AMERICAN HOUSE REBORN
PERKASIE >> Three decades after the 1988 fire that ravaged downtown Perkasie, the American House has been reincarnated.
The original one was a hotel built in the 1800s that was designed by architect Milton Bean, said Stephen Barth, Perkasie’s consultant for economic development. Its replacement at Seventh and Market streets is a threestory building with 10 apartments and 6,000 square feet of retail space, he said. “We designed the building kind of in the style of the original property to kind of complement and accentuate Perkasie’s Victorian architecture,” Barth said.
Next to it is the Perkasie Commercial Center, which has two retail spaces on the first floor and six apartments, is located where Lesher’s 5 & 10, another of the buildings destroyed in the 1988 fire, had been, he said.
The two properties are part of the overall resurgence in Perkasie, fueled in part by a new comprehensive plan in 2014 that made revitalizing the downtown a top priority, he said.
At the same time, there are
also new businesses, jobs and homes in other parts of town, he said.
“You can’t just renovate one building. You have to revitalize the whole community,” Barth said.
At the American House, where Rita’s Water Ice and Bloom Flower Co. have been located, Down to Earth Café and the Bread Box and Bakery are moving in, filling all the retail space on the first floor.
There’s still a lot of work to be done before the new location is fully set to go in a couple months, Down to Earth and Bread Box co-owner Ryman Maxwell said the week before Thanksgiving, but he expected to have the doors open by Thanksgiving and for the Dec. 1 Perkasie tree lighting.
“We’re just trying to be open for those events to add to our community,” Maxwell said.
All three of the businesses in the American House are owned by Perkasie residents, which gives them more of a vested interest in the community, Barth said.
“They live and work in the community,” he said. “Their children go to school here.”
Kelly Laustsen, the owner and florist at Bloom Flower Co., said she moved into the American House after having previously worked out of her home.
The business provides flowers for weddings, dinners and other special events, along with holding floral workshops and do-ityourself nights, she said.
“I just needed a bigger space to work because my weddings and events have gotten larger and I’ve been booking more, so I really just needed space to grow,” she said, “and I wanted to stay in Perkasie if I could because I live here and I love it here.”
Maxwell said having the café and bakery in the same location will be more efficient.
“The integration of fresh bread into everything that we do from scratch will be right at our fingertips, versus running from one store to another,” he said.
The amount of seating at the café will be about the same as at the present location but will now be able to be used in a new way, he said.
“We didn’t want to create more seating space. We wanted to create a larger, more professional kitchen, and we wanted to be able to offer spaces for meetings and luncheons where you’ve got privacy but you also have access to coffees, food and a menu,” Maxwell said.
The sidewalk at the building was designed to allow room for outdoor seating, which the café will have, Barth said. Repurposed wood is being used for parts of the work, he said.
“The borough’s obviously excited to have another eating place, especially right here in the downtown, right in the center of town where we have a lot of our activities,” Borough Manager Andrea Coaxum said.
Down to Earth, which was previously just outside the borough, is already well-known to local residents, she said.
“I loved eating their food before, and I’ll love being able to walk there from my office for lunch,” she said.
A new tenant has already been lined up for Down to Earth’s previous location and, while not yet finalized, the previous Bread Box location looks like it will soon have a new tenant, Barth and Coaxum said.
“I don’t think it will take long to fill it,” Coaxum said.
“We have a wonderful problem,” Barth said. “We have more people interested in the borough than we have spaces to put them, and I think that’s a compliment to Andrea and the council in that we’ve been very successful in revitalizing the downtown.”