I will tell you that this will be good for the neighborhood, super good for the commercial district, good for real estate values - and may be lousy for parking.”

Robert Elfant, president of Elfant Wissahickon Realtors

The Lantern Theater’s proposed new location at the former Presbyterian Church building at the corner of Germantown and Mt. Pleasant Avenues is sparking concern among neighbors who say there’s already a lack of adequate parking in the neighborhood. 

While most of the people who showed up at a recent virtual community meeting on the subject said they liked the idea of having a Center City theater as a tenant, virtually all worried about the potential impact on parking. 

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that this theater is a wonderful thing to have come to Mt. Airy,” said Robert Elfant, who is president of Elfant Wissahickon Realtors and has an office across the street. “I also have to agree that there’s no question this is going to put a strain on a somewhat already strained parking situation…The question we have to ask ourselves is this: is the positive enough to outweigh the negatives?”

For now, East Mt. Airy Neighbors, which held the meeting as the neighborhood’s Registered Community Organization (RCO), agreed to table their decision on whether to approve the theater’s use of that space until March 23. 

Nina Curlett, co-chair of the group’s zoning committee, said that new development already underway along the Avenue, and more that's coming, means that parking will continue to be a thorny issue. 

“It’s going to be an issue, and it’s definitely going to be an issue for people who live off the strip,” she asid. “It would be an unfortunate thing to lose a project like this because of that. I don’t know what the solutions are, however.”

Proposed schedule and programming

Stacy Dutton, executive director of the Lantern Theater Company, said they plan to use the space for administrative offices, the children’s matinee series, and also some of their regular season performances. 

Dutton said they planned to start with six full-time staffers, a number which could grow to 12. The children’s programming, she said, would not affect parking because the middle and high school students who attend typically arrive on a school bus, or take public transportation. 

For a small theater like theirs, regular season productions are intermittent. “These are relatively short runs, about four to four and half weeks, and they don’t happen back to back,” she said. 

Dutton said Lantern had “long envied” companies like the People's Light theater company, which is located in Malvern, because they have successfully developed a close relationship with their community without having to rely on a Center City audience. 

“We are very much interested in developing a relationship with a community of people who are not necessarily the cultural shoppers who come downtown,” she said. “That is a relationship we are very keen to establish and nurture.”

She did not mention Quintessence Theatre, which is similar in character and size to the Lantern and is located on the next block. She also did not know how many seats the Quintessence has (150 now, and 225 after it completes current renovations), and said it would be difficult, if not impossible, to say whether the two theaters would be running shows on the same evenings.

Dutton, who lives in Mt. Airy, did say that she had gone to many performances at Quintessence and thought there could be “a wonderful synergy between the two theaters.”

Quintessence Theater did not respond to the Local’s call for comment. 

Parking Study

Transportation engineer Lori Bickerdyke Ware, hired by the Lantern to complete a parking study for the project, reported that her team went out about an hour before performance times in late September of 2021 and counted 821 available spots within a 1,000 foot radius of the church.

Those spots included metered and non-metered on-street parking as well as spots in the FitLife lot, the lot on E. Mt. Airy Avenue just off Germantown and a larger lot off Chew Avenue behind the Sedgwick Theater. It did not include the lots at the Lutheran Seminary or Univest Bank, both of which are located within a block of church.

Dutton said she also has a verbal agreement with the management of the Acme Supermarket for permission to use that lot, which is a block away. 

While many residents asked about parking in the chat function of the meeting, nearby neighbor Dan Hoover voiced the strongest opposition during the discussion. He said parking had already gotten tighter due to the condominiums attached to that property, and that’s been a problem for elderly neighbors who can’t navigate a long walk and need to be able to park near their houses. 

“We have several folks on our block who are older and on a fixed income, and they’re not in a position to walk three blocks to get to their house,” he said.

Elfant noted that performances start at 7 or 8 p.m., after most people are already home for the evening, so he expects parking to be more of a problem for patrons than for residents. 

Dutton agreed, and said parking is an issue for small theaters all over the country - and that as a result, theater-goers have been changing their ways.

“What we are noticing is that some walk, some come by transit, some drive. Some of our old patrons are using Lyft or Uber,” she said. “I went to Victory Gardens in Chicago and had to park half a mile away on a cold Chicago night.

“I think theater-goers know that when they are going off the beaten path, which they often enjoy, that’s just a part of life now,” she said. 

Another member of the group’s zoning committee, Kelly O’Day, noted that he and his wife often walk more than 1,000 feet to get ice cream at Bredenbeck’s after attending a production at The Stagecrafters Theater in nearby Chestnut Hill. 

And David Fellner, who owns the Sedgwick Theater, added that he often goes to the Arden Theater in Center City, where parking is also scarce. “It seems to work,” he said. 

What’s next

The upshot, if there was one, was simply that the neighborhood - which is growing fast - needs to organize around a long-term solution for parking. 

Kelly suggested that the Mt. Airy Business Improvement District “begin the process of thinking through a long-term parking strategy for our commercial district.”

Fellner agreed. 

“We’re going to be in this every single time any new proposal comes in unless we can get our arms around the problems and figure out some solutions,” he said.

Businesses on the Germantown Avenue business district struggle, he said, and would benefit from an anchor like The Lantern. 

He noted how much more crime there was in the neighborhood when he bought the theater 25 years ago, and said he is grateful that things have changed. 

“Of course there are, in life, pluses and minuses about everything we do,” he said. “I personally have been waiting for 25 years…to see this block blossom. The fact that it is now a place where The Lantern can come and feel secure about being here is something I think we should all feel good about.”

Elfant agreed.  

“The Avenue has suffered from 40 years of mediocrity. I’ve been right in the thick of it for all 40 of those years. This type of use is potential game changing,” he said. “I will tell you that this will be good for the neighborhood, super good for the commercial district, good for real estate values - and may be lousy for parking.”