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A Wake Forest institution for 29 years,
The Corner ice cream store served its
last ice cream cone Sunday night.
The reason? The insistence
by the Raleigh Public Works Department,
which owns the town’s water and sewer
systems, that owner Kathaleen Chandley
install a grease trap at the shop in an
old brick building at the corner of
North Avenue and North Main Street.
“It was a mortal struggle
and I lost. I’ve been struggling since
March,” Chandley said this week.
The grease trap would have
cost “thousands and thousands of dollars
plus maintenance. The expense is way
beyond what an ice cream cone can pay.”
The grease trap was not
required because of cooking food.
“We don’t do any cooking,”
Chandley said. “We buy chicken (for the
chicken salad sandwiches) already cooked
from a food service.
“The ice cream is considered
the biggest polluter. The power might go
off and it might melt and we might pour
it down the drain.”
Chandley put up a signs
saying Raleigh Public Works is to blame
and also one saying, “Memories are
priceless.”
“It was a marvelous
experience with the children of Wake
Forest and just extremely satisfying.”
There were children whom their parents
finally judged old enough to make their
first trip on their own, walking into
The Corner to buy their first ice cream
cone. Years later, those children, some
of them now strapping Marines, have
dropped by, “remembering when they came
to buy their first ice cream cone.”
If the water and sewer
systems were still town-owned, Chandley
agreed, there might have been a solution
that allowed the shop to remain open.
But with Raleigh’s ownership, “We’re
just another number in their book.”
Despite the loss of the
shop, Chandley will keep a connection
with young people through her piano
students.
“Wake Forest was a lovely
place, and you notice I said was,”
Chandley said. |
