment in the case March 11 in favor of Goodwill Easter Seals. The sheriff’s foreclosure sale on the property and two adjacent parcels will be June 17 in the county administration building.