The Millworks plans to expand into this building at N. 4th and Sayford streets. The main Millworks restaurant and gallery space is the brick building to the right.
Two once-paired buildings soon may be reunited in use, as the Millworks plans to relocate its small brewery to an industrial structure across a narrow street.
On Monday, the Harrisburg Zoning Hearing Board approved an application that allows owner Joshua Kesler to move the Millworks brewery operations into a brick building at the rear of his restaurant, directly across Sayford Street.
“The genesis of this application is really an expansion of the Millworks operation,” said Kesler’s attorney, Ambrose Heinz of Harrisburg-based Stevens & Lee. “There’s currently a micro-brewing operation within the Millworks . . . that would be relocated into this facility.”
In 2014, Kesler bought the long-vacant Stokes Millworks building and transformed it into a now-popular restaurant and art space, later adding a small brewery.
Then, last November, he bought the Millworks’ sister building, a two-story, 8,640-square-foot structure across the street at 1321 N. 4th St. That building was constructed in 1939 to store lumber and support the manufacture of wood products for the Stokes Millworks.
In 1998, Thomas Slothower bought the auxiliary building on 4th Street from the Stokes family and used it for his own living and storage space, before selling it to Kesler last year for $385,000, according to the city.
Kesler now plans to move the Millworks’ microbrewery operations and offices into the former lumber storage building, freeing up space for expansion of the restaurant. He also expects to carve out dedicated space for meetings and events in the brewery building.
“It is the expansion of the current operations of the Millworks,” Kesler told the board.
At the meeting, Kesler first needed a variance for the brewery use. Though the auxiliary building was long used for commercial/industrial purposes, it currently sits in the city’s “residential-medium” zoning district, which does not permit industrial uses, including for a brewery, by right.
Secondly, Kesler needed a special exception for nine parking spaces, as there is no off-street parking on the planned brewery site.
After over 2½ hours of testimony, the zoning board unanimously voted in favor of both of these measures.
The board, however, balked at a third application for zoning relief.
In this case, Kesler sought a variance to establish a surface parking lot encompassing an entire city block at Verbeke and James streets. Kesler has actually operated a gravel parking lot at this site for several years for use by Millworks patrons, but has not received zoning approval for it.
Kesler said that he believes that the existing gravel lot already complies with city regulations, a position that the city disputes.
The Millworks’ gravel parking lot at Verbeke and James streets. The Millworks restaurant can be seen in the background, on the right, and the future brewery building in the background, in the center of the picture.
Both the city’s Planning Bureau and Planning Commission had attempted to tie together the brewery building approvals with improvements to the parking lot a block away. Both bodies required, as a condition for approval, that Kesler “formalize” and improve the lot with paving, landscaping and sidewalk reconstruction.
Kesler then would have the city’s blessing for the 48-space lot to serve as accessory parking for both the new brewery and the Millworks restaurant.
The zoning board, however separated the issues. It approved the building variance and parking special exception for the brewery building, but struck the condition requiring Kesler to formalize and improve the existing gravel parking lot.
In light of this, Kesler withdrew his application for the parking lot variance, so board members did not vote on that related issue.
At the meeting, board members did not publicly explain why they voted the way they did or why, against the wishes of the city Planning Bureau and Planning Commission, they unlinked the building approvals with the parking lot improvements.
According to Kesler, it may be awhile before the Millworks expansion takes place. Due to material and labor shortages, the project’s construction timeline is “more than a year” away, he said.
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