Back in Business: Canonsburg reimagines, redevelops downtown | Local News
Manuel J. Moore July 25, 2022Table of Contents
ToggleFresh new flowers and neatly trimmed trees line Pike Street, and the moment-vacant home windows welcome website visitors within downtown Canonsburg’s storefronts.
“There’s a excitement,” explained Lisa Scarmazzi, Canonsburg native and director of economic development for the borough. “We have Downtown Nourishment, Linda’s Bakery, Canonsburg Cake Corporation. The Nook. SerendipiDEE blooms just arrived in. We have Western Edge Seafood coming. It is just using off.”
Much more than a dozen businesses have opened in Canonsburg inside of the final two many years, and people stroll Pike Street, peeking in windows and ducking into storefronts, each individual day of the 7 days. The bustling downtown is a obvious improve to inhabitants and commuters who pass through every single working day.
“I don’t forget as you walked downtown, there was practically nothing in storefronts. The home windows had been filthy, it was filthy on the streets,” stated Canonsburg Borough Council President Eric Chandler, who grew up in the Modest Town Musical Capitol of the Entire world.
“Then when I would look at shots ahead of it was like they experienced, nicely, Isaly’s was right here, the men’s store was below. Various, smaller sized organizations were listed here,” Chandler explained. “Then all of a unexpected it was like they just closed up and that was it. I don’t forget rising up, people are like, ‘I’m heading to shift from right here due to the fact this is not a put I want to increase my family.’”
For decades, when-grand buildings alongside Canonsburg’s major street stood empty, relics of a affluent past, reminders the town experienced, like so many smaller cities, light alongside with the industries that designed it.
Now, Canonsburg is the location to be.
Past year, Andrew Andronas, a 2005 Canon-McMillan graduate who works in all-natural fuel, created his very first authentic estate expenditure alongside Pike Road.
Even though volunteering downtown with his wife, Dolly, also from Canonsburg, Andronas recognized some thing in the air.
“When you’re down in city and you’re volunteering your time and you are cleaning up and you’re meeting people today and you’re in the heart of it, you can’t support but just sort of appear at it all, assess it,” mentioned Andronas, who serves as co-chair on the Canonsburg Outdated Fashioned Xmas Committee. “I feel to myself, ‘If this town is thriving, which it when was … if it comes back again, when’s the time to financially get in?’”
Andronas put in two many years researching Canonsburg’s business district, and figured out that in 1939, McCrory’s Department Keep – a significant-box retail outlet from the Huge Apple akin to Macy’s or the previous Kaufmann’s – determined Pike Avenue was an excellent place for a new storefront.
“You have a massive company … that has nothing to do with Canonsburg, they do a research on Canonsburg and they determine that frontage appropriate down the middle of town as what they imagined was the actual estate that they desired. That was sort of my drive,” Andronas stated. “If it is superior adequate for McCrory’s then, if background repeats by itself and it turns into bustling when again, that identical frontage, very good enough for a office keep, possibly superior enough for my spouse and children.”
Andronas attained out to the constructing entrepreneurs, who in true little-city fashion he’d regarded his full lifestyle, and worked out a offer. Shortly just after Andronas acquired the massive former McCrory’s with its 10,000 sq. feet of potential upstairs and the longstanding Metropolis Mission flagship retail store downstairs, he created a 2nd invest in.
Fresh Start off Café opens at 117 Pike St. (Andronas’ building) this slide.
“I’m not a actual estate person I’m a Canonsburg dude,” Andronas said. “I’m not acquiring these structures to become wealthy. This is the place we’re invested, you know, emotionally, monetarily. So that is kind of the psychological component of it.
“But I normally really experienced a passion for redevelopment genuine estate, something which is aged that requires a minor TLC, has all the probable in the entire world to turn into new again, exciting. And which is Canonsburg, correct?”
Getting a gamble
Chris Beers recognized Canonsburg’s probable on a drive via city, a push he’d taken pretty much each day because moving to what locals affectionately simply call “Guntown,” with his family members in 2011. For many years, Beers passed by vacant window right after vacant window.
But then, Rusty Gold opened. And Iceberg’s ice creamery.
“Then the expansion with Chicco Baccello, ARC. (I assumed) ‘Holy smokes, they are going to set that considerably cash into that building in downtown Canonsburg.’ It was like, something is occurring here,” reported Beers, founder and proprietor of 7 Grandpa Joe’s Sweet Outlets. “And then Alleyway Saturdays. It was like, wow, there is some energy. This is variety of thrilling.”
When Mark and Ellen Bachmann, who have the previous PNC Lender building, affixed accent lights to its exterior, a lightbulb went off in Beers’ head.
“It’s a lovely building,” Beers reported. “I feel it was a mixture of those people lights, additionally the Alleyway Saturday events that said, ‘You know what? It is time to do this.’”
So he did it. Final calendar year, Beers took a gamble and opened Grandpa Joe’s along Pike Avenue. To his shock, the place is just one his prime performers. And to Canonsburg’s credit history, the city is a terrific area for business.
“The function organizers and the committee chairs have a real enthusiasm for seeking to make Canonsburg do well. These persons are inhabitants of Canonsburg that have lived below and are passionate about seeing the revitalization of their group,” he reported. “So that is a large difference in Canonsburg as opposed to a whole lot of places that I’m in.”
Beers stated Lisa Scarmazzi is a driving force powering Canonsburg’s revitalization.
“She’s well worth each and every single penny, and she provides it all back,” Beers stated. “She goes much previously mentioned what her job requirements are.”
Scarmazzi was employed as director of financial development in July 2020, just after Chandler and the borough council hosted a neighborhood workshop to study what Canonsburg inhabitants wanted to see downtown.
“We wished to redevelop Canonsburg, but we did not know how, per se,” said Chandler.
Throughout the workshop, parking and setting up vacancy emerged as the two major places in have to have of enhancement. In order to fill vacancies, borough council acquired, Canonsburg desired a encounter.
“A good friend of mine (said) you genuinely need somebody who is the place individual,” Chandler mentioned. “We started out throwing names all-around. We understood Lisa was volunteering in other spots and individuals talked really of her. We achieved out to her. And she claimed sure. She has a budget, but she volunteers her time. She doesn’t get paid. She was like, how can I give again?”
Scarmazzi presents back, in portion, by bringing in company.
“Most of the new firms are people that are youthful and this is their initial small business. What I really like about it, it’s not just getting their keep. They want to turn into pretty concerned in the group. They have new new suggestions. I just appreciate their energy. And they’re bringing that vitality into city,” she mentioned.
Fresh faces occur to city
Chelsea Becker, a 2011 Canon-McMillan grad, is a single of these new young faces.
Just after college, Becker remained in Ohio, where by she and her spouse, Seth, ran a preferred antique stand. Becker’s mother suggested the couple open a brick-and-mortar keep.
“We were being debating on likely from Ohio to Pennsylvania, and we looked at some locations in Ohio,” stated Becker. “Lisa Scarmazzi was the a single that sort of pointed us in the appropriate path of Canonsburg, like down here. We grew up right here, and Chicco Baccello was just opening, the vineyard was open up and all these spots were being just popping up. It was variety of that minute of, ‘Hey, you know, let’s just go for it.’”
Becker and her family members – her mother, Dianna Ammon, is “head honcho” and Becker’s sister, Julianne Murgie, and brother Jacob Ammon aid out at The Nook – fell into key real estate upcoming door to Iceberg’s.
“It wasn’t as challenging as it seems,” Becker stated.
Like numerous Pike Avenue small enterprise proprietors, Becker speedily began producing connections and bought concerned in the local community. She joined the Backyard garden Club, a team of residents devoted to beautifying city, and is on the lookout into signing up for the Oktoberfest organizing committee with her mom.
“I grew up right here, but I did not know how considerably there was to do around Canonsburg,” mentioned Becker. “I feel it’s so crucial that men and women see families and organization entrepreneurs demonstrating that they really don’t just treatment about their company, but they care about the group.”
Becker employs the classroom room at the back again of The Nook to convey the wider neighborhood collectively at activities like her new Tie-Dye workshop, for which she teamed up with Iceberg’s. She strategies to host biweekly or weekly gatherings, which include crafting for young ones and teens and staff-creating workshops in her house, and is thrilled to collaborate with other little organization proprietors.
“Everyone’s been very welcoming,” Becker said of the other business entrepreneurs. “We find the link and loyalty amongst other compact corporations down in this article to be so heartwarming.”
Previous March, Scarmazzi Households moved its headquarters from Houston to the east finish of Canonsburg, where by the company erected a modern-day design and style centre and beautified the town’s entrance.
“I grew up in Canonsburg, and we developed our initially household in which my first-quality faculty was, on Hawthorne Street,” reported Paul Scarmazzi, co-founder of Scarmazzi Homes and a member of the Increased Canonsburg Financial Development Committee. “It’s definitely what issues most to me, additional so than our enterprise, actually – the chance to be component of some thing which is larger than you, and the chance to effects the more substantial setting for the benefit of most people.”
Paul Scarmazzi explained transferring to Canonsburg has been fulfilling, and the associations in between setting up homeowners and small business owners is unique.
“We’re all sort of in it together,” he reported. “The wind appears to be at the town’s back again. We want to be a location, we want to be a regional draw, we want to be an asset in which men and women can come live, do the job and participate in.”
Scarmazzi Households has the “live” aspect down: Last year, the firm again invested financially in Canonsburg. In November 2020, Scarmazzi Homes broke ground on a new townhouse elaborate at the rear of the strip shopping mall, and all eight models are anticipated to be leased by the close of this summer.
“It’s portion of the town’s expansion, reinvention, reinvigoration. We’re a tiny aspect of it and we’re genuinely pleased to be,” stated Paul Scarmazzi. “We feel in the town, and we feel it provides something: That intimate, homey come to feel exactly where you are residing in an urban placing.”
It’s the large city in a small city that can make Canonsburg so distinctive, and the camaraderie among every person – company house owners, community govt and the neighborhood – that helps make it a fantastic place to open up shop.
“I may perhaps be biased, but I would not want to commit everywhere else,” stated Andronas. “Something about Canonsburg, you know. Men and women are inspired to see transformation. Anytime it will come to investing in Canonsburg, you don’t just make investments in Canonsburg. You devote with Canonsburg.”
Becker agrees that it was absolutely everyone from the economic growth committee to the code enforcement officials to regional federal government to other compact enterprise homeowners who designed it probable for her to open The Nook.
“It was this sort of a massive aspiration that we experienced, but we have been this kind of a minimal individuals in this neighborhood, and we were equipped to do it,” Becker mentioned. “There is option, and you can open your personal business. It’s taking place in this article ideal now.”
Chandler, Scarmazzi and Andronas share a desire of acquiring every constructing occupied quickly, and Becker and Beers stimulate any individual with a enthusiasm to open up up in Canonsburg. There is loads of opportunity, but the selection of spots downtown is speedily dwindli
ng.
“You have an notion. You push previous the vacant location, similar point I did for 10 a long time. What are you waiting for?” Beers said. “Just rip the Band-Help off and let’s do it. Open up a keep.”