Harrisburg’s City Island is more than a park. It’s a spectacle, teeming with history and providing the city’s most panoramic views. Now, during Harrisburg Beach Club’s first summer, the island is an iconic summertime refuge once again.
Owners Bryan Donovan and Adam Maust opened Harrisburg Beach Club in November after restoring the 101-year-old bathhouse. “It gives it that nostalgia feeling,” Maust says. A heated tent and igloos keep customers warm in the winter, and a long line of umbrellas keep them shaded in the summer heat.
The beach club is free to enter and features a food truck and bar. It’s a satellite location for Hidden Still Spirits, whose partnership with Harrisburg Beach Club has helped them “be successful here at the beach club and offer a wide variety of beer, wine, and spirits,” Donovan says.
Maust adds, “People can come with their own blankets, they can bring their own food, even, and really sit back and enjoy the space. It’s never to deter that, this is just to supplement your time here.” The sandboxes by the river are perfect for kids to play in, with the adults close by enjoying a burger or brew. Over at the bar, the bathhouse’s old concession stand has been transformed into a custom woodworked home for local beer and cider on tap.
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Karlo Gesner
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Karlo Gesner
There’s plenty of space for events, which often means private gatherings or business functions in and out of the bathhouse. However, it also means public events like races with the beach club as the start and finish line for runners. Open daily, the beach club features live music all through the weekends for anyone to enjoy (including adults and accompanied under-21s). In short, there’s no shortage of activity going on.
City Island already offers a lot—a baseball field, mini golf, river boat tours, carriage rides, a cafe, green space, and more, all in just 63 acres. Even so, the addition of the Harrisburg Beach Club is propelling the island’s popularity once again. Maust says, “We think it’s a nice complement to some of the other businesses on the island.”
Donovan and Maust first met through the Harrisburg Young Professionals Kickball League. “We kind of indirectly picked each others’ brains, talked about things we were working on, but never actually connected on a project,” Donovan says—until they decided to launch the beach club as a joint passion project. The two are serial entrepreneurs in their own right, but reviving the region through various community-minded projects has become a priority for them both.
With their beach club smack dab in the middle of the Susquehanna, Maust and Donovan carry a responsibility to the Susquehanna River and the surrounding environment. That’s why they plan to test the water and share the results right on their website, so people can see its health. “Just that awareness in itself will really help people appreciate the river a little bit more, just by spending a little bit more time around it,” says Maust.
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Karlo Gesner
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Karlo Gesner
Looking back at old photographs, you can see thousands of people on City Island cooling off in the river. From the Dauphin County Historical Society, a 1930’s black-and-white photo shows a manned lifeguard stand on a barge with swimmers in every direction. The now-revived bathhouse is emblematic of its original condition, with even nicer design and accoutrements. After sitting abandoned for 30 years, the building’s restoration is truly a historic accomplishment.
Maust and Donovan are not ignorant of the island’s vulnerability to flooding. Once known as Island Park, the Harrisburg Senators baseball team lost their island-based home field to flooding in 1936 and didn’t get it back until 51 years later in 1987. Maust says, “Flooding’s not an if. It’s a when,” which is why the Harrisburg Beach Club made sure they are able to take down everything and store it on higher ground within as little as three hours. This emergency plan makes sure the beach club can continue to serve locals and visitors alike, regardless of what goes down with the weather.
That’s just another quirk of City Island, a place unlike any other. Ultimately, Maust and Donovan don’t want it to be a hidden gem, but a gem right out in the open. With the Harrisburg Beach Club, that wish is now a reality. Maust gleams when he says, “You just feel like you’re in your own little oasis.”
Visit Harrisburg Beach Club every day from 12 p.m. – 10 p.m. (weather dependent) on City Island at 700 Riverside Drive, Harrisburg. If driving, park in the lots under the Market Street Bridge, and walk the path to the north side of the island.
Karlo Gesner
Harrisburg Beach Club
700 Riverside Dr, Harrisburg, PA 17101
717-743-1001
