CHUNK’S BRINGS SUMMER TREATS TO BUCHANAN WITH SWEET NOD TO HISTORY

By DEBRA HAIGHT
BCR Correspondent
BUCHANAN – A new ice cream shop is opening in downtown Buchanan this week. Chunk’s will be located along the McCoy’s Creek Trail in the old pump house of the former Clark Equipment complex on East Dewey Street.
“Chunk’s” will be open seven days a week starting June 1 at 324 East Dewey St. and will offer 12 flavors of ice cream from Moo-ville Creamery, a Michigan-based ice cream maker. Owner Haley Jones said they chose Moo-Ville because it’s a Michigan company and had the best flavors of all the ice creams they tested.
“We will have 12 flavors that we will periodically rotate out,” Jones said. “We will always have vanilla and chocolate and we will always have dairy free and sugar free options … Moo-Ville ice cream has a higher butterfat and they have over 70 flavors to choose from, as well as the best selection of dairy free and sugar free options.”
For her, building community is just as important as selling ice cream. “Our goal is bringing neighbors together one scoop at a time,” she said. “We want to bring the community together and restore the building. The creek and the trail run by the shop, with 600 or so people walking by on the trail every weekend.”
When asked why they chose “Chunk’s” for their business name, Jones said that it’s actually a nickname she had for her now husband, Justin, when they were kids. “We were high school sweethearts and I called him Chunk when he didn’t make his weight as a wrestler,” she said. “It’s an inside joke for us.”
Jones noted that both she and her husband spent their early childhood in Buchanan before their families moved to Niles. They then went to Ohio for college and moved back to the area. They moved back to Buchanan in 2022. “We knew we wanted to open the shop in Buchanan,” she said.
Jones said she and her husband have been thinking about opening an ice cream shop for several years and decided last year it was the right time to turn that dream into a reality. They looked at a couple of locations before connecting with Building 324 owner Randy Hendrixson and finding the former pump house. Building 324 is what was the Clark Administration Building.
“15 years ago I told everybody that I wanted to open an ice cream shop in the old Tastee-Freeze but when it went on tax sale I knew as a real estate person that it wasn’t worth it,” she said. “I talked to Ashley Regal at the city and said I should talk to Randy. That was last July. We looked at this building and Randy gave us the opportunity to fix it up.”
        “One of our biggest draws to the building was its history,” she said. “We love the historical feel of the building…we want to keep the historical look on the outside.”
Historical elements found on the outside of the building include the clay tiles on the roof, and the decorative terra cotta panels found on the sides below the roofline. Buchanan historian Peter Lysy said the panels are in the Craftsman or Art Deco style. The large concrete flower pot outside the building is the last of its kind from the Clark headquarters next door.
Jones noted that the pump house is the next to the oldest building in the former Clark complex and dates back to the early 1900s. The main building that housed the original Clark offices is now known as Building 324 and was built in 1917. The pump house is believed to be the second structure built in 1919, followed by the electric shack and guard house.
Another piece of history that intrigued the couple was that the Carbon Waffle Company had owned the pump house in the late 1990s and had fixed it up to sell ice cream and sandwiches. Carbon had owned the old Clark complex as well as what is now the nearby Lehman’s Farmhouse restaurant during that time period.
Jones said they’re paying homage to that part of the building’s history by using Carbon’s waffle mix to make freshly made waffle cones daily for the ice cream they’re serving.
The shop’s hours will be Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. They plan to be open through mid-October and open next year by May 1.