Stanley P. Brozana Jr., 72 – Served 37 Years as Orwigsburg Police Chief
The lead singer of Crobot and the band’s tour manager are turning their rock experience into a business – and now they’ve got $50,000 to help make it happen.
Brandon Yeagley, lead singer for Crobot, and Dave Cantwell made their pitch to open a Let There Be Rock School location in Pottsville to a panel of judges and about 100 attendees at last night’s final presentations of the Launch Pottsville 2.0 business competition.
“I’m going to need a little more cowbell,” event emcee John Powers Jr. said in announcing Yeagley and Cantwell as the winners.
The idea for a Let There Be Rock School location in Pottsville emerged victorious over three other finalists competing in this year’s competition.
For winning Launch Pottsville 2.0, the business partners will receive $50,000 in startup funding. Let There Be Rock School will be located in the Carriage House of the Yuengling Mansion located on Mahantongo St. in Pottsville.
“We are ecstatic,” Yeagley, originally from Good Spring in Porter Township, tells The Canary. “This community is one of the strongest, if not the strongest that we’ve ever been a part of … Pottsville and what everyone is bringing to the downtown community feels electric.”
Launch Pottsville 2.0 zeroed in on businesses catering to the arts and entertainment economy. The other competitors in this year’s competition were Flux & Ferro, a ceramics retail shop and studio, created by Morgan Althouse; Variegated Goods, a house plants boutique founded by Chandon Krause; and Pottsville Greenway, a trail project connecting the Mar Lin area to downtown Pottsville, which is being spearheaded by Allen Reinert and Walter Davis.
No one walked away empty-handed Thursday night. After Yeagley and Cantwell were named winners, Pottsville Area Development Corp. Executive Director Savas Logothetides made the surprise announcement that all of this year’s competitors would receive funding of some kind from PADCO.
Althouse and Krause will each receive $25,000 in startup capital for their ventures. And PADCO will serve as the first grant match in the amount of $15,000 for Pottsville Greenway and provide $10,000 in technical grant writing assistance for the project.
Based on their presentations on Thursday, the $25,000 in startup funding should be enough to get Flux & Ferro and Variegated Goods off the ground. The ceramics studio is proposed to be located at 108 N. Centre St. in downtown Pottsville. And the plants boutique is proposed for the Avenues storefront at 1755 W. Market St.
Pottsville Greenway is a proposed four-year project but one aspect of it involves reviving the City Cycle 17 bicycle race later this year. The race will be a sanctioned USA Cycling event.
More Than Just a Music School
Let There Be Rock Schools are more than just your average music school. It not only teaches music to students wanting to learn, it teaches the business of music and all aspects of staging a music production, all the way down to merchandising and promotion.
“From set up to tear down,” Cantwell, who is originally from Shenandoah, says.
“We wish we would have had this growing up,” Yeagley says.
Some of the money won through Launch Pottsville will allow Let There Be Rock School to construct soundproof whisper rooms inside the Yuengling Mansion’s Carriage House.
The plan is to start accepting students by July of this year.
A Strong Partnership
Both Yeagley and Cantwell say they each lost a best friend in their journey to where they are today and that emotional loss inspired them to do more.
“That happened. I quit my job. I’m $60,000 in debt and I’m like, ‘What do I do’,” Cantwell says.
He says he got himself in a stronger financial position and was ready, if asked, to go on tour with Yeagley and Crobot.
Yeagley says he and Cantwell’s partnership has strengthened over the last few years. It was Cantwell that actually named the band Crobot.
Their combined skills and areas of expertise are essentially what Let There Be Rock Schools are all about.
Launch Pottsville Creating New Businesses
The Launch Pottsville 2.0 Final Presentations reception was held at Arrow Studio & Events. Arrow was a finalist in the first Launch Pottsville competition. That initial competition spawned the opening of The Chopping Block, Rage Parade, and Arrow.
This year, it appears at least four new businesses and projects will get off the ground because of Launch Pottsville. Credit the process for that, at least in part. Participants began preparing for Thursday night back in November.
In conjunction with Alvernia University’s O’Pake Institute for Economic Development and Entrepreneurship, the competitors complete several courses in the run up to the final presentations. Those courses help entrepreneurs craft well-researched business plans, develop concepts for their startup ideas, scout potential locations, and create realistic financial forecasts.
“Even though we finished first, three other businesses are about to open in Pottsville, too,” Cantwell says. “That’s what this is all about. It’s about the community. The community won. Schuylkill County won.”
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