St. Stephen’s Episcopal School scrambles for solution as access to free breakfast, lunch program ends

January 21, 2020 | by Lawrance Binda

Free breakfast and lunch programs are in danger at St. Stephen’s Episcopal School.

St. Stephen’s Episcopal School is appealing for community support after learning that funding soon will end for its free breakfast and lunch program.

The school recently lost its “at risk” status due to changes in federal regulations, said Head of School Ellen Hartman.

“We’re truly an inclusive school, where you can attend regardless of your socioeconomic status,” she said. “That’s why we deal with issues that so many other private schools don’t have. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution here.”

Of the 145 students who attend the pre-K-8 school, about 40 children are in the breakfast program and 60 children in the lunch program, she said. As of Jan. 31, those programs will end, as the federal government continues to tighten regulations for its food programs, including the USDA’s Child and Adult Care Food Program.

St. Stephen’s has been participating in that program since January 2018 after entering into a partnership with South Central Pennsylvania Food Bank, which began providing students with a healthy breakfast and a hot lunch daily. In early January, after two years, the food bank notified the school that it no longer qualified to participate in the program.

“We didn’t meet the requirements the food bank needed for the food to continue to come here,” Hartman said. “There needs to be a certain percentage of students who need to meet a certain income level.”

Under the most current rules, 65 percent of student families must be below a certain income level, a level that the school didn’t meet, Hartman said. In addition, the “eligibility number kept fluctuating,” she said.

St. Stephen’s draws from throughout the Harrisburg area, but many students live in impoverished areas of the city, Hartman said. About one-third of students qualify for tuition assistance.

“When I came here in 2017, I observed things that didn’t settle well with me,” she said. “I observed a lot of children coming to school with plastic bags filled with random food. Sometimes, kids would come in with nothing but a pack of crackers.”

Therefore, it was welcome news when David Lloyd, the youth programs manager of the Central PA Food Bank, informed her that St. Stephen’s qualified for the free breakfast and lunch program. The food bank then began to provide the meals, she said.

Now, that program access is ending, sending school officials scrambling for a solution. Thus far, the UPMC Pinnacle Foundation has stepped up, contributing enough money so that the school can continue the program through February, Hartman said.

According to the school, the cost to feed all students is $315 a day or $5,670 a month.

After February, Hartman isn’t sure what will happen. She hopes that the community will donate enough so that, at the least, the school will be able to get through the remainder of the current academic year. This will give school officials some time to come up with a more permanent solution for next year.

“I hope the donations will cover everyone in our food program right now,” she said. “So many of these kids really need it.”

St. Stephen’s Episcopal School is located at 215 N. Front St., Harrisburg, PA, 17101. To donate, please mail a check to the school or contribute online at www.sseschool.org/donate. The school’s phone number is 717-238-8590.

Bob’s Art Blog: Art and About for 3rd in the Burg

January 20, 2020 | by Bob MacGinnes

“Kildalton Cross Sheep, Islay” by Carrie Wissler-Thomas, at the Riverfront Gallery

Editor’s Note: Our fine arts writer was out and about on Friday night during 3rd in the Burg. Here’s what he found.

Part I: “Scottish Landscapes” at St. Stephen’s Riverfront Gallery

Back in late summer of 2018, congregant and art enthusiast Lindsay Gottwald and a faithful few hatched the idea of a full-scale art gallery at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Cathedral. In its brief existence, the Riverfront Gallery already has made quite a name for itself in the local art community.

In September, it brought “Icons in Transformation,” contemporary religious iconography, to its cathedral walls for a three-month run as part of its national tour across the United States then back to Europe. Art, viewed out of its normal setting of a gallery or museum, becomes a brand-new experience within the cathedral’s cloister.

Following a world-class exhibit like “Icons” could prove to be a daunting task for a gallery and an artist to follow. St. Stephen’s deemed it fitting for an exhibit featuring the work of Carrie Wissler-Thomas, CEO of the Art Association of Harrisburg, who is showing her collection of oils of sacred sites from Scotland.

Wissler-Thomas’s paintings showcase the Holy Isle of Islay and other historical landmarks dating back to Neolithic days. In all, a score of sumptuous oils painted over the course of a decade from annual trips to Scotland capture an eternal beauty of well-known locales forming the Scottish countryside. Scotland’s nooks and crannies come alive in Wissler-Thomas’s power of place studies highlighting lochs, burns and tors. With a fluid continuity, they provide the perfect backdrop for textured tableaux of treasures unchanged by time.

In her palette, Wissler-Thomas took full advantage of the color-rich vegetation of Scotland, from the lavender-colored heather to the vibrantly irrepressible shades of gorse growing with wild abandon. Umber shades burst forth from the golden collars of the sheep, their wool mixed with specks of black-like peat in “Kildalton Cross Sheep, Islay.” Languid landscapes linger in the minds eye while the aires of ancient times lend accompaniment to a soundtrack playing in the artist’s head.

Scotland, for Wissler-Thomas, is akin to being transported to her own isle of enchantment, rich in history and meaning. She pays homage to Druidic days with her painting of sacred stones in “Callanish II, Isle of Lewes.” The upright tablets are captured right before dawn or at dusk as the sky turns ambiguous shades of marled oatmeal like flecks of tweed. Firing the imagination is a sea-swept scene in “Loch Fynne, Lowering Sky.” In tramping among the becks and rills over craggy terrain to find the perfect pitch to set her canvas aright (metaphorically speaking), Wissler-Thomas makes her annual pilgrimage worthy for those who follow.

“Callanish II, Isle of Lewes”

Wissler-Thomas paints with eyes wide open, seeing shades and sunsets, catching the sky as it changes quickly and quietly. Her canvases speak to a love that grows deeper with each year and visit—of Scotland wild and woolly and the siren call the wee shores make, beckoning her to paint those halcyon days of yore. The bucolic rural life lends itself to vagabonds and dreamers, to poets and painters. In the end, the sacred and the secular blend in their own perfect symmetry, creating a harmony found somewhere between the unfettered fields of heather and heaven.

“Scottish Landscapes” runs through Feb. 28 at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Cathedral’s Riverfront Gallery, 221 N. Front St., Harrisburg.

Part II: “Shift” at Susquehanna Art Museum

Usually when you hear the phrase, “There is a glitch occurring,” it’s a bad thing. In art, that may not the case. In fact, just the opposite might be true.

At the Susquehanna Art Museum, two artists, painters both, employ and amplify technology, twisting it just so to meet their needs. A show entitled “Shift,” in the Lobby Gallery, offers distortion and drama in just the right amount. The end results are highly stylized, individualistic paintings that use technology as the backdrop to a new manner of looking at things familiar, yet different.

Tiffany Calvert’s oil paintings, layered atop digitally formatted glitch aesthetic Dutch floral still lifes, spring alive on their black backgrounds. The thickly applied textural touches of taupes and mauves, added to the flowers natural hues, pop off the canvas, creating a genre entirely its own. Alex Kanevsky’s oil-on-panel paintings distort time and its impermanence. The double-edged sword of memory and its unreliable nature, paired with how man views his meaning in a world where nothing remains constant, is a narrative purely his own.

#296, oil on digital inkjet print on canvas, by Tiffany Calvert, based on the painting, “Bouquet of Flowers in a Glass Vase” by Dutch artist P.W. Windtraken

Both artists are modern-day myth manipulators, mining the age-old dictum that art exists only within a certain framework. How does one improve upon art from centuries ago? The end result prods and provokes, which forms the foundation for a new reading. Those notions of the past, in laying a fresh perspective, are now determined detrimental in developing a solid template tempered through technology. This becomes the paradigm itself. “Shift” may change your way of thinking about art and certainly the way you look at it. Isn’t that what great art is meant to do after all?

Alex Kanevsky’s “Lulu in Madrid )Twice,” 2017

“Shift” runs through Feb. 16 at the Susquehanna Art Museum, 1401 N. 3rd St., Harrisburg. For more information, visit www.susquehannaartmuseum.org.

Harrisburg residents bust out the rakes, brooms, shovels on a chilly MLK Day of Service

January 20, 2020 | by Lawrance Binda

A volunteer rakes up trash and weeds from Patrick Alley.

A bitter wind swept through a narrow Harrisburg alley on Monday, but Puja Gellerman had springtime firmly in her sights.

Over here, she said, would be some hardy plants; over there, native perennials.

“We want to bring more beauty to this place,” said Gellerman, a master gardener and Midtown Harrisburg resident.

Little-known Patrick Alley, which sits in back of a strip of businesses along the 1300-block of N. 3rd Street, could be called a lot of things—neglected, forlorn—but “beautiful” is typically not among those words.

Today, though, about 35 people took a first step toward reclaiming this patch of land as volunteers from Friends of Midtown, Sprocket Mural Works and the Junior League of Harrisburg took up rakes, shovels and wheelbarrows to clear out the trash, litter and weeds as part of the annual Central Pennsylvania MLK Day of Service.

Throughout the city, hundreds of volunteers similarly spent their day off painting, scrubbing, sweeping and helping others, gathering at sites that ranged broadly from The Bridge’s new home at the former Bishop McDevitt High School to Paxton Ministries on Paxton Street to Gospel Fellowship Church in Uptown Harrisburg to the main gathering point at Commonwealth Charter Academy.

Down 3rd Street, Keisha Ordaz set up a table outside of Gifted Hands Barber Studio with bottles of water, blankets, gloves and other items so that people could stop by and pick up whatever they needed.

Inside the shop, they gave away free and discounted haircuts and served chicken noodle soup donated by the neighboring restaurant, Pastorante. Two doors down, craft ice cream vendor Urban Churn offered delicious hot cocoa for anyone who asked.

“So far, we’ve had a pretty decent turnout, considering it’s so cold and no one is really outside,” Ordaz said.

These businesses were part of a more informal MLK Day effort to combine resources in the neighborhood to help people in need.

Urban Churn owner Adam Brackbill said that he hoped that the businesses on his block would continue their partnership, perhaps holding similar donation events every couple of months.

“Folks have been in and, I think, this afternoon, it will get a little busier,” he said.

Manager Keisha Ordaz and owner Mike Payne stand outside Gifted Hands Barber Studio, where a table was set up with items for those in need.

Back up on cold Patrick Alley, Nate Lotze, co-chair of the Friends of Midtown beautification committee, said that he hoped their cleanup would be a first step in a major transformation of the narrow, usually deserted and unkempt street.

Sprocket Mural Works, along with Friends of Midtown, has approached the city to potentially create a pocket park on Patrick Alley and a small, adjoining section of Sayford Street. If they get the go-ahead, they would like to create a snug urban oasis with a garden, planters, seating and murals.

“No matter what the end project looks like, this is a great start for this space,” he said. “It lays the groundwork for what will come.”

Megan Caruso, Sprocket co-founder, said she was impressed with the turnout, especially given the sub-freezing temperatures and biting wind.

“We have a ton of people who came out,” she said. “It’s all happening very quickly.”

MLK Day of Service volunteers pose on a newly weeded and cleaned Patrick Alley.

Councilman Dave Madsen also was in the thick of it on Patrick Alley, shoveling up dirt and debris as other volunteers raked out the weedy area that, come warmer weather, will become flowerbeds.

“It’s great to see people not just sleeping in but coming out and serving their community on MLK Day,” he said.

Stories on environmental topics are proudly sponsored by LCSWMA.

Theatre Harrisburg transforms literary classic to musical, “powerhouse” production.

January 19, 2020 | by Gina Napoli

If you remember Nathaniel Hawthorne’s bleak novel, “The Scarlet Letter,” from your high school literature class, you probably didn’t imagine it arranged as a musical. But Theatre Harrisburg delivers a compelling musical rendition that both showcases the cast’s lyrical and acting talents while capturing the severity of Puritanical morality.

Theatre Harrisburg’s Executive Director Stosh Snyder noted the “historic occasion–the first time “The Scarlet Letter” has been done as a full-scale, two-act musical production in the U.S.”

According to co-writer Dan Koloski, who saw this rendition for the first time opening night, this musical was first produced in Scotland from 1996 to 2001.

“It’s a joy to see people we don’t know interpreting, bringing this to life,” he said.

The stage’s setting has a life of its own, a rustic simplicity reminiscent of a mystical fairy tale. On the left are the deep woods, green and gray, punctuated by roses red—the symbolic color of sin. On the right are simple chambers grimly lit with blue light. Center stage is an impressionistic backdrop of a town behind a public platform used for hanging and shaming in colonial Massachusetts in 1642.

On this platform, we first meet scorned citizen Hester Prynne (Christine Salazar), holding her infant. Her husband was believed to be lost at sea for over a year, but he surprises Prynne by moving to the colony posing as physician Roger Chillingworth (George H. Diehl). After refusing to name her infant’s father, Prynne is sentenced to wear a scarlet “A” on her monochrome Pilgrim dress as a shameful symbol of her adultery.

Throughout the production, Salazar sincerely expresses Prynne’s inner anguish with glints of joy through her melancholy singing to her daughter Pearl.

Pearl, clad in red and white—sinful innocence—skips around, singing sweetly against a discordant melody coming from the pit orchestra. The gritty, raw music called attention to itself by using obscure percussion instruments in a John Cage-like sequence. Oscillating between dramatic, playful and jarring, the score highlights the juxtaposition of characters strong and weak, the prey of unrelenting judgment.

With Pearl’s parentage secret guarded, Prynne’s quiet existence angers the gossiping townspeople, who endeavor to deliver her daughter to a Christian family. More villains than friends lurk in the colony for Prynne.

Instead of ministering to Prynne, the spineless Reverend Dimmesdale (Tony Barber) shuns her, contrasting sharply with Prynne’s tenacity. Dimmesdale may be weak in character, but Barber’s singing skills are strong, hitting soprano-like notes.

Chillingworth proves to be an even more sinister villain, looming as a pretend friend to the colony, but instead a tyrant with vengeful intentions. Diehl and Salazar ignited the charged dynamic between Chillingworth and Prynne.

When the audience feels sympathy for Prynne in the face of having her child ripped from her, the imposition of morality itself becomes a villain. And another villain is outed when the audience learns who Pearl’s father is.

Together, the cast harmonized in a range of tones that carried through in perfect reverberation, the kind of music that penetrates the skin like a seasoned church choir.

When Director Kristi Ondo workshopped this drama, she provided the framework, allowing the actors the latitude to develop their own interpretations of the characters.

“They need to be part of creating the characters or else it will fall flat,” she said. “It’s a collaborative effort, a vision we work from together.”

Ondo also had the unique opportunity to work with the writers. She knew co-writer Stacey Mancine Koloski from their time together at Susquehanna University.

“This [project] was our courtship,” Dan Koloski said of his co-writer/wife. “This is what we did back in those days for fun.”

Writing a musical about adultery with your life partner? Not the most romantic topic. But all the beguiling elements the writers wove together made the foundation for an enthralling play. Combine that with a surprising score brought to fruition by some of Harrisburg’s most talented dramatic musicians and actors, and you have a can’t-miss powerhouse of a play.

“The Scarlet Letter” runs through Feb. 2 at Theatre Harrisburg, Krevsky Center, 513 Hurlock St., Harrisburg. For more information and tickets, call 717-214-2787 (ARTS) or visit their website.

The Week that Was: News and features around Harrisburg

January 17, 2020 | by Lawrance Binda

A model unit in Harristown’s new BenMar building.

The weather may have been crazy this past week, but the news overall was surprisingly subdued. Still, this warm/cold week produced some interesting stories and, if you missed one, we have our coverage recapped below.

Art knows no boundaries, and even a river can’t run through it. So says our fine arts writer, who visited two recent exhibit openings on the West Shore. He offers all the artsy details in his semi-monthly blog.

Cameron and Mulberry Street intersection in Harrisburg has been causing headaches all week for area motorists, as PennDOT has been conducting work on the Mulberry Street Bridge. Click here to find out what all the fuss was about.

Harristown has begun signing leases for three downtown buildings as it prepares to debut more than 80 new apartments in downtown Harrisburg. Find out where these apartments are and all the other important details in our online feature story.

Home sales in the Harrisburg area are on the rise, as are prices. The Greater Harrisburg Association of Realtors this week released its latest statistics, and we have a county-by-county breakdown of the numbers.

Homelessness affects many families in our area, and a new play gives voice to the stories of homeless children. Discover how this fascinating narrative came about, with young people playing an essential role in the telling of these stories.

Liz Moore is a novelist who’s made a name writing compelling books that weave together fiction and the gritty real world. The author will appear this weekend in Harrisburg, her third visit here. We have the details in our online story.

MLK Day of Service is almost upon us, with numerous activities planned for Monday. Read our feature story to learn the highlights of the day and how several Midtown businesses are joining forces to help those in need.

Sara Bozich hopes it doesn’t snow this weekend, as there are so many things going on around Harrisburg. Before you head out, check out her long list of activities and events, including Friday’s 3rd in the Burg.

The Red Boat has docked on Reily Street in Harrisburg, serving Vietnamese cuisine with many creative twists. Read our feature story to discover what to expect when you get on board.

Tomboys Barbershop recently opened in downtown Harrisburg, fulfilling a dream for a local woman who long had her eye on the space. Read her fascinating story from our January magazine.

Do you subscribe to TheBurg Daily, our daily digest of news and events delivered right to your inbox? If not, subscribe here!

Midtown businesses team up to help others during MLK Day of Service

January 16, 2020 | by Maddie Conley

Many businesses along the 1000-block of N. 3rd Street in Harrisburg will offer free and discounted food, items and services during MLK Day of Service on Monday.

For one day, a Harrisburg ice cream shop will be scooping hot food instead of cold.

Businesses on the 1000-block of N. 3rd Street are teaming up this MLK Day to provide food, blankets and clothing items to those in need in their community.

Along with Urban Churn, Gifted Hands Barber Studio, Pastorante and Keystone Diner are collecting donations in order to participate in a day of service.

“There are people that don’t have anything,” Gifted Hands owner Mike Payne said. “I don’t like that.”

The barbershop will be giving out blankets, hats and socks, as well as soup and $10 haircuts. They will have resources with information on housing and after school programs as well. Other involved businesses will be serving food. Community members can stop by any of the locations from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The idea came through a conversation between Gifted Hands’ Manager Keisha Ordaz and Adam Brackbill, owner of Urban Churn.

“We want to collaborate our ideas so we can continue to make it a community barbershop,” Ordaz said.

Neighboring businesses such as Central Pennsylvania Buy and Sell, District Bar and Lounge and Mahatam Mini Mart are donating, as well.

“Businesses have a responsibility not just to make money, but to give back,” Brackbill said. “It shows you’re a part of the community.”

Gifted Hands and Urban Churn hope to continue this day of service in the coming years, including more businesses in the Midtown area.

“If all the businesses get together, there’s nothing that can stop us,” Ordaz said.

All of the businesses are located on the 1000-block of N. 3rd St., Harrisburg. For more information on the 2020 MLK Day of Service, read our recent feature story.

Weekend Roundup with Sara Bozich

January 16, 2020 | by Sara Bozich

Happy Weekend!

sip @ soma brings North Country Brewing to downtown Harrisburg TONIGHT and tomorrow! (Both 6 p.m. slots are full; 8 p.m. seatings have availability.)

Plus, it’s 3rd in the Burg!

Will it or won’t it? Snow, that is. Sort of holds the future of my weekend. I have plans to take Bo to see Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood at Hershey Theatre on Saturday. Plus, that night is the GK Team dinner. Of course, if snow happens, none of that likely does.

Otherwise (and maybe entirely), a chill weekend for us, and that’s a-OK by me.

What are you doing this weekend?

(more…)

Novelist Liz Moore slated to return to Harrisburg for book talk, signing

January 14, 2020 | by Yaasmeen Piper

Author Liz Moore

Kensington, Philadelphia: a place that straddles the line between the Lower Northeast and North Philly.

It’s the home to a large black, Hispanic and Polish American population and, more recently, an area marked by gentrification. Kensington is also one of the neighborhoods within Philadelphia that was hit hardest by America’s opioid epidemic.

This Friday, for 3rd in the Burg, Liz Moore returns to Midtown Scholar’s stage to read from her latest novel, “Long Bright River,” which dives into both the opioid epidemic and its effect on Kensington.

The book tells a fictional account of sisters Michaela “Mickey” and Kacey Fitzpatrick. The two are inseparable, almost like one another’s shadows, but they eventually become estranged due to one sister’s addiction. Mickey becomes a police officer who patrols Kensington, the same neighborhood where her sister works in the sex trade to fuel her addiction.

Kacey goes missing around the same time that women in the area are being murdered. So, Mickey takes it upon herself to solve the murders and find her sister.

“Most of the research [for the book] was organic,” Moore said. “I was there anyway, in the neighborhood for other reasons and other projects. So, a lot of it was just absorbing what was going on around me.”

Moore lived in Philly for a decade, and, in 2009, started a photojournalism project in Kensington, which turned into a long period visiting the area and writing nonfiction and fiction pieces about the area. She got to know more people in the community through volunteering, teaching a free writing workshop at a day shelter and just talking to people.

“As a writer of fiction, I often draw from my own life to a certain extent, but I’m also very aware of my outsider status in Kensington, which is important to point out,” she said. “I’m not from there, I didn’t grow up there. I think it’s more of, I found it an interesting place.”

Most of the research for her book came through absorbing her surroundings in Kensington. However, she also interviewed addiction counselors and people who suffered from addiction and spoke with family members of people with addiction, police officers and other people in the community. Almost everyone she talked to had some sort of connection to the opioid epidemic, whether they themselves had an addiction or had an addicted family or friend.

“My hope is that [this book] allows readers to be all the characters—characters who are suffering from addiction, characters who have lost someone from addiction,” Moore said. “Both are very very difficult positions to be in. I hope this book puts a face on something that we read a lot about in the news.”

This is Moore’s third time visiting Midtown Scholar. In 2017, she read from her then-latest novel “The Unseen World” and, in 2019, returned to moderate an event with novelist Téa Obreht.

On Friday, Moore will share a bit about her inspiration behind “Long Bright River,” do a reading and hold a Q&A session, as well as sign copies of her book.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Liz Moore back to the Scholar. She already has many devoted fans and readers here in Harrisburg. So, it’s especially exciting when she comes out with a new book,” said Alex Brubaker, manager at Midtown Scholar. “‘Long Bright River’ has so much anticipatory buzz behind it from booksellers, book clubs and reviewers that’s so well deserved. It truly is one of the must-read crime novels of the year.”

See Liz Moore this Friday, Jan. 17, at 7 p.m. at Midtown Scholar Bookstore, 1302 N. 3rd St., Harrisburg. For more information visit www.midtownscholar.com/featured-events. For more information on Moore, check out her website at https://www.lizmoore.net.

Harristown wraps up 3 downtown apartment projects, begins leasing process

January 13, 2020 | by Lawrance Binda

The interior of an apartment at the BenMar building at 116 Pine St.

Harristown Enterprises has largely completed the renovation of three downtown buildings, bringing more than 80 new apartments onto Harrisburg’s housing market.

The city-based company has begun leasing the Fox on Washington, a boutique building with eight units, as well as the BenMar, two adjoining buildings that total 74 units.

“We’re very excited to have reached this important point,” said CEO Brad Jones.

Tenants have already begun to move into the Fox on Washington, a 114-year-old brick building on the corner of S. 2nd and Washington streets in Shipoke.

That 1906 building, originally the Fox Hotel, had long housed Santanna’s Seafood House, with apartments upstairs, but had been empty for decades before Harristown purchased it from UPMC Pinnacle in 2018.

The entire building has now been converted to apartments, with two, two-bedroom and six, one-bedroom units.

The BenMar at 116 Pine St.

On the other side of downtown, Harristown has begun to sign leases for a project on Pine Street that it calls the BenMar Apartments, as BenMar was the original name of one of the buildings.

That project consists of two adjoining, mid-century office buildings that Harristown converted to a mix of one- and two-bedroom residential units. This project began about a year ago.

A unit at the BenMar at 124 Pine St.

The larger of the two buildings is at 116 Pine St., with 49 apartments in a mid-century modern architectural style. The building next door at 124 Pine St., with 25 apartments, has been renovated with a modern farmhouse look. Both buildings date from the mid-1950s.

Rents for all three of the buildings range from $1,050 to $1,475 a month depending upon the size of the units and number of bedrooms and bathrooms.

Harristown plans several open houses so that prospective tenants can view the two BenMar buildings. They will be held on successive Saturdays, Jan. 18 and 25 and Feb. 1.

With these buildings, Harristown has delivered some 150 new apartments downtown over the last few years, mostly converting old, rundown office buildings into residential space. It now is seeking final city approval for another residential project, with plans to convert an office building at 17 S. 2nd St. into 30 new, market-rate units.

For more information on these apartment buildings, visit www.hbgrealty.net.

Home sales, prices increase across the Harrisburg area

January 13, 2020 | by Lawrance Binda

A row of houses near the state Capitol in Harrisburg.

Home sales and prices both increased in December, as the residential market continued to be strong in the Harrisburg area.

For the three-county region, home sales jumped 15.4 percent compared to the year-ago period, while the median sales price increased 3.6 percent, according to the Greater Harrisburg Association of Realtors (GHAR).

In Dauphin County, residential sales rose to 273 units compared to 238 in December 2018, while the median sales price increased to $166,900 from $165,000, said GHAR.

Cumberland County saw sales go up to 283 units versus 234 a year ago as the median price rose to $215,000 compared to $207,900. In Perry County, sales dipped in December to 21 units from 28 units in the prior year, while the median sales price rose to $182,500 from $161,450, stated GHAR.

Throughout the region, the average days on the market fell considerably, down 8.3 percent from the year-ago period, GHAR said.

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Happy Weekend!

What are you doing this weekend?

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