Now the cafe is preparing for a larger room, a more visible corner and a place inside one of Lewistown’s older stories.

Square Cafe is moving into the former Wilson’s Jewelry building at 13 E. Market St., part of a downtown redevelopment project that will combine two historic properties overlooking the square. The move will take the cafe from a familiar downtown storefront into one of the most visible locations in the borough, where old jewelry counters, covered windows and unused spaces are being turned toward a new use.

For owner Kayla Zook, the reason is simple. The business has grown.

“When I step back and look over the past nine years and see how my business has grown, and then when I look to the next nine years, I see there are changes that need to be made,” Zook said. “My business has grown significantly, and if I want to continue in that trend, I need more space. This opportunity became available, and it seemed like the best fit for my vision and goals.”

Sentinel photo by SIERRA BOLGER
Square Cafe and Bakery owner Kayla Zook displays a made to order sandwich.

The new space gives Square Cafe two things its current location can’t offer in the same way: more room and more visibility.

Zook said there are no immediate plans to change the menu or the cafe’s setup. The Square Cafe that customers know will remain the Square Cafe. Once the staff settles into the larger space and works out a new system, she hopes the cafe can add some new menu items.

“The Square’s identity will remain the same,” Zook said. “We have no drastic changes in mind.”

That may matter as much as the move itself. In a small town, a restaurant becomes part of people’s routes. Customers remember where they sat. They know which door sticks, which table fills first and how long it takes to get a coffee before work. A business can move only a few doors and still ask people to change a habit.

So far, Zook said, the regulars have been excited.

The move also puts Square Cafe inside a larger downtown question. What happens when old buildings stop being memories and start becoming useful again?

The redevelopment project includes 13 and 15 E. Market St. Previous plans called for the properties to be joined into a single restaurant destination overlooking the square, with indoor dining, takeout service and outdoor dining space. The project also includes the demolition of the former Trolley Car restaurant building at 15 E. Market St., a structure that had long held sentimental value for many residents but had become difficult to restore.

Mike Buffington, president of MAB Holdings and the owner of the buildings, said Square Cafe made sense for the property because it had already proven itself downtown.

“There are several things when I think about the Square Cafe,” Buffington said. “One, the success of their current location on the Square, and wanting to keep them in downtown Lewistown, and them wanting to stay in downtown Lewistown, was probably a primary fit with it.”

He said Zook, her employees and the cafe’s track record made the business the kind of tenant he wanted in the building.

“We tend to look for good quality tenants when we’re putting into our locations,” Buffington said.

The building itself has been part of Buffington’s portfolio for years. He said he would need to check his records to confirm the exact date, but estimated he had owned the property for at least 10 years. During that time, the upper floors were improved first. Four existing apartments on the second and third floors were renovated. Around the COVID period, an unused rear section of the second floor was converted into two new apartments.

The first floor remained the harder question.

As tenancy changed, Buffington began looking at how to bring the space back into use. After his company acquired the neighboring property, the project became larger. The issue was no longer one storefront. It became a matter of how two properties could work together, how the space could serve Square Cafe and how the whole project could meet code and zoning requirements.

“So it’s really just about improving both properties,” Buffington said.

The former Wilson’s Jewelry building, Buffington said, has been easier to work with than the neighboring structure. The more difficult piece has been 15 E. Market St., the building many people knew as the Trolley Car.

Buffington said that the structure posed the greatest challenge because of structural problems and the difficulty of bringing it up to current code and ADA standards. He said it was a prefabricated building made to resemble a trolley car and was never intended as a permanent structure.

“It wasn’t even an actual trolley car,” Buffington said.

The plan is to remove that building and use the space for outdoor dining and other restaurant needs. The neighboring building at 13 E. Market St. will remain, with its historic character brought back where possible.

Inside the old Wilson’s Jewelry space, Buffington said, the work has involved opening up areas covered over the years and seeing what can be saved. Renovating an old building often begins with uncertainty. Walls and cabinets hide what earlier owners left behind. Some features can be restored. Others are too far gone. Some discoveries change the plan.

At 13 E. Market St., Buffington said, new windows will overlook the square. The plywood now covering the openings will give way to views from the cafe’s indoor dining area.

“You really have to get in there and see what is salvageable that you can reuse and features that you can bring back,” Buffington said.

For Zook, moving into that kind of building carries weight.

“It means a lot that this space became available to us and we get to be a part of a building with so much history,” she said. “I hope that our business can represent Lewistown well and the history it has.”

Square Cafe’s move comes as other downtown properties have drawn new attention. Zook said she has watched businesses open and older buildings undergo renovation during the cafe’s nine years downtown. The former Laskaris property, near Square Cafe’s current location, is also under renovation.

“Seeing other buildings being remodeled and new life coming back to them and new businesses starting is exciting,” Zook said.

Buffington sees the same pattern. He said downtown Lewistown has momentum, with businesses and organizations returning to once vacant spaces. He pointed to investments by other groups, including Geisinger, as part of a wider effort to strengthen the downtown.

He does not describe redevelopment as one person’s work. In his view, each owner has a piece of the larger job.

“It takes everybody doing their piece,” Buffington said. “So, for us, it’s about doing our piece on the properties that we own to keep that momentum going in the right direction.”

That is the bet behind the project. A cafe needs room. A developer needs a tenant. A town needs its old buildings to matter again. None of those needs alone can restore a downtown. Together, they can put people back behind the windows.

Buffington said consumer and business demands have changed in Lewistown and in communities everywhere. The old uses do not always come back. The question is whether the buildings can be made useful for the businesses that exist now.

“How do you repurpose those buildings and bring them back to life so you have people in them?” Buffington said.

Square Cafe has already answered part of that question. It stayed downtown. It grew downtown. Now it is moving deeper into the center of town, into a building where people once bought jewelry and where future customers may sit by the windows looking over the square.

For Zook, the move is not a break from what Square Cafe has been. It is the next version of it.

More room. More visibility. Same cafe.

And maybe, for downtown Lewistown, another light back on in an old building.