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New Business Improves Longtime Eyesore

WILLIAMSPORT — A corner property in Williamsport has a new lease on life after it spent years as abandoned and run-down. It is now home to a bagel shop an...

WILLIAMSPORT -- A corner property in Williamsport has a new lease on life after it spent years as abandoned and run-down.

It is now home to a bagel shop and its owners are banking on the location for good business.

George and Dennis Zapata set up shop earlier this month at a new spot in Williamsport.

"Me and my brother were driving and said that would be the ideal place for a bagel shop, a drive-thru bagel shop," said George Zapata, owner of Georgie Bagels which has a location in Berwick as well.

For years, the property sat empty until a local developer teamed up with Georgie Bagels.

"For years this was a dilapidated property. That didn't have anything going on, heard it was a gas station, overgrown with weeds," added Zapata.

"This was abandoned for five, six years easily, nice to see this come in here and improve the area for sure," said customer Steve Moff.

Moff and his son Stefan chowed down on some bagel sandwiches, happy to see the place improve dramatically over what it was.

"It's better than having an abandoned, ugly-looking house or gas station. It works," said Stefan Moff.

It took more than a year to get to this point after the September floods hampered the developer's other properties and delayed construction materials.

"Even the glass we had was from Bloomsburg, from the company Stauffer's Glass, that got pushed back so we couldn't have windows or doors," added Zapata.

Now they do and Georgie Bagels will have its grand opening in a couple of weeks.

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