Wedding business booms at Historic Shady lane

The wedding business has "exploded" at Historic Shady Lane.

A few years ago, with the help of a cousin, Steve Kohr launched a website marketing the historic property in East Manchester Township as a wedding venue.

About a dozen couples booked their weddings there in 2012. About 35 did so in 2013.

This summer alone, Shady Lane will serve as the backdrop for more than 65 weddings.

"We didn't plan on it going where it is today, but it just kind of took off," Kohr said.

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The picturesque 34-acre property dates to the late 1700s, when it was a farm and distillery owned by the Hake family. The Hakes sold the property in the early 1900s to Fred Small, a York County industrialist who turned Shady Lane into a summer home of epic proportions.

Over the years, Small added a greenhouse, band- stand, rose garden, guest house, tennis courts and a home for his chauffeur.

It was a place to entertain friends and family, made possible by its trolley-line connection to York City six miles south.

Kohr, a local realtor, bought Shady Lane in 2003 and has been working since to restore the property, which is located off of North George Street

"We want to keep everything original and keep it historical and not modernize anything in any way," Kohr said. "We're trying to restore everything that's here back to the way it was."

Zoning change: The overwhelming success of the wedding business has triggered a need for a zoning change, which will be addressed at a hearing scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday at the East Manchester Township building, 5080 N. Sherman St. in Mount Wolf. The hearing is open to the public.

Kohr has applied for a special exception to change the property's zoning from residential to resort. Special exceptions are allowable uses that require board approval.

The process is mostly a "formality," as Kohr said he intends to use the property as he has been the past few years. For example, there's no plan to build a restaurant or hotel, he said.

"We just rent the property for the weddings," he said. "But they thought it would be better suited if we have it zoned for a resort."

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