Jolene Kao bought Charlotte’s iconic Old Brick Store in 2023, determined to revive the historic building as a bustling local hub, where people could shop, eat, and connect with friends and strangers alike.
She installed an espresso bar, freshened up the menu of prepared food and began stocking the shelves with specialty goods in addition to classic kitchen staples.
Kao also brought back something the store lacked in recent years: seating, with a long farmhouse table and stools along a coffee counter.
The changes paid off. The store now hums throughout the day as workers drop by for breakfast or lunch, families pop in for milk or eggs, and visitors linger over coffee.
But not everyone is celebrating the newfound energy. The store’s next-door neighbors, Sarah Beal and David Kenyon, say its transformation has upended their lives, from daily parking headaches to a monthslong ordeal involving a failed well and septic system that has drawn in engineers, regulators, town officials and attorneys.
The couple, who have lived in their home for 11 years, say their attempts to resolve the problems with Kao fell short. In September, they sued her for damages. They’ve also appealed to the town, arguing that the business violates her zoning permit because it operates more like a restaurant than a general store. The Charlotte Development Review Board, which postponed a vote last month, will take up the zoning matter again on November 11.
What began as a quiet dispute between neighbors has snowballed into a messy public fight that has pitted the couple against a community they’ve long called home. Online commenters have accused Beal and Kenyon of NIMBYism, and more than two dozen people wrote to the zoning board last month urging officials to side with the store.
What began as a quiet dispute between Charlotte neighbors has snowballed into a messy public fight.
“The community loves it; hence, it is thriving,” wrote Katherine Arthaud, a longtime Charlotte resident. “It is very surprising to me that anyone would be complaining about that.”
Beal and Kenyon, who were store regulars until earlier this year, said they’ve been vilified for standing up for their family. They say they greatly value the store and don’t want to see it close.
“We just don’t want it to ruin our lives,” Beal said.
They’ve called on Kao to scale back her operation at least until she can address the parking and infrastructure problems. Kao said she doesn’t see how she could do that without going out of business.
“I have tried my best to be a good neighbor and do everything I can to resolve this situation thoughtfully and as quickly as possible,” she said.
A general store has stood at the intersection of Ferry and Greenbush roads since at least the 1820s. While the current building has changed hands many times, it has remained a beloved fixture in Charlotte, an affluent town with little commercial development.
Proximity to the store was initially a draw for Beal and Kenyon, whose own local roots run deep. Kenyon is an eighth-generation farmer who co-owns the Nitty Gritty Grain Company of Vermont in Charlotte, while Beal, who moved to town as a kid, recalls riding her bike to the Old Brick Store to purchase penny candy.
“The convenience of being next to the store has always been great,” Beal said. “It’s so nice to be able to walk over and get a coffee and muffins.”
The couple moved in just as the store was entering a moribund chapter. Sold to a new owner in 2015, the Old Brick Store hobbled along through the pandemic, with staffing shortages often limiting its hours. By 2023, the store was back up for sale.
Kao moved to Charlotte with her family around then, looking for a change. She had been working in New York’s fashion industry for years but long hoped to run a food business, inspired by her experience working in her family’s Chinese restaurant in Dallas.
Kao planned to take a year to get her bearings: “I didn’t want to come in like guns blazing, like ‘Oh, I know what everybody needs,’” she said. But as she considered commercial properties for sale, the Old Brick Store stood out, in part because of its historical significance.
Kao recognized early on that the property had limits. She told Seven Days in 2023 that its well and septic system would constrain her kitchen — ruling out, for instance, the possibility of a full dinner menu. Still, she saw a need for a gathering spot in town, so seating was a priority.
“For me, food and community have always been connected,” she said.
Town staff told her that she’d probably be fine adding seats, since earlier incarnations of the store had them. But Kao, a self-described rule follower, hired engineers, obtained a new wastewater permit and brought her plan to the Development Review Board, which in 2024 approved up to 130 square feet of seating.
The revamped Old Brick Store was a quick success, but Beal and Kenyon say that popularity came with consequences. Customers began parking in the couple’s driveway, and delivery trucks prevented them from leaving. Kao responded by adding stripes to the parking lot, posting signs and asking vendors to be more considerate.
Then the couple’s water started running out. Beginning in May 2024, the well they share with two neighboring homes repeatedly failed, often during the store’s morning rush, forcing the family out of the house at times over the next year. They eventually fracked the well and bought a storage tank, to the tune of roughly $10,000. They suspect that the store’s deeper well nearby was drawing down theirs; testing to confirm that is pending.
The final straw came last winter — in the form of raw sewage. Long-standing easements have allowed the store to keep its septic tank in Beal and Kenyon’s backyard and its mound system on a second neighbor’s property.
In February, an odor emanating from the septic tank grew so strong that the couple’s children couldn’t play outside. The crew that Kao hired to pump the tank dragged its hose across the backyard, smearing sewage across the snow, Beal said. The next month brought another pumping, during which the couple said septic water spilled onto their driveway and front step.
Beal said she suffered a panic attack that day and, when she texted Kao, the owner apologized and offered to buy her family dinner.
“That was the moment I realized this had gone too far,” Beal told the Development Review Board last month.
Septic problems are nothing new in Charlotte, where most properties rely on private systems. Stone’s Throw pizzeria, less than a quarter mile away, was plagued by a failing system before closing its Charlotte location last year. And the Charlotte Children’s Center, down the road from the Old Brick Store, has said for years that it would enroll more children if it had more septic capacity.
Kao said she brought in engineers after learning that the Old Brick Store’s septic system had failed, allowing sewage to seep from the nearby mound. In April, the state ordered Kao to replace the system but allowed the store to remain open in the meantime, requiring monthly pumping of the tank in Beal and Kenyon’s backyard.
Kao was originally given a June 1 deadline to obtain a new wastewater permit that would allow her to replace the failed system. But she persuaded regulators to grant an extension to give her engineers more time to come up with a solution.
Beal, who co-owns the Burlington store Common Deer with her mother, said she had kept quiet about her difficulties with the Old Brick Store out of fear of hurting the business. She confided in a few friends and swore them to secrecy.
Her feelings shifted when she learned this summer that Kao was planning to open a satellite store in Burlington — while also asking for more time to address the problems in Charlotte.
Kao acknowledged that the timing of the announcement wasn’t ideal but told Seven Days that the expansion has nothing to do with the Charlotte septic issue. The Burlington shop will have low overhead costs, she said, serving coffee and limited food options. Kao said the new store could even help limit traffic in Charlotte by siphoning off some of its many Burlington-based customers.
Still, for Beal, the expansion news “hit me like a ton of bricks,” she said.
Their dispute came to a head in late July, when Kao delayed a meeting with the couple to discuss the septic issues because her attorney was getting married out of town.
The couple decided not to wait. Their attorney asked Charlotte’s zoning administrator, Rebecca Kaplan, to take enforcement action, arguing that the store had tilted too far in the direction of a restaurant, in violation of its zoning permit. Kaplan sided with the business, saying she saw no change in the store’s historic operations, “although its current success may give that impression.”
The couple appealed to the review board, and word of the dispute began to spread. In early October, Kao emailed supporters asking them to send the board photos depicting the store’s history and to describe what the place meant to them.
A friend of hers forwarded the email later that day to an undisclosed group of recipients and accused the neighbors of bullying Kao with fear tactics and legal actions.
“The bottom line is they want the OBS shut down,” the friend wrote, attempting to rally supporters for the board’s October 14 meeting. “The bottom line is they want money from Jolene’s success.”
Kao, who was copied on the email, doesn’t remember seeing it but suspects her friends have come to her defense because they know she’s reluctant to speak out. As for whether she believed her neighbors were looking to shut her down and cash in, Kao said, “I cannot guess what their motivation is.”
At the review board’s meeting last month, Beal fought back tears as she read a prepared statement to a skeptical, standing-room-only crowd.
“We are not here to shut down the Old Brick Store,” she said. “We want the store to succeed. But that success cannot come at the direct expense of our mental health, property rights and the safety of our children.”
Kao, in her own statement, acknowledged that the store’s success has been “double-edged” but said she’s done everything she can to operate her business with “honesty, kindness and compassion.”
“This was and is still my dream,” she said. Her statement was met with loud applause.
JD Herlihy, a selectboard member who lives diagonally across the street from the store, said he feels for both Kao and the neighbors. In an interview, he urged residents to let the zoning process play out.
“It’s great to show support for the Brick Store and why we cherish it so much in town without making the neighbor the enemy,” he said.
No matter how the town rules, the septic problem remains unresolved: The couple are now appealing Kao’s replacement system, even though state regulators have signed off on it.
They argue the new system is doomed to fail because it is designed to handle the same maximum daily load as the old one, even though the store has been using more water than that on most days, according to meter readings that the store is now required to report to the state. In one recent month, the store stayed under the limit only four times and on some days used more than twice the limit.
Kao said she hadn’t seen the couple’s appeal. But she said the data reflected several water “anomalies” stemming from leaking fixtures, which have since been replaced. She further noted that the meter tracks only how much water the store pulls from its well, not how much flows back into the septic system. Much of the water that comes out of her faucets ends up in customers’ cups, or in soups and breads, she said.
Meter data from October, which does not need to be reported to the state until next week, shows water flows within the permitted amount, according to Kao. She said her engineers have told her that the old septic system simply reached the end of its life after decades of food service and that the proposed replacement should solve her problems.
Both the store owner and the neighbors say the dispute has taken an emotional toll.
Kao was nervous when speaking to Seven Days, out of fear she would say the wrong thing, she explained. She has felt under scrutiny during the past few months, she said, as her communications with town and state officials have been subject to public records requests and anything with her name on it has been examined.
“The stakes feel really high with every word that I say,” she said.
It’s also the first time in her life that she’s felt unable to solve a problem by talking to someone. “That’s their home. This is my business,” Kao said. “We’re both talking about property that we own and people we care about.”
Beal, for her part, said the problems she attributes to the store have taken a severe toll on her mental health and the public blowback has made matters worse. She wonders at times whether she would have been better off keeping quiet. Then, she said, she thinks about her young children and the message that silence would send to them.
“I want nothing more than to be able to go in there and get a muffin,” she said. “But I want to feel good about it.” ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Love Thy Neighbor? | Charlotte’s cherished Old Brick Store is thriving. That’s created problems for the homeowners next door.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Love Thy Neighbor? Charlotte’s cherished Old Brick Store is thriving. That’s created problems for the homeowners next door.”
This article appears in November 4 • 2026.
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