Who’s to blame?

Re: Hill Gap to Close (12/4/03)
I have lived in the Hill community now for three years (I live roughly 250 feet from Germantown Avenue and Highland Avenue) and have been an active participant in the community since 1997. I am a designer and have, amongst my friends, often discussed the failures of Chestnut Hill and the local surrounding shops. I read the “Hill Gap to close” article with renewed dismay. Once again, blame gets tossed back and forth on why the area is going “down Hill,” due to the lack of police protection [and response] to thefts and crime.

The loss of the Gap (for good or bad) can be blamed on two basic components, with the Gap and the community shops taking most of the blame.

One, the Gap is a very poorly designed store. A store with two entrances is a difficult store to manage in any location, be it street or even a mall. The Gap store needs to be redesigned for any business to do well there. For the Gap then to blame the move on “a variety of metrics” and not be more specific, really only lets us assume that it is shoplifting that is the main problem. This is very sad and shows a complete lack of respect for the community and its customers. I have seen a security guard in the Gap every time I have been in that store; maybe his job should have been reviewed?

The Gap has a policy of non-prosecute on shoplifters. Who knew? For the Local to announce this to all up-and-coming criminals is even more unbelievable to me.

If the Gap did not have its lease renewed, as has been rumored, I can only ask, what was the landlord thinking? Is the Gap not a large enough business for the area? Does Hampton Associates wish to put another cutesy little local craft shop in there, that will surely close after a few months?

Secondly, in the Local paper, I read articles, weekly on how the Chestnut Hill community can resuscitate the local economy. The local shops of Chestnut Hill have done very little to make the area a shopping destination. One main and simple reason I rarely shop in my own community is the complete inaccessibility of the shops. I work a job 8-6 Monday to Friday. I would say roughly 95 percent of the shops on the Hill close between 5 and 6 p.m. (The Gap closes at 6), making it nearly impossible to shop my local stores. With Germantown Avenue [bridge]now open, it’s even easier to escape to the suburban malls northward for a late-night shopping spree. So unless I plan all my shopping around a very busy weekend, the local area barely sees any of my money or [that of] most of my friends as well. One would think that the community and the shops along Germantown would see how well the area does during the Christmas extended shopping hours and would make a shift to longer hours throughout the year.

My girlfriend and I stroll Germantown Avenue many a night looking at all the closed shop windows. We eventually end up at Borders, which I would guess will surely close one day as well if changes are not soon made to the surrounding community.

Chestnut Hill has the opportunity to move forward, yet it continually seems to be trapped in a past that is no longer here. Want to know what stops crime in areas? PEOPLE! Busy streets with people shopping do. Installing cameras seems like another waste of local money.

The closing of the Gap can be seen as a very big loss, but it should also be seen as an eye-opener to the community. However, I do remember Banana Republic leaving a few years back to go to the greener grass of Manayunk, and that didn’t seem to shake anything up here. Yet Manayunk seems to be livelier every time I venture down there. Now I am not trying to say I wish [for] the congestion of Manayunk, what with all the bar/club traffic, though Chestnut Hill is a driving nightmare on Saturday mornings. Chestnut Hill does have a rich history, one that should be shared, not through security cameras and locked up storefronts.

Christopher Jones
Chestnut Hill

Ed note: The section of the Gap building that houses GapKids was built in 1989, two years after the rest of the building.  James McCreight, the developer, created two entrances facing Germantown Avenue so that the building resembled two structures. Store hours are an issue with which the Chestnut Hill Business Association has been concerned for some time.

A success

I would like to thank you again for your help in making our “Pies for St. Vincent’s Dining Room” such a wonderful success. Thank you for having the jars for St. Vincent’s in your stores, and for putting up with me when I stopped in to check them. We haven’t counted the money yet, but I want you to know that St. Vincent’s Thanksgiving was special because of your help. Your kindness at this busy time was wonderful. Thank you again — and I hope I’ll see you next year.

Jean Dwyer
Chestnut Hill

Monthly recycling

We are sorry for the confusion over the monthly Partnership Recycling collection scheduled for last Saturday, December 6. Here’s what happened …

Because of the storm forecast, we were in contact with our partner, the Streets Department, on Friday and it was agreed the program would go ahead as usual. They accepted our position, as they have always done before, that we have no way to stop the program completely, so their support is inevitable, whether from 9-1 Saturday (our recycling), or as clean-up at a later time (their cleaning the site of trash). Apparently, on Saturday morning, as the City readied plows on trash trucks for their snow clean up, the decision to support us was reversed at a higher level. This news did not reach us on the site until about 10:45 a.m. That’s why those who called or came to see if we were operating were assured it was ‘business as usual’.

We are just as disappointed as those who tried to recycle that, for the first time in ten years, communications broke down so completely.

On the positive side, the Chestnut Hill Community Fund recently received $2,962 as Partnership Recycling program benefits for the first half of the year. An additional estimated $2,000 can be anticipated from sale of the mixed paper collected in the same period. So, keep on coming; we’re almost always there for Chestnut Hill! Our next date is January 3. (There won’t be a make-up date for December.).

Chestnut Hill Recycling Group
John Holt, Coordinator
Stewart Graham
Bill David