Tag Archives: Zeroday Brewing

What’s coming for Harrisburg in 2021? Development, road work, murals and more

December 30, 2020 | by Maddie Conley Gittens

A view of the state Capitol

You can’t predict the future; you can only predict the past. But here’s my best stab at it anyway. Artists, entrepreneurs, engineers and city officials in Harrisburg have big plans for 2021. Below, you will get an idea of what may be coming down the tracks. Take it with a grain of salt. If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that plans can change very quickly.

Citizen’s Law Enforcement Advisory Committee
This was one of the hottest legislative topics in the city in 2020. Months of town hall meetings and public comments from concerned residents resulted in approval of a board tasked with keeping a check on Harrisburg’s Police Bureau. The nine board members will be empowered to review police documents and records and suggest recommendations to City Council. Council and the mayor are slated to appoint residents to serve during this coming year.

Community policing
Harrisburg substantially increased its Police Bureau budget for 2021, creating new community policing positions. There will be seven “community service aides,” a new civilian position aimed at improving bureau relations with residents and assisting officers. Two more co-responders will add to the one that already works in Harrisburg through a Dauphin County program. The co-responders are trained professionals who assist with police calls where mental health issues may play a role.

Concerts
Oh, the days of listening to live music. Harrisburg University had big plans for 2020 concerts, but COVID derailed all of them. That didn’t stop them from rolling out big names for 2021. Rockers Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit are set to perform on May 29 in Riverfront Park. Sept. 23 brings a weekend concert blitz including Cage the Elephant, Dawes and Portugal. The Man. Cancelled concerts from 2020, including Young the Giant and MisterWives, have been rescheduled for 2021, as well.

Development
In his January column, our editor reflected on the many major development plans that popped up during 2020, but didn’t see much action. Developers have big plans for the new year, but when exactly will they come to fruition? The Bridge Ecovillage plans to start construction on Harrisburg’s old Bishop McDevitt High School in the spring. Integrated Development Partners may begin construction on the former Salvation Army building on Cumberland and Green streets, depending on city approvals. They are proposing 16 market-rate condominiums. Also hinging on city approval is a plan to renovate the former Gerber’s Department Store—also known as the “Carpets and Draperies” building for the sign on the front façade—on the 1500-block of N. 3^rd Street. Harrisburg resident Nathaniel Foote hopes to transform it into a small apartment building by the end of the year. TLC Construction & Renovations plans to construct eight apartments in Uptown, and two abandoned buildings on N. Cameron Street are slated for conversion to office and residential spaces by Harrisburg Commercial Interiors. Lastly, Harrisburg University should finally break ground on its 11-story academic building.

New Brews, Eats
A Broad Street Market favorite, Zeroday Brewing Co., is slated to open a much larger location on the 900-block of N. 3^rd St. early this coming year. Radish & Rye Food Hub, which was also a market vendor, should be opening soon just across the road on N. 3^rd Street, the owners confirmed. Also expected early this year is highly anticipated Good Brothas Book Café on the 1400-block of N. 3rd Street. Co-owner Tony Diehl of Denim Coffee, with shops in Carlisle and Chambersburg, said they will likely open their third location at 401 Walnut Street in a couple of months.

Mayoral Race
Following a chaotic presidential election year, Harrisburg will have a race for its own chief executive in 2021. The primary election will take place in May, followed by a general election in November. Current Mayor Eric Papenfuse will likely run for re-election. David Schankweiler, the former publisher of the Central Penn Business Journal and the former chair of the state-appointed Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, said that he plans to challenge Papenfuse. According to sources, former city council member Otto Banks may be running, as well. Additionally, four City Council seats will be up for election.

Murals
Sprocket Mural Works announced that they will hold a 2021 Mural Festival in Harrisburg. According to their website, they plan to paint more in Allison Hill, create a mural on the Mulberry Street Bridge and would like to create a pocket park in Midtown. However, they may not hold an outdoor celebration, due to COVID.

South Allison Hill Safety Project
Approved in the 2021 city budget was $103,345 for an initiative to improve lighting, safety, blighted properties and vacant lots in Allison Hill. Tri County Community Action, Wildheart Ministries, Power to the Hill and four other organizations decided to take action after seeing an uptick in crime in that section of Harrisburg.

Street improvements
City Engineer Wayne Martin has told TheBurg that 2021 will be busy for road work in Harrisburg. Some larger projects include reducing travel lanes on State Street to decrease car accidents and pedestrian fatalities. This was approved by PennDOT, which owns the road. Other projects coming next year will likely include adding bike lanes, parking and sidewalk enhancements on Chestnut and Walnut streets. Plans for converting 2nd Street to a two-way road, improving 7th Street and extending a pedestrian and bicyclist friendly corridor on Boyd Street from N. 3^rd to N. 6^th street are in the beginning stages.

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Beer Frontier: On Allison Hill, three men are on track to open PA’s first black-owned craft brewery.

June 29, 2018 | by Lizzy Hardison

Burg in Focus: Harris Family Brewery from GK Visual on Vimeo.

Shaun Harris was watching TV in his Harrisburg home when he caught an episode of “Moonshiners,” a show about illegal whiskey production in the Appalachian Mountains. As he witnessed scofflaws in rural Virginia distill liquor from giant drums of hog feed, Harris thought to himself, “You can do that?”

As it turns out, you can’t. A quick Google search told Harris that brewing liquor in America is illegal without a license. Brewing beer, on the other hand, is fair game. Harris promptly bought a simple home-brewing kit, made his first batch of beer and “was immediately blown away.”

Harris roped his friends JT Thomas and Tim White into joining him for a daylong home-brew session. They brought one of their first kegs to a summer barbeque, where they offered it to a dozen friends with a disclaimer—they didn’t know how it would taste.

“Six gallons were gone in like, 20 minutes,” said Thomas. “People had one and wanted another and another and another.”

Harris describes that barbeque as a light-bulb moment. He didn’t know yet what craft beer was, but he did know that the ingredients and production that went into his keg didn’t cost much.

“Where we’re from, you try to monetize everything—it’s called being a hustler,” Harris said. “We thought, we can do something here.”

That was four years ago. Since then, Harris, White and Thomas started making beer as the Harris Family Brewery, and they just secured a location for a taproom on 13th and Market Streets, in South Allison Hill. They still need to obtain a brewer’s license and retrofit the empty space with brewing equipment and seating, but they’re hoping to sell the first beers over their 10-seat bar in early 2019.

When it opens, Harris Family Brewery will be the first craft brewery in Allison Hill and likely the first black-owned brewery in Pennsylvania. Harris hopes that the business will inject new life into its neighborhood and broaden Harrisburg’s craft beer scene beyond its downtown and Midtown epicenter.

Shaun Harris, Tim White and JT Thomas.

Untapped Potential
The guys at Harris Family Brewing don’t just see their new business venture as a way to do what they love—it’s also an opportunity to bring a new base of consumers into a lucrative market.

Craft beer sales in the United States topped $26 billion last year and account for 13 percent of the country’s total beer industry. But African Americans, who make up 14 percent of the country’s total population, only consumed 4 percent of its craft beer in 2014, according to a Nielsen study.

Mike Potter is the editor of Black Brew Culture, a Pittsburgh-based online magazine dedicated to advancing African Americans in the craft beer industry. Potter said that people of color haven’t traditionally been exposed to craft beer, in part because the industry hasn’t invested in marketing to minority customers.

Craft beer consumption among blacks is on the rise, but Potter said that fewer people of color enter the industry as brewers and brewery owners.

“We’re getting to a point where there are more and more of people of color in craft beer, but they’re not getting the same amount of exposure due to lack of resources,” Potter said. “We’re playing a bit of catch up.”

Since national brewer associations don’t track the demographics of brewery owners, Black Brew Culture keeps its own tally. Potter estimates that people of color own roughly 50 of the country’s 2,800 craft breweries, and he’s certain that Harris Family Brewery will be the first in Pennsylvania.

Harris says he’s used to being one of the only black people at craft beer tastings and breweries. To him, that’s not a problem so much as a sign of untapped potential. Shortly after they brewed their first successful batch of beer, White pointed out to Harris that they would have a niche market for their product.

“I thought, ‘You’re telling me that we have a whole market that doesn’t know there’s a product out there that is this big?’” Harris said. “I say, ‘Let’s open that market up.’”

To that end, their brewery location will be key. Though the brewers initially had their eyes set on property in Steelton, serendipity led them to their spot above a laundromat at 13th and Market. It’s snug, but Harris said they hope to open “a nano-brewery in the truest sense,” meaning that all of the small-batch beer they produce will be sold on site. The space is just big enough to accommodate their current home-brew set up and a 10-seat bar. They don’t plan to serve any food, but do anticipate a busy carryout business once they start selling bottles and cans.

Harris Family Brewing will start small, but its proprietors are already charting plans for growth. They’ll start with an off-site canning facility once the taproom on Market Street takes off. They then hope to distribute their beer across the state and grow their presence through festivals and industry expos. They’ve already sampled their beers during Harrisburg Beer Week and also held a pop-up tasting in Strawberry Square with local event organizer and promoter Sara Bozich.

They’ll also bring kegs to Steelton Community Day on July 23 and will hit the road for the Aug. 11 FreshFest, a black brewing festival in Pittsburgh hosted by Black Brew Culture.

Strangest Industry
If you already own a brewery in Harrisburg, it could be easy to see a new one as competition. But that’s not the case for Brandalynn Armstrong, co-owner of Zeroday Brewing Co. on Reily Street. Armstrong, who’s also on the board of the PA Brewers Association, thinks that expanding the craft beer market into a new neighborhood can only help Harrisburg’s existing breweries.

“Bridging neighborhoods is incredibly important, as long as it’s done through responsible development,” Armstrong said. “And what better way than using craft beer to link our neighborhoods together?”

She and Harris also think that each individual brewery in the city benefits from customers having more options. Harris hopes that Harris Family Brewery will introduce many of its customers to craft beer, encouraging them to “expand their palates” and try other beers in the city.

Harris, who works full-time in corporate IT when he’s not brewing beer, called craft beer “the strangest industry you ever saw—it’s more like kids on a playground than corporate America.”

He’s been shocked by his company’s warm welcome into the local brewers’ network, which he described as more collaborative than cutthroat. Harris Family and Zeroday recently held a joint brew day to develop a collaboration beer, which they’ll debut on July 3 during a screening of “Poured in PA,” a documentary about the statewide craft beer industry.

Harris, White and Thompson learned to brew by watching YouTube videos and have honed their craft through trial and error. They developed some of their favorite recipes through pure experimentation, like when they made a Christmas stout (which they dubbed “Black Santa”) by fermenting the ingredients for fruitcake—currants, raisins, sour cherries and ginger spice.

Now that they’ve secured seed funding for their site and begun renovations, the trio is focused on perfecting their recipes and setting a menu for the taproom. Since they’re playing the long game, they’re already thinking about potential businesses that they could spawn by bringing craft beer to a new neighborhood and customer base.

“In five or six years, I want to look back and say, ‘We blew the scene up,’” Harris said.

Potter agreed that Harris Family could inspire other people of color to pursue careers in brewing or brewery ownership.

“I think it’ll be a huge blueprint for brewers across the country trying to get into the game,” Potter said. “Being the first is a big deal.”

For more information Harris Family Brewery, visit www.harrisfamilybrewery.info or the Facebook page.

Another Round: Let’s all toast the return of Harrisburg Beer Week.

March 31, 2017 | by Ann Beth Knaus

The craft brew scene has been bubbling over in recent years, with several new breweries and tasting rooms popping up throughout the midstate.

So, just when beer lovers didn’t think it could get any better, along comes Harrisburg Beer Week, which runs the last week of April. The event promises high-end connoisseurs and weekend beer warriors alike more events, new brewers, an expanded homebrew battle and the opportunity to take classes in the art of beer-making.

And did I mention drinking beer?

Now in its third year, Harrisburg Beer Week, the brainchild of Sara Bozich, Chelsie Markel, Colleen Nguyen and Tierney Pomone, has helped to promote local beer tourism by drawing visitors to the capital area for a chance to imbibe, celebrate, learn and support charity. From its inception, the event has grown greatly in participants and customers.

This year’s event features several new kids on the block, like a mini golf outing on City Island, as well as the usual fan favorites, such as the Little Big Beer Fest and Battle of the Homebrewers. And, throughout the week, there’s no end to the beer pairings, tap takeovers, brewery collaborations and firkin nights.

Dizzying Array

The fun starts on April 21 with a VIP kickoff party in a new venue—the historic Pennsylvania Room of the Harrisburg Transportation Center. But, even if you can’t make it there, numerous local bars, restaurants and breweries will host their own celebrations on that first night.

The next day is PA Flavor, the longstanding festival that matches our state’s homegrown food with natively brewed beer. One participant will be HACC, which developed a certificate in brewing science program last year, and Beer Week will help showcase the results.

“HACChiato, created by the students in our Brewing Science Program, will be spotlighted in collaboration with Zeroday Brewing Co.,” said Abigail Peslis, director of corporate and business services at HACC. “Additionally, we will hold mini brewing education sessions—‘Brewing Abridged’—on April 25, instructed by local brewing experts.” The classes will be held at HACC’s Midtown campus.

Next-door neighbor Zeroday will play host to a dizzying array of events. Its biggest event, “Freaky Friday” on April 28, is a switcheroo that will transform Zeroday’s tasting room into Carlisle-based Molly Pitcher Brewing Co., while Molly Pitcher makes over its tasting room into Zeroday, with each brewery’s respective libations on tap at the other place.

“This is the first year something like this has been done,” said Brandalynn Armstrong, Zeroday co-owner and Lindsay Lohan stand-in.

Zeroday also will feature a collaboration brew with Molly Pitcher Brewing Co. and Middletown-based Tattered Flag Brewery & Still Works. The brewers worked together to design the recipe for the beer—“Marketing Gimmick,” a juicy, hopped saison—but will be brewing the same recipe independently with an official release on April 26 at the Midtown Tavern in Harrisburg. The new beer will be available for sale in the breweries’ tasting rooms, and guests will receive a punch card that is included in the Harrisburg Beer Week brochure. Customers who visit all three breweries during the week will get a specially printed, 32-ounce growlette.

“We really want to encourage travel to all three places,” Armstrong said.

Rich Heritage

Once again, Harrisburg River Rescue is the beneficiary of Beer Week proceeds. The organizers hope to top last year’s windfall of $40,000, which was double the inaugural year amount, to improve the rescue’s facility.

To that end, Garlic Poet in New Cumberland will offer tickets to its exclusive Chef’s Table Beer Dinners. These dinners will provide guests with the opportunity to eat and discuss the beer-making process, as well as meet Executive Chef Kurt Wewer.

The Garlic Poet’s sister restaurant, Grain + Verse Bottlehouse, located right next door, features more than 300 different craft beers. The unique bottle shop will hold a number of events, including the first-ever Tröegs beer trivia night, featuring a limited scratch beer to be tapped at the start of every round of trivia. Tröegs’ very own Ffej Herb will emcee the event.

“We have a rich heritage of producing beer in Pennsylvania, and this week celebrates it,” Wewer said.

Some new sponsors and features have been added to this year’s roster. Among the sponsors is Weis Markets, which will host events in the pub of its new flagship store on Valley Road in Hampden Township. Among the new events: the inaugural Mini Golf outing on City Island (hint: both putters and beer may be involved).

One of the most popular annual events, “The Battle of the Homebrewers,” has moved and expanded. It will be held April 23 at the Broad Street Market. Market vendors will be open during the competition, and 35 home-brewers are slated to participate for top prizes. Attendees will receive a commemorative tasting glass to sample the brewers’ creations and will be treated to live music.

“Beer Week is a wonderful addition to the area, and the organizers are truly dedicated to making Harrisburg a cooler, more worldly place,” Wewer said.

Harrisburg Beer Week runs April 21 to 29. For more detailed information and a full listing of Harrisburg Beer Week events, visit www.harrisburgbeerweek.com.

Author: Ann Beth Knaus

Deliciously Bad: At a Down in Front show, first comes the cringe, then comes the laughter.

January 31, 2017 | by Rebecca Oken

Most moviegoers don’t enjoy when other audience members talk loudly during a film. But at Midtown Cinema’s monthly improv show, “Down in Front,” people pay for just that.

At each Down in Front event, performers let loose during a notoriously bad B-movie. The month’s film must fulfill one requirement—it can’t be too self-aware. It must be “earnest” in its awfulness, said Stuart Landon, a core DIF member and director of community engagement at Midtown Cinema.

For instance, in December, for the fourth year in a row, DIF featured the 1964 film “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.” Before the show, crowlers of Zeroday Brewing Co. beer cracked open to help warm the funny bone as the night’s four performers—Jennie Adams, Matt Golden, Felicia O’Toole and David Ramon Zayas—mingled at the front of the room.

Shortly after 9:30 p.m., Adams gave a short introduction to a sold-out room, the lights dimmed, and the whole cast announced, “Down in front!” as they sat down with their microphones. The roasting of “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians”—chock full of cheesy dialogue, creepy characters, offensive makeup and bad special effects—was underway.

Different Moods

When Landon became Midtown Cinema’s community engagement director, he looked to other arthouse cinemas around the country to see what they were doing to connect with the public.

“It was one of those group efforts back in the day when I first started at the cinema as the manager,” Landon said. “Many of us were big fans of ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000.’”

“Mystery Science Theater 3000” was a quirky 1980s and ‘90s TV series in which a janitor, trapped in a theater, is forced by his mad scientist overlords to watch bad movies. To preserve his sanity, he builds robots to keep him company, and, together, they mock the awful dialogue, sets, acting and everything else.

The first Down in Front show took place in the fall of 2013 with the screening of the cult classic, “Little Shop of Horrors.”

“It was the first piece of programming we did that wasn’t our normal programming,” Landon said, adding that it took about a year before they attracted consistent crowds.

Landon recruited Adams, who was involved in local improv. Within the first year, the two founders and Golden became the core company of DIF. At first, they emulated the three-performer format of “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” Instead of two robots and a man, though, “it was two gays and Jennie,” Landon joked.

Today, they perform with a fourth guest each month, agreeing that an extra person helps to balance different moods.

Throughout DIF’s three-year history, a few “deliciously bad” movies have become yearly staples, like “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians,” “Plan 9 from Outer Space” and “Trolls 2.”

For the rest of the schedule, Landon, Adams and Golden have an ongoing Facebook thread to brainstorm and pick movies a few months in advance, Golden said. The team has learned from experience that the films have to meet a universal standard of bad.

The group showed “The Notebook” a few years ago in honor of Valentine’s Day, even though Adams was reluctant because “people really love that movie.”

On another occasion, they chose “The Creature from the Black Lagoon.” During the show, an audience member, misunderstanding the premise, got angry at the performers for talking over the movie and left.

“So, now, we make a statement before each show: ‘We will be talking into microphones and making fun of this. If it is your favorite film, you can leave now and get a refund!’” Golden said.

Collaboration & Community

The improvisers donate their time to each show, but the close-knit nature of the Harrisburg theater community has helped build a diverse roster of regular and enthusiastic performers.

“It’s been nice to pull different improvisers and comedians from different groups around this little community, which is crazy that there’s so much comedy in such a small city,” said Adams, who also is the education director at the Harrisburg Improv Theater.

Generally, they don’t prepare much for each show or watch the films beforehand. In the case of “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians,” though, it was the fourth time Golden and Adams were witnessing the atrocity.

“Oh, I’m dreading it!” Adams said.

Nevertheless, they were able to feed off O’Toole, Ramon Zayas and the audience to come up with new jokes.

O’Toole, a local drag performer and co-creator of the Sundae Best Variety Show, compared DIF to what she does in her living room watching terrible movies with her roommate.

“This honestly doesn’t make me nervous,” she said.

The goal is simple, O’Toole said.

“People have so much stuff going on in their lives,” she said. “If I can give them two hours of a show at Down in Front where they can just forget about that and laugh, yeah, that makes me feel good.”

Down in Front performs monthly at Midtown Cinema, 250 Reily St., Harrisburg. The next show is slated for Feb. 10 at 9:30 p.m. For more information, visit www.midtowncinema.com.

Author: Rebecca Oken

Your Beer Is Ready: At Ever Grain, a service call means a well-poured pint.

January 31, 2017 | by Cathy Jordan

Craft breweries have become masters at repurposing former industrial spaces.

Local beer-lovers, for instance, are now downing IPAs, saisons and stouts inside a former plasma center, an old machine shop and a long-defunct lumber mill (Zeroday Brewing Co., Boneshire Brew Works and the Millworks brewery, respectively).

Since late September, you can add to that list a repair garage, as Ever Grain Brewing Co. opened in what used to be the service bay of the former Sun Motor Cars dealership along the Carlisle Pike, a stretch long identified with all-things auto.

Proprietors Norm Fromm and Larry Dolan are locals who’ve known each other for more than 30 years. Both come from the restaurant industry, are avid craft beer fans and former home brewers. They saw an opportunity for a brewery along the Carlisle Pike “right from the beginning,” they told me.

“I’d been thinking about it for six to seven years,” Fromm said.

Once they made the commitment and found their spot, they had to transform the empty service bay into a functioning brewery. That involved, well, everything: new plumbing, brewing equipment, painting, ceiling and an interior build-out that included a counter bar and a spacious seating area.

Today, if you belly up to the bar, you’ll get a front-row seat to the brewing action. The open corner space to the bar’s right displays the brew house, where the malt is mashed. Brite tanks, which carbonate and finish the beer, are located in the back. The garage doors are still there, and, when they’re open, a nice cross breeze fills the room.

Huge Compliment

As one might expect, opening a brewery is no easy task, so I asked about some of the more notable challenges.

First they had to find a master brewer, since neither owner had the expert skills needed to head up the beer-making operation. So, they hired Bruce Tanner, who had worked at breweries in Arizona and North Carolina, then at Troegs in Hershey. The three got along well and felt they could work together as a team.

They also needed a good name that wasn’t already claimed.

“We picked the name from the process of elimination from a host of others on a list that we had,” Dolan said. “We had other great names which were denied due to trademark reasons.”

Fromm added that they had no idea that choosing a name would be such a daunting task, adding that naming their individual beers also is a process.

“We can call them anything we want in-house, but we can’t put those names on labels or bottles without a trademark,” he said.

Getting the recipes correct was another challenge, one met by a collaboration between Dolan, Fromm and Tanner.

“Bruce has a lot of experience,” said Fromm. “He sits down and figures out how to make the beers different and better.”

I asked who was lucky enough to be the taste-tester. Both men laughed and raised their hands.

As of last month, Ever Grain had 13 beers on draft, two stouts aging in bourbon barrels and one porter aging in a rum barrel. The brewery offers flights, samples, half pours, full pours, growlers and crowlers. What’s a crowler? It’s an oversized can filled on a tap line, then sealed on demand by a machine.

I asked Dolan and Fromm what they thought about the online comparisons to Troegs. Dolan’s eyes widen.

“I had no idea we were being compared to them,” he said.

“I take that as a huge compliment,” Fromm added. “They make great beer. We know the owners personally, and they’ve been very helpful to us.”

Where We’re Going

At first, Dolan and Fromm wanted to focus completely on beer, so had no intention of offering food. But then landlord Mike Kennedy approached them about a restaurant inside the brewery. They liked the idea, and, thus, Red Sky Café (owned by Chef Wes Stepp) was born. Though a separate entity, the restaurant has an ordering window at the former Sun Motors customer service window, which connects the restaurant to the brewery.

“We want to encourage families to visit and bring the kids,” said Fromm.

To that end, you may notice the Monkey Pod games at the front, giant-sized floor games of Connect Four, a ping pong table and corn hole. In an effort to give back to the community, beer tender Nina Hamilton (who is also a yoga instructor) offers free community classes, referred to as Ever Flow Yoga, inside the brewery’s open floor space every Sunday and Tuesday morning. Right now, about 25 people attend on a regular basis, but Fromm says there’s plenty of room for more.

Looking down the road, there are a host of things the owners would like to do.

“I’d like to have outdoor seating,” Fromm said.

In addition, beers change with the season, meaning there’s always something to look forward to.

“New beers are coming in the spring: a new IPA, pale ale, Belgian wit and a Gose,” Dolan said.

Fromm added that they might consider bottling or canning their beer.

“But, for right now, I want to grow into what we’re doing and where we’re going,” he said. “I’m letting the people decide where we will go.”

Ever Grain Brewing Co. is located at 4444 Carlisle Pike, Camp Hill. For more information, call 717-525-8222 or visit www.evergrainbrewing.com.

Author: Cathy Jordan

Not Our Fault? In Harrisburg, there’s plenty of blame to go around.

June 1, 2015 | by Lawrance Binda

I don’t often get into screaming matches, much less in public places.

But, a pint or two in at my favorite new Harrisburg brewery, a friend and I began raising our voices over something we actually agree about—that we’re both angry, really angry, at John Campbell.

For sure, we’re not alone. The disgraced former Harrisburg treasurer upset plenty of people who had trusted him with their confidence and their money.

Heck, two months before Campbell’s arrest on theft charges, TheBurg helped host a party in his honor as he departed Historic Harrisburg Association, where he had been executive director. And my friend and I both were members of organizations where Campbell has been accused of taking money.

So, I guess we needed to vent, which we did, loudly, in contrast to the sounds of folks happily enjoying their La Dolce Vita drafts and their mutual company and the din of the jukebox at Zeroday Brewing.

We vocally debated Harrisburg’s version of “he who must not be named,” but, in the process, disagreed about something fundamental.

I hold many of us at least partially responsible for the phenomenon that was John Campbell; my friend doesn’t.

“He was a con man,” my friend said. “How could anyone have known that?”

Con man, no doubt. But I insisted that Campbell never should have had such positions of authority in the first place.

“He was a 21-year-old kid still in college when he was hired,” I countered, insisting (without success) that Campbell should have been flagged as too young and too inexperienced to serve as director or treasurer of anything important.

A person, I believe, is responsible for his own actions. However, that also pertains to the supporting actors, those who played lesser parts in a situation that goes spectacularly wrong.

I feel largely the same way about the city’s financial collapse.

Former Mayor Steve Reed, without question, tops the list of people responsible for Harrisburg’s fiscal chaos. However, in a flow chart of blame, you could list, in descending order, Reed’s direct underlings; the professionals who advised him; the Harrisburg Authority; members of City Council; the Dauphin County commissioners; numerous state officials; the supine media; and the voters.

Not that anybody has accepted this blame. A few years back, during a state Senate committee hearing on the city’s massive incinerator debt, every witness called upon, including Reed himself, denied responsibility. Evidently, Harrisburg’s near-bankruptcy happened without anyone causing it.

In fact, during the Reed administration, signals abounded that his consolidation of power was troubling and that the city’s finances were increasingly out-of-whack. Some residents tried to sound the alarm, but they invariably were shouted down, mocked or ignored.

You could make a long list of the ill-advised projects that the Reed administration championed, often financing them through strange, convoluted deals. For the sake of this column, I’ll limit my focus to what might be the most surreal—Reed’s attempt to build not one, but “five nationally scaled museums” (his words) in a poor, tiny city in central Pennsylvania.

New museums typically are born in one of two ways. In the first, a group (usually a non-profit board) tries to raise money for a building and/or its contents. In the second, a wealthy patron donates items—and sometimes foots the bill for the building, as well.

Harrisburg didn’t follow either path. The museum idea originated in the mind of a single man, Steve Reed, without any of the detailed preparation and painstaking planning needed to embark on a massive venture like starting a world-class museum (much less five of them).

In a nutshell, Reed got hold of public money and began buying stuff because he wanted to—and because he could.

Over a decade, he packed an enormous warehouse (and several other buildings) full of thousands of items from his sprees, spending untold millions on things that ranged from the genuine and valuable to junk and fakes. Lacking expertise, he vacuumed up lot after lot, often overpaying for the good and the bad.

The majority of objects were for an Old West museum he wanted to build, but some were for an African-American heritage museum he proposed and others for a Sports Hall of Fame he hoped to construct on City Island. There also were artifacts that didn’t seem to fit into any category—wood from a Colonial-era ship, transcripts from the Nuremberg trials.

Eventually, he got one “nationally scaled” museum built, the National Civil War Museum, but only because he learned that former Gov. Tom Ridge was a Civil War buff. So, according to project architect Vern McKissick, Reed quickly carved out a Civil War collection from his vast Old West stash and, though luck and salesmanship, got the state to foot the bill for the building.

This is local government gone completely off the rails. I half-laugh, half-cringe when I imagine Reed and his surrogates darting around the country attending auctions, sweeping up inventory, packing it all up, shipping it to Harrisburg, unpacking it and storing it in whatever dusty corner they could find for future museums that had no realistic path to ever existing.

But that’s what happened, and a lot of people knew about it—officials and politicians, consultants, city workers, the media, some in the general public. Yet year after year after year, it went on.

Typically, I’m not big on assigning blame, as I find resolving a problem more important than determining who’s at fault. However, in the case of Campbell and Reed, I believe it’s important to examine if we, as individuals, are in some way responsible. By understanding our own roles, we lessen the chance of a future rogue mayor, thieving treasurer or whoever might try to scam us next.

We all know the cliché that it takes a village to accomplish something good. Well, sometimes, it also takes a village to screw up royally.

Lawrance Binda is editor-in-chief of TheBurg.

Local Spirits: Distillery Proposed for Midtown

November 12, 2014 | by Lawrance Binda

Two Harrisburg residents hope to transform this dilapidated building into the city’s first distillery since Prohibition.

In 2015, a new brewery and beer garden are slated to open in Midtown Harrisburg. If two city residents have their way, a distillery will be added to the mix.

Business partners Alan Kennedy-Shaffer and Stanley Gruen plan to open Kennedy Spirits, a distillery that would produce liquors such as whiskey, vodka, gin and rye. If all goes well, they hope to open in the historic “Carpets and Draperies” building at 1507 N. 3rd St. in mid-2015.

“We hope to be the first distillery in Harrisburg and Dauphin County since Prohibition,” said Kennedy-Shaffer, a former attorney for the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board and founder of the community group Harrisburg Hope.

Next month, the city’s Planning Commission and Zoning Hearing Board will weigh in on the proposal, which will require a variance as that area is not zoned for industrial uses. In addition to the production facility, the plan for the distillery includes a fully renovated building with a tasting room and a bar.

Kennedy-Shaffer said he considered several options that would not have required a zoning variance, such as locating along the N. Cameron Street industrial corridor or in the suburbs. However, he said he rejected those ideas because he is committed to Harrisburg and to Midtown, where he lives. He also believes that a small-batch distillery would fit well into the continuing revitalization of the neighborhood.

“It’s in a perfect location,” he said. “There’s plenty of parking around, but a lot of people will just walk from Midtown or even downtown.”

The three-story industrial structure was built in 1910 as a factory that manufactured carpets, draperies and related products. The dilapidated building has sat empty for more than a dozen years, passing through a number of owners. It currently is owned by Mechanicsburg-based Mussani & Matz Co., which bought it in 2007 for $190,000, according to Dauphin County property records.

Sale of the building to Kennedy Spirits LLC will be contingent on the company receiving its zoning variance from the city, said Kennedy-Shaffer.

Kennedy-Shaffer and Gruen said they have several investors interested in the project, but hope to secure others as they expect the cost of the building renovation to exceed $1 million. They also are looking for qualified candidates to serve as their master distiller.

Both partners said they see synergy between their proposed distillery and other businesses that will open soon in the same neighborhood. Zeroday Brewing Co. (formerly Alter Ego Brewing Co.) expects to open early next year at the rear of Midtown Cinema at 250 Reily St., while the Susquehanna Art Museum will open a block away in January. The Millworks, which includes a farm-to-table restaurant, a beer garden and artist studios, also will debut early next year across from the Broad Street Market.

“So far, the community has been extremely supportive and encouraging,” said Kennedy-Shaffer. “Most people welcome the prospect of drinking spirits made right here in the city of Harrisburg.”

Currently, Kennedy-Shaffer and Gruen are collecting signatures from neighbors to demonstrate support for their business.

For the past five years, Midtown residents thought that a new federal courthouse at N. 6th and Reily streets might act as a catalyst for the neighborhood, said Gruen. But that project, he added, has been delayed indefinitely, necessitating new ideas to spur the local economy.

“We want to add to the neighborhood,” he said. “We hope this will bring life to the street.”

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