Getting ready for holiday festivities

Elizabethtown is getting ready for holiday festivities, including the holiday parade at 6 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 14.

This year's theme is "The Twelve Days of Christmas." And if you've been around E-town for the parade, you know it's one of the largest community events. Every year, thousands of people jam the downtown to see Santa Claus, floats, bands, fire trucks and an array of organizations.

Last year, the borough changed the parade to a Saturday evening instead of a Friday, and by all accounts (at least from what my colleagues on Borough Council and the staff at the borough have said), it was a great success.

This year, the downtown organization Market Street Improving Business is shadowing the borough staff since MSIB will take over organizing and running the parade in the future.

In fact, MSIB has taken over the upcoming New Year's Eve celebration "Let E-town Ring." According to discussions at Borough Council earlier this year, MSIB President Andrew Schoenberger said the event would be expanded to include the Dove Promise Drop at midnight EST rather than at 7 p.m. to match the time of Elizabethtown's sister city Letterkenny in Ireland (as has been the tradition for the event). This year will also include fireworks, which were featured for the first time at last year's event.

It is great that a community organization like MSIB is taking on these events. When the Elizabethtown Chamber of Commerce decided to hand over the events to the borough to run last year, we were looking for community groups that would be interested in taking them over. I am pleased that MSIB has stepped up because it means they are taking ownership of them, which I hope will ensure they will be successful well into the future. The parade and "Let E-town Ring" are established events, and I think new people with new ideas can make them even better.

So if you're around for the holidays, I encourage you to support the community -- and downtown Elizabethtown -- and come out for these great events.

Inaugural Beans and Brews event planned for Second Friday

I am thrilled that Market Street Improving Business is holding a first-ever Beans and Brews event that coincides with Second Friday next week. This is the kind of event that downtown Elizabethtown needs and that can generate tons of excitement and buzz for the community. 

Here are the details (full disclosure: I wrote the following news release on behalf of Market Street Improving Business and distributed it to local media):


ELIZABETHTOWN – Home brewers and cooks will put their beers and chili to the taste test in the inaugural Beans and Brews from 6 to 8 p.m. March 8 as part of Second Friday in downtown Elizabethtown.

To be held at the Elizabethtown Public Library, the brewing portion of the evening is a sanctioned event by the Beer Judging Certification Program. Sponsors for the event are Lucky Ducks Bar and Grille and Lancaster Homebrew.

“Beer and chili go great together, and I know we have some great cooks and home brewers in the area,” said Andrew Schoenberger, one of the founding members of Market Street Improving Business, a nonprofit organization that promotes downtown business in Elizabethtown. “This is a great opportunity for amateurs to test their best recipes against their peers. More important, Beans and Brews is an even better reason for people to come visit downtown Elizabethtown.”

Admission is $10 just for the chili contest and $15 for both the chili and homebrew contest. Admission allows for sampling the chili and beer. The pass also will get discounts at local shops for one week after the event and 5 automatic entries to win either a $50 gift card to Lucky Ducks Bar and Grille or a homebrew startup kit valued at $70.

The entry fee for the beer competition is $6 before March 4 ($10 after March 4), with a limit of two entries per person. Home brewers must have one bottle for judging at the library by 4 p.m. on March 8 for it to be judged. A panel of four judges – three from BJCP and one guest judge – will taste 4-ounce samples in a blind test. Beers will be judged on American Homebrewing Association/BJCP guidelines.

The entry fee for chili is $3 by March 4 ($6 after March 4) and will have three judges. Only one entry per individual or business is permitted. The chili will be judged on the following criteria: meat texture, temperature, consistency, spice and taste, and color and aroma.

Both brewers and cooks must provide three gallons of their beer or chili to serve to those who attend the event. They will be eligible for a Taster’s Choice award, presented to the ones that receive the most raffle tickets available for purchase by contest entrants and attendees. Proceeds from the event will benefit the marketing and revitalization of downtown Elizabethtown.

Award winners will be announced at 9 p.m. Friday at Lucky Duck Bar and Grille, 45 N. Market St., a short walk from the library.

For complete rules, visit www.facebook.com/VisitElizabethtownPA.

Market Street Improving Business is a nonprofit organization founded in 2011 to provide downtown Elizabethtown businesses with support, marketing strategies and plans, organizational structure and beautification funding. It supports and promotes community and economic education and sustainability.

Is Elizabethtown experiencing a downtown renaissance?

A couple of months ago, local businessman Andrew Schoenberger came to a Borough Council meeting to discuss a new initiative he and two other businesspeople started called Market Street Improving Business.

Schoenberger, who owns Epic Photography, Lisa Clemens from the Lynden Gallery and Brad Alexander from the soon-to-open Pita Pit joined forces to start this organization focused on building up business in downtown Elizabethtown. A native of the borough, Schoenberger said he remembers as he grew up that his family didn't have to venture outside of town for lots of shopping.

"We have a feeling a lot of people want that back," he said.

The new organization, for which the organizers are seeking nonprofit status, will provide support to downtown businesses and also help bring some ideas to fruition. Schoenberger mentioned a town map of businesses, bringing a farmer's market to town and having events downtown.

In addition to Market Street Improving Business, the downtown area could be on the verge of a renaissance, with new a number of businesses having opened or planned.

Consider that J's Sweet Treats, a bakery featuring all sorts of cakes, cupcakes, cinnamon rolls and pastries that opened this spring has expanded already. Located on the southeast corner of the square, owner Jodi Stapler has moved the kitchen for the bakery into a neighboring storefront on the square. And in the past week or so, she just opened an ice cream parlor in the neighboring storefront on East High Street.

Last year, a used book store called Pages opened next to Folklore Coffee & Co. on the northeast side of the square. I ventured in for the first time in April in search of a birthday present for my wife, and I was duly impressed with the quality, condition and selection of the books. Check out this great story that WGAL's Meredith Jorgensen did about Pages last fall.

And what about Andrew Douglas Jewelers? After several years without a jeweler in downtown, this business recently opened.


This coming week, the Pita Pit is slated to open in a portion of the former Elizabethtown Hotel. The owners provided the food for last Thursday's installment of the Downtown Summer Lunch Series. They said opening is pending inspections, and they were hoping to open as early as Tuesday.

That's not all that's happening at the former hotel. Sean Cavanaugh, owner of John J. Jeffries, an upscale restaurant located at the Lancaster Arts Hotel, has plans to open a similar eatery there. Cavanaugh's approach is to prepare fresh, seasonal and organic food. To learn more, take a listen to an interview with him on the Lancast.

Left turn lanes installed at High and Market

In the past several weeks, left turn lanes were installed on East and West High Street at Market Street as part of a synchronization project and other improvements to all the signaled intersections in the Elizabethtown area.

As anyone who navigated the intersection can attest, drivers had been making their own through and left turn lanes for years. This created hazardous and dangerous situations at times.

With the turn lanes, drivers now know exactly where to go. The project did require Borough Council to eliminate parking on High Street so the lanes could be painted,  but it was a decision that creates a safer community.

When I drove through the intersection with the marked turn lanes the first time, I thought that it would eventually need left-turn arrows for High Street drivers. During the Elizabethtown Area Regional Authority's meeting this morning, West Donegal Township Supervisor Chairman Ralph Horne brought up that point.

However, Steve Gault, a traffic engineer for Mount Joy Township, said the synchronization of all the traffic signals complicates adding the arrows. While they could be installed, he noted that the time it would take for the arrows to cycle through would have to be taken from the cycle on Market Street. And if you adjust the timing at that intersection, all of the other intersections through town would need adjusting to accommodate the change.

"It's sort of a balancing act," Gault said, adding that the negatives of adding the arrows outweigh the positives.

Gault also noted while the synchronization project will help with traffic flow through Elizabethtown, Maytown Avenue at Market Street will continue to be a congested intersection. He said "the only way" to eliminate that is to "build more capacity or reduce (the) volume" of traffic.

E-town wins Governor's Award for Local Government Excellence

Elizabethtown recently won a 2009 Governor's Award for Local Government Excellence for the public-private partnership between the borough and Mars Snackfood US to extend West College Avenue and the $70 million expansion of the chocolate factory's manufacturing plant.

The borough picked up the award at the 13th annual Governor's Award ceremony April 15 at the Farm Show Complex and Expo Center in Harrisburg. Elizabethtown was one of 11 government entities from across the state to be recognized for their foward-thinking approaches to revitalize towns, create jobs and improve the quality of life for residents.

Elizabethtown's award came under the category of Promoting Community and Economic Revitalization. The program for the ceremony indicates that the borough supported the expansion at the chocolate plant for the following reasons:

• To maintain a major employer in the borough and secure the most-productive use of a large, low-impact industrial facility in downtown Elizabethtown for generations to come.
• To create a new entrance to downtown Elizabethtown and a "second square" that serves as a conduit to Mars Snackfood US, Elizabethtown College and Masonic Village.
• Spark the beginning of major economic development efforts in downtown Elizabethtown

This project is one of the most significant for Elizabethtown in recent memory, especially given that Mars' main competitor nearby announced last year that it is moving chocolate manufacturing out of the United States. For a major corporation to make such a significant investment in this community is a boon to our tax base and our efforts to boost the local economy.

As noted in other posts, the second phase of the West College Avenue project, which will include the construction of a bridge and connect with Market Street, is on target to go out for bids this summer. When that is complete, and the renovations of the Amtrak train station are done, expect Elizabethtown to become a force to be reckoned with in western Lancaster County.

Status update on West College Avenue project

For the past year or so, Elizabethtown has been working on a project to extend College Avenue west and connect with Bainbridge Street. This project was made possible in large part because of Mars Inc., and specifically its snack food division, which constructed five new production lines for Dove Chocolate at its plant that bordered Bainbridge Street. To build the plant, Mars needed to build over the existing street.

The first phase of the road construction project, from the railroad underpass to the creek, was started last year and completed by early fall. I think I can speak for all of Borough Council and the administration and say that Mars has been an incredible corporate citizen through this entire project, and especially during the past six months as it has allowed traffic to use a portion of its parking lot so vehicles can connect to the newly constructed road. This has gotten traffic flow back to relatively normal conditions, alleviating the congestion on West High Street where traffic was detoured.

The second phase of the project, which requires the construction of a bridge, is slated to go out for bids in July, according to Borough Manager Pete Whipple. He said the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, which is funding the project, asked the borough specifically to wait until July to put the project to bid because of the current economic climate. July 1 is the start of the state's new fiscal year. If the project remains on this timeline, work on the project should begin later this summer, with an anticipated year of construction.

In the meantime, the borough is working on obtaining small easements for the installation of electric and other utility poles.