Ashcraft was hoping to get Cunha's Country Grocery, destroyed by fire back on May 21, rebuilt and up and running in time for the Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival in October.
"We'll never make it by then," she reluctantly said Tuesday.
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Mike Bredenbeck, Ashcraft's fiscal advisor, said that clearing the site and rebuilding can't possibly happen in five months.
"Everyone would love it by Pumpkin Festival, but it won't happen," he said. "It'll be sometime next winter - or spring - under the best of circumstances."
That means it's possible the town might be celebrating a rebuilt Cunha's store and the first anniversary of the May 21 fire at the same time.
It is certainly easier to rebuild a building destroyed by fire than it is to start from scratch and get permits for a new site, said Marge Macris, the interim planning director for Half Moon Bay.
"They don't have to get a Coastal Development Permit and they don't have to have a public hearing," she said. "All they have to do, really, is bring in their building plans, which the planning department will check to make sure it complies with all the zoning rules and building code requirements."
Those requirements are different than when Cunha's was built a hundred years ago.
"There needs to be access under the American with Disabilities Act and sprinklers in case of fire," Macris said. "That's something all architects know about and it wouldn't take much to design."
Bredenbeck said that Half Moon Bay architect Bruce Turner has been tapped to do the design work. Bredenbeck gave the city a nudge, added that it will take a fast permitting process for the building to go up even by next spring.
"Under the best of circumstances, you can't get design and permits in under six weeks," he said. "That's what we're working to do."
Bredenbeck said that means the earliest a contractor could break ground would be August 1. He said Ashcraft talked to four contractors and the most optimistic estimate is six months to rebuild the store.
"That's if everything is perfect - with good weather and no delays," he said.
In the meantime, the demolition of the building and removal of asbestos-tainted wreckage in the store is nearly done.
"Bev is doing everything she can," Bredenbeck said, "to move this along."
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