The Commonwealth Project LLC
We open small markets and stock them from nearby.
The Commonwealth Project is a two-person Pennsylvania company. We find a main street with farms and makers around it, open a market the town will actually use, and fill it from inside about an hour's drive. New Cumberland General Store is the first one.
Why bother
Why a market and not a shop.
A market can take a grower's whole crate on a Thursday and pay them the week it sells. It can give a soapmaker four feet of shelf without asking her to commit to a year of it. That is a much shorter distance between the person who made a thing and the person who takes it home, and it is most of the reason we bothered.
How it works
How each location works.
01
Vendors first, lease second
We do not sign for a storefront until enough growers and makers have committed to filling it. Day one should look like month twelve.
02
Leave room to change
A rotating bench, a workshop calendar, and shelf space held open on purpose. What sells in April is not what sells in October, and the store should be able to follow that.
03
Fair splits, said out loud
Our vendors know their terms before they unload. We hire from the borough and we compost what we can.
The two of us
Who runs it.
Daniel Crawford of Run-a-Muck Farms and William Padilla-Brown of MycoSymbiotics. They spent five years sharing tables at pop-ups and markets across the Susquehanna Valley before deciding a permanent one would be easier on everybody, and formed the company in 2026.
Meet the vendors →Next
Looking for the next street.
We are walking West Shore and Cumberland County main streets now. If your town has an empty corner and a few farms within ten miles of it, we would genuinely like to hear where.