(Eleventh in a series)

By Christiaan Hart-Nibbrig

By 1995, downtown Lancaster city was several decades removed from its sparkling prime of the post-war 1940s and ’50s. As the second millennium approached, the city still had not recovered from the wholesale demolition of its historic downtown retail district on the 100 block of North Queen Street during the 1970s and subsequent failed development.

The embarrassingly mishandled (but well-intentioned) civic debacle of Lancaster Square no doubt scarred the community and leadership alike. For years, this area, known to locals as “our hole in the ground,” a concrete jungle of abandoned buildings and empty spaces, was a constant ugly physical reminder of the failed “revitalization” efforts of administrations past. Ultimately without evidence that the projects would be feasible, a Hilton Hotel (the current Brunswick) and a Hess Department Store were constructed as end pieces.

The Hess Department Store closed within two years and was adapted for the manufacturing of fuses. It now stands empty.

There was not sufficient downtown business to support the Hilton, so the affiliation was canceled, and for decades the hotel depended largely on groups of federal government trainees bussed to Lancaster from Washington D.C.

While Lancaster County can boast a substantial tourist economy, tourists stay at scores of suburban motels and usually spend their money at the popular suburban and ex-urban outlet malls and are entertained at large, family oriented theme theaters, one being Sight and Sound, a large Christian-themed live performance venue located several miles away.

It was 1995 when the historic Watt & Shand department store on Penn Square closed its doors forever. The Shand family had sold the Watt & Shand department stores at the Park City Mall and downtown on Penn Square to the Bon-Ton chain the year before. Bon-Ton, with a flagship in York, had wanted only the mall location, but both stores were included in the deal. Bon-Ton agreed to keep the downtown store open for a short, agreed-upon time; when that time expired, the downtown location was vacated.

The Watt & Shand Building was no ordinary retail office space. Designed by the eminent local architect, C. Emlen Urban, the Watt & Shand anchored downtown retail since 1898. Its towering columns and ornate facade was a distinguished example of the Beaux-Arts style often used by Urban.

The four-story building, with its design, size, and central location, was also a cultural touchstone for generations of Lancastrians. When it closed, combined with the continuing problems with Lancaster Square, many felt the city’s heart had stopped.

The building languished, unoccupied for more than two years. Mayor Janice Stork, a Democrat, and the Economic Development Company of Lancaster, negotiated acquiring the building from Bon-Ton for the Harrisburg Area Community College (HACC). The college wanted to locate a satellite branch of one of their campuses in the building. The Economic Development Company of Lancaster was a small non-profit group of powerful downtown Lancaster business leaders that including Lancaster Newspapers, Inc. Chairman, Jack Buckwalter

The state education department rejected a $6 million funding request, and there were public objections that parking would be problematic and that HACC would be exempt from real estate tax, depriving the City and the School District of Lancaster of a needed revenue stream. Two of the people strongly raising these objections to the HACC plan were Art Morris, former two-term Republican mayor (and current chairman of the Lancaster County Convention Center Authority board), and Republican mayoral candidate, Charlie Smithgall, a colorful, local pharmacist. Smithgall defeated Stork in the 1997 election and promptly killed the by-now moribund HACC proposal.

Two years after closing for business, the majestic Watt & Shand stood empty and dark over Penn Square. Meanwhile downtown had not yet begun a new wave of revitalization which occurred over the next decade.

A call came from many quarters: “What can be done?”