Trio aims to cut through red tape in attempt to revive old Penn Township general store
A trio of Penn Township natives are seeking help from the community as they attempt to revive and renovate the former McCormick’s Market general store on Brownsdale Road.
The group, led by Shawn Kozar and his wife, Jen, say they are certain that the building existed prior to a cutoff date that requires a pricey inspection. But tangible proof — in the form of official records or photographs — has been hard to come by and may delay their plans for a new shop.
The group needs to show the proof to Code.sys, the code consulting agency used by Penn Township, that the structure existed as a general store prior to April 17, 1927.
The date is significant because it marked the passing of Pennsylvania’s Fire and Panic Act, which set basic requirements for fireproofing in structures across the Commonwealth.
If the group cannot adequately prove the building existed as a general store prior to the 1927 date, then they will have to pay upward of $6,000 for a local engineering firm to perform an official inspection. This inspection would determine whether the building — pre-renovation — meets the 23 standards of the International Existing Building Code of 2018.
If so, then a certificate of occupancy will be issued to the building and allow the Kozars to begin work on renovations. Under section 403.28 of Pennsylvania’s Uniform Construction Code, any building without a certificate of occupancy, but was built before April 17, 1927, is deemed to be legally occupied “until the owner proposes to renovate, add an addition, alter or change the occupancy of the building,” as the Kozars are planning to do.
Ed Thaner, who is working with the Kozars on the project, believes that the whole process is needless and shouldn’t apply to what the trio is trying to do.
“There's rules and there's regulations and there's laws, and they're not made for every situation,” Thaner said. “This is a very, very unusual, and in my opinion, unique situation.”
Older Penn Township residents remember McCormick’s Market as a thriving general store that served the community between 1945 and 1985, under the ownership of Alfred and Sylvia McCormick.
In 2023, Kozar noticed that the old general store property was up for sale. Motivated by his experience as a frequent customer at the store decades prior, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to purchase it for himself, and he closed on the property that December.
According to Butler County property records, the closing price was $175,000, and he purchased the property from Amber Cooper and David Smith.
“Whenever I was a kid driving by here, we'd stop on our way to Lernerville to get food for going to the racetrack,” Kozar said. “When I saw it come up for sale, I thought it'd be great.”
Kozar, who also owns Kozar Excavating, intends to revive the general store alongside his wife, Jen. Plans are for Jen to handle food services at the store once it opens.
“My wife's interested in doing the food stuff. She wants to do her own food business,” Kozar said. “We’re going to try and have hot foods and cold foods and bread and milk and lottery and all the good stuff.”
Initially, the Kozars aimed to make more extensive renovations to the second floor, but those plans had to be shelved due to state regulations.
“We wanted to put a full second story on top after we demolished the top half of the building,” Jen said. “We were told with the combined square footage that we were going to be required to put in an elevator, even though the upstairs of the building was just going to be private offices and storage for us to use.”
The trio has tried, to no avail, to submit some scraps of documentation to Code.sys in an attempt to prove that the building predates the Panic Act.
“That building was definitely built before 1927. It's just how do we prove that?” Thaner said. “What they’re asking for is a picture, preferably from a newspaper article.”
One piece of information they have submitted is the obituary for Clark Bailey, which was posted in the Butler Eagle upon his death in the 1930s. According to Jen, her research shows that Bailey purchased the property in 1930 and turned it into a service station, and upon his death, his wife Ella ran it as a grocery store until 1945, when it was sold to the McCormicks.
“That obituary was brought to the attention of Code.Sys, and I was told it was not sufficient information because there was no address listed,” Jen said. “They just said that my information was not specific enough.”
For his part, Thaner submitted passages from two official histories of Butler County which were published in 1883 and 1895 and state that a general store was established in Brownsville by A.M. Brown in 1844.
Although Thaner believes that the store being referenced is the same structure that still exists today, these statements were also rejected by Code.sys as hard evidence.
“We will need definitive proof that the building that is being altered was constructed prior to April 27, 1927,” reads an email from a Code.sys engineer, a copy of which has been obtained by the Butler Eagle. “I am unclear how a statement that a store was there in 1844 refers to this structure, which is being altered.”
“How many general stores could there be in Brownsdale in 1844?” Thaner told the Butler Eagle.
Thaner also mentioned that he came across an old aerial photograph which shows the building, but it is of no value to the situation since it came from 1938 — 11 years after the cutoff.
The trio has also found a reference to an A.M. Douthett, which was published in the now-defunct Butler Citizen newspaper in 1902 among a list of candidates for a political office that year. The profile mentions that he was “involved in a general store business at Brownsdale.”
Although the Kozars are prepared for the possibility of having to pay $6,000 for an inspection, they are seeking the community’s help to prove the building’s age. The group made their situation public during a Penn Township board of supervisors meeting on Dec. 9.
“If (paying $6,000 is) what we're going to have to do, that's our only other option,” Kozar said. “But we figured we'd try to get a little more word out on the street.”
Code.Sys did not reply with comment prior to deadline.
