Mifflin County Lewistown
Progress 2022 The Sentinel
LEWISTOWN REBORN
Projects revitalize business community as habits change
Downtown on the move
GREG WILLIAMS
Sentinel reporter
gwilliams@lewistownsentinel.com LEWISTOWN — Practically barren shelves in each department, stained ceiling tiles overhead and short lines at a makeshift checkout. Aug. 26, 2018, was truly one of the saddest days in Susan Miller Knepp’s life. It was the day The Bon-Ton in downtown Lewistown was shuttered. “I shopped at the store since I was a young girl,” Knepp, who lives in Lewistown, posted on social media. Her post included photos of the store’s opening nearly a half century ago. The Market Street location opened just in time for the Christmas season on Nov. 6, 1969, with throngs of customers waiting anxiously to flood the new store. A ribbon-cutting ceremony was part of the pageantry. The Sentinel described the store as a “… spacious 45,000 square foot structure (which) features the ultimate in modern shopping conveniences.” Newspaper photos captured a bustling Bon-Ton. Knepp’s pictures revealed the final days of one of Lewistown’s retail institutions — perhaps the last remaining one. The Bon-Ton joined fellow retailers Danks & Co., Diana Shoppe, The Hello Shop, McCrory’s and G.C. Murphy’s, all of which have left downtown Lewistown over the years. Cindi Burnell Kearns also posted memories: “My mom worked at McMeen’s and then The BonTon for almost 40 years.” Kearns, a Lewistown native, now lives in Greeley, Colo. For every memory about The Bon-Ton, there are memories about other retailers from yesteryear. News of new tenants filling long vacant storefronts have cre-
GREG WILLIAMS
Sentinel reporter
gwilliams@lewistownsentinel.com
come a ghost town. To the contrary, a new generation of shops and eateries fill the storefronts. In his book “A Mifflin County Christmas, 1920s-1960s,” detailing holiday buying habits in and around Lewistown over five decades, Forest Fisher of the Mifflin County Historical Society chronicles Lewistown’s past as a shopping “mecca,” the commercial hub of Mifflin County. In the 1930s, street directories revealed more than 60 neighborhood grocery and general merchandise stores in Lewistown Borough. Dozens of retail stores offered almost unlimited choices. Fisher recalled traveling with
LEWISTOWN — Don’t look now, but Lewistown’s downtown is on the move. Most of the downtown storefronts have been filled with popular hot spots, like East End Coffee Co. and Downtown OIP and Grille, along with long-time establishments like Laskaris Restaurant. “Finding the right place for the right business is the challenge,” said Jim Zubler, executive director of Downtown Lewistown Inc. “We work with them upfront and try to understand who their clients are and where they are coming from. “Once we understand all of those things then we can go to work,” he added. That process takes time. A lot of the recent developments for downtown Lewistown have been in the planning stages for years. “It doesn’t happen overnight,” Zubler said. “Using a methodical, managed approach is absolutely critical.” “The community is really benefiting from a nucleus of young entrepreneurs, supported by older corporations,” Zubler said. “We’re blessed to have these young people. “We continue to look at programs that assist them in bettering their businesses,” he added. Mike Buffington, a property investor for a handful of multi-use properties within downtown Lewistown and the
See Reborn / Page C8
See Downtown / Page C8
Sentinel photo by JEFF FISHBEIN
Once home of department and discount stores, downtown Lewistown today offers a new generation of shops and eateries. ated reason for optimism. The Geisinger School of Nursing announced it is opening a new state-of-the-art facility in the 46,660-square-foot free standing space that formerly housed the Bon-Ton for so many years. “The downtown location has been attractive to us for the school for some time,” said A.J. Hartsock, director of operations for Geisinger-Lewistown Hospital. “We know our community leaders have worked hard to revitalize the downtown and we want to be part of those efforts. We hope the school can be an anchor for the downtown and will help the local businesses prosper and encourage even more to come in. “We have had tremendous
support from the county commissioners, Jim Zubler from DLI, Rhonda Kelley from the chamber and many others,” he added. “We look forward to being part of the downtown scene in the future.” That news offers encouragement to Zubler, executive director of Downtown Lewistown Inc. “I’ve never seen the downtown so attractive,” Zubler said. “It might be a different kind of use. It is two different from when the two department stores were here, which fed off one another. “You don’t have department stores like that in many places,” he added. The small-town downtowns of past are likely gone, but that doesn’t mean Lewistown has be-
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