Congratulations to our own Dan Berger and Dan Berger, Jr. for representing the landlord in bringing this wonderful project to fruition!
By Mary Ellen Wright, Lancaster Online
In a former factory building in the northeast part of Lancaster city, there’s a whole town where little kids are in charge.
It’s a place where a kindergartner can don a mail carrier’s cap and deliver letters to white mailboxes all over the neighborhood.
It’s a miniature version of a town square, where youngsters can fix the engine on a 1950s Chevy, be a server at a cafe or scan canned goods at a grocery store cashier’s station.
Tiny Town is opening for business Saturday in an 8,000-square-foot warehouse space on Janet Avenue. It’s an indoor village of nine large playhouses that are powered by children’s imaginations.
“Our slogan is ‘big fun for little people,’ ” says owner Hannah Harris, a mother of three who developed the play place with both young kids and their parents in mind.
With a construction crew putting the finishing touches on two of the playhouses last week, Harris’ children and those of some of her staff members were busily living other lives as firefighters, doctors and mechanics.
In the miniature market, a 6-year-old girl ran plastic fruit over a checkout scanner that lit up and beeped. A 3-year-old boy piloted a little red plane across the floor, while a 5-year-old girl took toy medical supplies out of a cabinet at the hospital, next to a plastic defibrillator.
A couple of other kids climbed up a ladder in the firehouse and slid down the pole, while a curly-headed little girl pulled the nozzle from the toy gas pump outside the mechanic’s shop.
These things that in real life would be far above their heads are right at eye level for young kids.
And there’s not a video game in sight.
Harris recommends the playhouses — each representing a business named for one of Harris’ mother’s grandchildren — for kids 7 and younger.
Each house is several feet tall, and can accommodate about five or six kids at a time.
“A lot of it is educating themselves through play without all that technology,” she says. “We want a place where kids can role-play, where they can explore all of these items … with their hands and their minds.”
There’s a whirring plastic blender on the counter of the cafe, a wide variety of plastic groceries in the market, floor-to-ceiling books in the library and toy dryers in the hair salon.
“There are costumes that go with each (playhouse),” Harris says, from plastic capes in the hair salon to a firefighter jacket in the fire station.
While the kids are in the playhouses, Harris says, their parents can sit in the cafe and lounge area across the room and socialize over coffee and a snack.
There are tables, chairs and comfy couches for the grownups. The cafe will serve coffee and packaged foods such as muffins.
Tiny Town “is designed for moms, dads and grandparents to come in and let the kids play,” Harris says. “It’s built for moms to catch a break — to come in, sit down and catch up with a friend.”
A day’s play at Tiny Town costs $10 per kid and $8 for adults; admission is free for children under 12 months. Harris also plans to offer 3-, 6- and 12-month memberships.