The M.S. Hershey Foundation, created to provide educational and cultural opportunities, engaged Buchart Horn for landscape architecture and civil engineering services to develop “The Hershey Story: The Museum at Chocolatetown Square” to celebrate the life and legacy of Milton S. Hershey, the town he created, and the people he touched.
A 40,000 SF, two-story building was fitted on a small but prominent W. Chocolate Ave site in the heart of downtown Hershey, PA. BH worked with the building architects, the museum exhibit designer, Gary Goddard Entertainment, and staff members from the Hershey Museum, Hershey Foundation, Hershey Trust Company, and Hershey Entertainment & Resorts to ensure the vision for the site and its use and aesthetic, was accomplished while meeting all the municipal, county, and state requirements for stormwater management, highway occupancy, zoning, and land development.
The museum project spurred a shared parking agreement between several major downtown entities to share existing parking and the parking provided by the new parking garage located immediately behind the new Museum, also a BH project. Even with this additional coordination, all site related permits and approvals were obtained as scheduled.
Downtown visitors can park in the free parking garage and visit the Museum, or directly access W. Chocolate Avenue by the pedestrian alley incorporated into the Museum’s site design. Opening day visitors were quoted saying how impressed they were and feel it will attract tourists and improves the downtown.
Architecture
Transportation
