The Broad Street Market.
The Broad Street Market has hired Ashlee O. Dugan, a member of the market corporation’s board and the founder of a local food-recovery organization, as its newest full-time interim manager, market board members confirmed Friday.
Dugan, who will assume her role on June 18, will be leaving her current job at the Pennsylvania Downtown Center, where she worked as a membership and marketing coordinator. She will be replacing Len Cobosco, from the Camp Hill accounting firm Carey Associates, who came on as an interim manager in June of 2013.
Cobosco will remain employed by the market as a part-time financial manager, board members confirmed.
Officially, Dugan said Friday, the position is transitional, since the market’s operations and organizational structure are still under review by the Broad Street Market Task Force, which Mayor Eric Papenfuse appointed shortly after his inauguration in January. The market may open the search for a permanent manager again following the task force’s recommendations, she said.
Amy Hill, a volunteer board member doing public relations outreach for the market, noted Friday that Dugan has a “legacy connection” to the market. Dugan’s great-grandfather, Gilbert S. Miller, operated a butcher stand at the market from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s.
“She’s just such a dynamic young lady. She represents the best the market has to offer,” Hill said. “It’s exactly what the market needs right now.”
Jonathan Bowser, president of the market’s board, applauded Dugan’s hire, noting her “extensive background” in agriculture, food systems and urban revitalization. “She has a diverse skill set that is much needed at the Broad Street Market,” he said.
Dugan is also familiar with the market’s operations. Her wife, Erin, is the manager at Harvest, a sustainable farmer’s co-op in the market’s brick building. Dugan was also one of three founders of the Broad Street Market Alliance, which publicized a proposal last October for an overhaul of the market’s management and operations. The alliance, whose other founding members were Josh Kesler and Julia James, still maintains an active website where that proposal can be viewed.
Kesler, also a market board member, is the developer of the Millworks building next door to the market, soon to be home to artists’ studios, a beer garden and a farm-to-table restaurant.
For the past two weeks, Dugan has worked part-time for the market as a social media consultant, following the expiration of the market’s contract with tla Communications, a public relations firm owned by today’s the day Harrisburg founder Tara Leo Auchey.
Dugan is also the founder of The Greenhouse, an organization she created in August of 2012 with the goal of locating and saving food that might otherwise go to waste.
The Greenhouse’s mission, according to its Facebook page, is “transforming Harrisburg, Pennsylvania from a food desert into a food oasis by recovering food that would have otherwise been wasted, preserving it in healthy and creative ways and then distributing it to the community.”
For more about the Broad Street Market’s history and the efforts of the task force, read our full-length feature in the April issue of TheBurg.
The packed first public meeting of the Broad Street Market Task Force, held at the market’s stone building in March.
