The slow road to opening a downtown business

The first in a series by Cliff Lewis

For business owners Cheryl Young and Kharran Cattell, Expressly Local Food was an organic expression of their passion for healthy local food products. The scope of the project has naturally expanded with the demand for these local items; however, in recent months, the business has run into considerable strain through the effort to set up shop in a downtown storefront.

Several years ago, their strong network of relationships with numerous small, diverse farms in Lancaster County allowed Young and Cattell to assume an informal distribution role, routinely rounding up a collection of locally produced food items for affordable resale. This co-op eventually took the form of Expressly Local Food, a stand run by the two owners at Eastern Market, Lititz Market, and sometimes right out of Cattell’s Race Avenue front porch.

Around the end of last summer, these owners decided that the next step for Expressly Local Food was to establish a physical presence in a fixed location with regular business hours. The fresh inventory would move faster; the selection would expand; and healthy local foods would be available on more than just market days. Around last September, they began calling facility owners in downtown Lancaster—“we wanted to make that commitment to the city,” Cattell said.

Last December, after a few months and a lot of unreturned calls, Young and Cattell finally found their future location at 213 West King Street. The shop was perhaps a few steps away from the “ideal” downtown strip, but nonetheless, a location that Cheryl says Lancaster City is “ready for.” Even more, the property owner—who had been looking for a tenant that would provide a unique contribution to the quality of life in Lancaster City—saw that potential contribution in Expressly Local Food. An official lease was signed in January.

Allowing time for existing tenants to move on and for the owner to implement necessary renovations, Expressly Local Food had estimated that they would begin moving into the facility around early May and open for business in June, an ideal time of year to start up a new local market. Now, however, nearing the end of July, the owners have yet to even begin setting up their space. The owners attribute this delay, almost entirely, to an unwieldy system of Lancaster City code requirements.

As Cattell explained it, “I’ve heard over the years from various people who have opened businesses in Lancaster, and it’s always the same story: It’s a lot of red tape….You find out one thing, and then you try and do it, and then you find out that wasn’t exactly how you were supposed to do it. So you’re spinning a lot of wheels.” Young noted that the process their business has undergone is overcomplicated and difficult to follow. “It’s beyond opaque,” she said.

Further complicating matters was a decision by the City in May to outsource its inspections and commercial plan review process to Associated Building Inspections, Inc., an Ephrata-based firm. This change, resulting in higher fees and allegedly slower service for some small business start-ups, carries its share of potential benefits and drawbacks, which will be further discussed in a later installment of this series. But, regardless of the politics, Expressly Local Food continues waiting for its new space as the summer season unyieldingly rolls by: “We signed a lease in January,” Young said, “and we’re still I-don’t-know-how-many moons away from actually moving in at this point.