There goes the neighborhood?

When word began to spread last week that Borders Book Store would close for good in January, there was a buzz of low-grade panic in the air. Other shops had closed in the last few years, even some big ones like Caruso’s and Wawa, but Borders was different. This was the Big One.

Perhaps it’s the shop’s position at the physical peak of Chestnut Hill’s Germantown Avenue retail corridor. Or maybe it’s the shop’s size and the chain’s big-name familiarity. Whatever the case, most in Chestnut Hill consider Borders to be the Hill’s commercial anchor. As it goes, so goes the neighborhood.

Some see Border’s leaving as indicative of a greater decline. It’s part of a larger trend that Chestnut Hill is sliding — that’s it’s mighty central Avenue is losing its grandeur. Even longtime Hillers have a hard time not seeing things this way.

Others – though I have talked to only a few with this perspective – see Border’s closing as an opportunity. With the right planning, the Hill can replace the bookstore with a real prize, like a small independent movie theater.

The reality, of course, is somewhere in between.

Border’s closing doesn’t appear to be a sinister landlord move. It’s not, as some rumors have insisted, a ploy to move in a big junk retailer like Walgreens. Borders employees and its corporate spokesperson all say the same thing: The store just wasn’t making enough money for the parent company to keep it open. So it was given one more holiday season to make a few bucks and then it will close.

Borders, in that respect, is just one more victim of the recession. It’s not because Chestnut Hill isn’t worth investment. The book business in Chestnut Hill just wasn’t a good business to be in.

So The Hill isn’t a dying business strip, necessarily, but it is about to have a very large vacant property in the most prominent spot on the Avenue. And we will have to wait to see what kind of tenant replaces the bookseller. And there in lies the legitimate worry. We have no control over what takes the place of Borders if we do nothing but wring our hands.

The vacancy should be seen as a challenge to Chestnut Hill’s civic resources. Perhaps we can figure out a way to proactively influence the outcome of what kind of development takes place. The idea of a movie theater is really interesting, but it’s going to take a focused effort by Chestnut Hill leaders.

 Chestnut Hillers definitely have the talent to pull it off. But talent alone will not get the job done. The Hill is going to have to move in a cooperative way. And it’s going to take vision, as well, to imagine what can be. Cooperation and vision have not always been hallmarks of recent Hill development.

Borders closing certainly doesn’t have to mean the end of Chestnut Hill as-we-know-it. But it’s definitely going to test the Hill’s resources and spirit.

Pete Mazzaccaro

Be part of the solution: The first step we can take is determining the best use of the property. We’ll have a poll up at chestnuthilllocal.com to track possible uses of the space. If you don’t have access to a computer, send us a letter with your ideas. We’ll report on what you, our readers, believe is the best use of the Borders property.

Commentary: Good Morning America should wake up and smell coffee
by Fran O’Donnell

It was a busy Saturday on the Hill, Nov. 7, when the phone rang at O’Doodle’s and a staff member transferred it as “Scott from some morning show.” The “morning show” turned out to be GMA – Good Morning America. They were in Philadelphia to follow up on a recent New York Times article that claimed price wars between the Big Box Stores and Internet behemoths are hurting the smaller independents, and they wanted to know how O’Doodle’s was faring on this issue. I agreed to the interview that was scheduled for that afternoon.

Well as with the most media, they showed at the store after 6:10 p.m. – past our closing time. It was a brisk afternoon of business and we had a full store of customers. We made do with the few customers that still lingered in the store as they waited for their pizza at Fiesta. The interview was a little different than I had expected.

The reporter was still in New York and would be calling in for the interview. I had done phone interviews before but never on camera. So picture this: I have a lime cell phone on a tripod to my left, a camera filming to my left and I am told just to answer the questions naturally and look straight ahead as if the interviewer were present.

Heck, it’s O’Doodle’s, so we’re always up for something different. No rehearsal … It’s state your name and position and off we go.

The first question was stated something like “Are you worried about business this Holiday season?”

My answer was that I am not worried – I think we will do OK this season, because we have a very loyal customer base in Chestnut Hill. We have a smart customer who sees value over price alone. We have a customer who values time and we know time is money.

Folks want to be able to come into a store and be serviced by the retailer and know they are getting what they paid for. If you watched the interview, it was edited to “I think we’ll be okay.”

The interviewer then said, “You sound so positive about your business district. Why so?”

I reiterated that we have loyal customers who value a personal shopping experience. Whether it is my store or The Cheese Shop or any other store on the Hill, our shops are really hubs where folks meet and greet and catch up on the past week and the what’s up for the week ahead,

It’s a kind of retail therapy, if you will. There is comfort in shopping on the Hill. Folks on the Hill want to support Main Street (Germantown Ave.) They know that a strong Main Street makes for a strong Elm Street (Residential Street).

I spoke in broader terms to pitch to the nation. Again it ended up on the cutting room floor. We really have a great story here in Chestnut Hill. We’re very fortunate to live where we live!

Lastly they asked, “What does O’Doodle’s do that the big box stores don’t?”

I spoke about our “unplugged” toy mix, but touted personal service and knowledgeable staff to mothers and grandmothers. We offer a personal shopper experience for grandmothers who have been out of the kid loop and are happy to see that the classic toys still are a hit with the kids. What was aired was that we offer free gift wrap and walk items to you car. A 30-minute interview was reduced to seconds.

It was great, however, to see the O’Doodle’s storefront on national TV. I really wish they had covered all the great things we do in Chestnut Hill to make it an outstanding shopping and dining experience, and our loyal customers who support us despite all the other shopping alternatives. To all of you I thank you!  If you want to catch the very short clip, it is on the GMA website.

As Paul Harvey used to say, And now you know the rest of the story. Good Day!

Commentary: Undermining Chestnut Hill’s future
by Bob Previdi

Chestnut Hill is a special kind of place that many people admire for its natural beauty, its architecture and sense of community.  But many of us who live here have expressed concern over its future when it comes to the health of business on the Avenue. This was especially true when Wawa and Caruso’s closed and now there are worries about the fate of Borders. With this in mind – it would seem that we would welcome new stores with open arms – but we continue to resist change.

The experiences of developers during recent projects shows that we are still not clear on our future – and the message that we continue to send to potential developers through our actions and deliberations over development is: “Go away.” This is because the process for gaining approval is difficult and in the end, we don’t stand up for it.

For example, near neighbors of the Good Food Market recently undermined the well-established Chestnut Hill Community Association’s development review process. Without any substantive professional input they were able to bypass the CHCA process and overturn its approval of a zoning variance at the Zoning Board of Adjustments downtown. This result sets a bad precedent and is a sad commentary on our commitment to improving the Avenue. 

It is hard enough to develop here but the recent denial of the variance request by the Good Food Market is alarming not only because it undermined the CHCA development review process, but it did so without substantiated facts to back up claims of excessive traffic and limited parking. I would be okay with the Zoning Board of Adjustment’s decision if it were supported by facts. But there were none.   

The near neighbors offered photographs and information that reflected pre-existing conditions. There was no expert testimony from anyone with credentials in traffic planning or engineering that adequately presented future impacts based on the presence of a new store.

In spite of this, the Chestnut Hill Community Association’s Traffic, Transportation and Parking Committee, of which I am a member, listened carefully to neighbor concerns. But in the end, we did not feel – given the relatively small size of the store — that any increase in traffic would be bad enough to deny the variance request.

We felt that faulting the new store for the existing traffic conditions on Willow Grove Avenue was not fair. That is something the whole community needs to fix. Chestnut Hill College is facing the same criticisms – that its development would increase traffic and exacerbate problems. But these traffic problems cited as reasons not to move forward with a development are really nothing more than excuses to stop change. 

When the neighbors kept suggesting that traffic and parking were the reasons to deny the variance, I kept thinking to myself: Why can’t we see that this kind of a business – one that promotes walking – is exactly what we want?

The entire country and world are worried about so many things related to our dependence on the car: climate change and CO2, dependency on oil. So many places are trying to build what we already have – sidewalks and public transit. Chestnut Hill is one of the original transit-oriented developments, and the Good Food Market wants to fit into this pedestrian fabric of Chestnut Hill.

Last January I took a visit with my family to the Ballston section of Arlington, Va., which is located on the Washington, D.C. Metro’s Orange Line. What I saw was jaw-dropping. They have preserved the wonderful little homes on both sides of the commercial corridor and made changes to flow of traffic, and there are traffic-calming measures installed so the development does not negatively impact the neighborhood.

The results on the commercial corridor are amazing. It has size, strength and character that we should emulate here. Maybe not to the degree of Arlington, but if we look at Germantown Avenue from Broad Street to Chestnut Hill we might find suitable locations for the larger scale development that Arlington has down in Germantown.

I would invite everyone to look at the Arlington Web site and go through its zoning maps. They are fascinating in their detail and thought provoking (http://www.arlingtonva.us/Departments/AED/AEDMain.aspx).

This link will take you to a page that says that Wilson and Clarendon Boulevards were named by the American Planning Association as the Best Streets in America in 2008 – or you can Google “Arlington VA” and the government Web site will pop up.

Northwest Philadelphia in many ways is a peer of Arlington. Both are places with about 200,000 people. But Arlington had to start from scratch when it came to its public-transit access. When compared to Arlington, Northwest Philadelphia looks great. It has not one but two train lines and not 11 but 19 train stations. We have the bones for a historical trolley line; Arlington has none. We should focus less attention on parking and traffic and more on making use of these fabulously underused resources.

I look at the deplorable conditions of Chestnut Hill West and East stations, the Borders site and other locations like Kurtz’s at Winston and Moreland and think about the possibilities for making larger, more inviting development along the commercial corridor. Our hostile energy toward development needs to shift to one that guides development the way Arlington has so successfully done.

Our greatest strength moving forward is not our parking; it is our sidewalks, public transit resources and density of development – but when push comes to shove we worry about parking and traffic. We need to ask ourselves: “How can we encourage public input in a process to review development in a constructive way – without allowing unsubstantiated facts to control the debate or alter the outcome?”

We live in an area that can be an example of how to address climate change and help reduce our dependency on oil. But if we don’t design and develop stores that encourage us to leave our cars at home, we will have failed at making the most of what we have. We are a place that is a “real” neighborhood where you can walk to the store for a quart of milk and mail a letter. But are we truly satisfied with variety of our stores?

It is vital that we clear up our vision, shore up the CHCA process for review and approval and regain the confidence of our political leaders and the planning and zoning departments downtown. The case of the Good Food Market is relatively small, but it sets a very bad precedent that will hurt this community for years to come unless we act for positive change. 

In her letter last week, Zoga wrote that when she was planning her business, “I didn’t realize my name would be in the Local weekly or that I would have a handful of angry protestors calling me and taking photos of me.  Had I known I would have shied away!” 

It is embarrassing to read that this type of bullying behavior was going on, and that a prospective business owner might have shied away from opening a business here because of a handful of protestors.

Jen Zoga’s comments should be a wake-up call for the community association, its committees and the community at-large. So many members of the community have come to me over the years and wondered why we don’t have a better, more diverse set of stores. The reasons are simple: the spaces are not large enough, there is not enough foot traffic and the process for development is too difficult unwelcoming and unfair.

If we continue to allow false and unsubstantiated ideas to control any debate, we risk losing these types of developments and all we will be left with are the current bad traffic conditions and fewer resources to solve them.

Bob Previdi is the former Executive Director of the Chestnut Hill Business Association and the Chestnut Hill Business Improvement District and a current member of the Traffic, Transportation and Parking Committee. He is the former communications director for City Council President Anna C. Verna and a former planner and spokesman with MTA NYC Transit.