EDC Finance helped Darrenkamp’s acquire an SBA 504 loan to help finance leasehold improvements and equipment purchases.

An anchor is defined as a heavy object used to keep a boat from floating adrift, and also as “a person or a thing that can be relied on for stability.”Newberry Commons, in the hills of northern York County halfway between York and Harrisburg off Interstate 83, was for several years a shopping center badly in need of an anchor.

Super Fresh grocery store left in January 2010, leaving a huge hole at one end of the 245,000-square foot shopping center, which opened in 1987.

Now, the center is 96 percent occupied, and seven new stores have moved in since April 2014.

That was when Darrenkamp’s, the family-owned grocery chain based in Lancaster County, renovated and opened a new 35,000-square-foot store.

“We thought this would be a great fit for us, and everything so far has shown that to be the case,” said store manager Ryan Darrenkamp, whose store, the fourth Darrenkamp’s and the first outside Lancaster County.

Most of his 120 employees are area residents, and each year has seen “a 20-percent growth compared to the prior year, so we’re pretty happy with that,” Darrenkamp said.

“We do half our business on Saturday and Sunday, which is even more, percentage-wise, than our other locations do,” he said.

Read the full article from Central Penn Business Journal here.