By Dianna Marder
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
If a single city neighborhood could lay claim to the only outlet for something as exotic as Tunisian harissa pasta, would that neighborhood be considered chic? Maybe, but East Falls knows better than to put all its hope into one market basket.
Blessed with proximity to the Schuylkill (river and expressway), this slice of the city gave the world Grace Kelly and a slew of recipes for catfish. Thousands of commuters pass by daily on Ridge Avenue, and on weekends thousands more stroll and cycle by on Kelly Drive.
But for all its potential, East Falls seemed to sleep through the revivals in Manayunk, Fairmount, Brewerytown, Northern Liberties, Port Richmond and Fishtown.
Now the new Marketplace at East Falls is up and running, offering shoppers the Tunisian pasta and a Reading Terminal-style greengrocery. And more development is on the way.
With the anticipated infusion of nearly $400 million in public and private dollars, East Falls is in for an extreme makeover.
"Now there are a lot of pent-up expectations in East Falls," said Carolyn Sutton, who chairs the board of the East Falls Development Corp. "We all feel as though success is just around the corner."
But. In East Falls, there's always a but.
Fallsers, as the locals are known, have heard talk of an economic revival for nearly a decade - even as they watched restaurants open to acclaim and shutter for lack of customers.
The neighborhood's most prominent intersection, at Ridge and Midvale Avenues, still has more storefronts empty than occupied. Intense civic involvement breeds fractiousness that can make progress difficult. And native son Mark Sherman's return to the roost as a major real estate developer has only added complexity - and controversy - to a dizzying development scene.
"We've been waiting a long time," longtime resident Jerry McCormick said last month at a ceremony marking the lighting of the landmark Falls Bridge across the Schuylkill to accentuate the planned gateway. "I've lived here 26 years," said McCormick, a public school teacher, "and I've been waiting."
Updating a rich history Nestled by the Schuylkill and the Wissahickon in Northwest Philadelphia, East Falls is where John B. Kelly, the self-made millionaire and triple gold-medal-winning Olympic rower, raised Grace and Jack Jr. The Old Academy Playhouse, where Grace got her start, still draws crowds, and Kelly Drive was renamed in memory of Jack Jr. - an Olympic oarsman like his father and a member of City Council.
Gov. Rendell, U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, U.S. Rep. Chaka Fatah, and a cadre of elite city officials whose jobs come with residency requirements have homes at the top of the hill, near Philadelphia University - in a section rich in architecture with estates that attest to a grand past.
There were indeed falls in East Falls - that's what made it such a haven for catfish. But the creation of the Fairmount Dam three miles downriver in the early 19th century ultimately submerged the falls, leaving only a few rocks protruding from the river. Millwork became more important then.
In the late 1800s, industrialists built mansions here that looked down on the lower falls - on their mills and the rowhomes they built for their workers.
But the community seems to split along the tracks where the R6 Norristown Line runs. Here the streets become narrow and steep, almost tumbling down toward the Schuylkill. This is where workers labored and lived in the 1850s.
Despite recent tensions at Thomas Mifflin Elementary School involving black parents and the school's white principal, the neighborhood's Democratic ward leader, Ralph Wynder, said East Falls was an integrated neighborhood that had not been negatively affected by racial issues.
Mayor Nutter, who represented the area on City Council, called East Falls "one of the most highly organized neighborhoods in the city."
Throughout the 1990s, the community battled the Philadelphia Housing Authority when it wanted to retreat from its promise to demolish and redevelop Schuylkill Falls, a blighted and crime-ridden high-rise public housing project. The project has been replaced with Falls Ridge and Hilltop at Falls Ridge, side-by-side developments of subsidized and market-price homes, townhouses and apartments.
With that issue resolved, the neighborhood's comeback gained momentum in the late 1990s when the newly formed East Falls Development Corp. adopted a master plan, initiated zoning changes, and began spreading the word that East Falls had room to grow and welcomed callers.
When Gina Snyder arrived to run the East Falls Development Corp. in 2002, she found the neighborhood ignoring its enviable waterfront. Now, thanks in large measure to her leadership, the neighborhood is determined to reconnect with the river.
Lighting the landmark Falls Bridge has been accomplished. New, well-lit public parking is in place under the Twin Bridges, and the city's Mural Arts Program is committed to making an art installation on the Twin Bridges' 80-foot supports. Across from the parking lot, renovations are under way to turn the remnants of a 1930s-era city swimming pool into a cafe and visitors center. (Pat's note; this is where the old bathey was located, in case you did not know) And there are plans to extend access to the river with a pier or boat dock.
At the key intersection where Kelly Drive meets Ridge and Midvale, a gateway will be created, said Snyder, with new streetlights, directional signs, crosswalks, trash receptacles, benches, trees - all designed to lure strollers and cyclists from Kelly Drive into East Falls' retail corridor.
The old Rivage catering hall site facing the river will be transformed, she said, into East Village, a complex with apartments, offices and shops on a protected pedestrian mall with off-street parking and a new through street.
Farther along Ridge Avenue, as it winds toward Scotts Lane, 19th-century manufacturing sites are being refitted as luxury apartments and condos with granite countertops, bringing as many as 500 residents.
On Henry Avenue, the old Medical College of Pennsylvania, site of the world's first medical college for women, will be retrofitted as market-rate apartments; subsidized living spaces and a community center for seniors; a school for autistic children; a production facility for Capogiro, an artisan gelato maker; plus shops, offices and a fitness facility.
The Arthur Ashe Tennis Center has a new 10,000-square-foot home on the riverfront. The basketball leagues that drew crowds and local heroes to Gustine Recreation Center have new indoor courts. The Catfish Cafe, a stalwart from the 1980s on Scotts Lane, is making a comeback.
Marketplace at East Falls, Jeff Baskin and Lisa Berger Baskin, husband-and-wife entrepreneurs, bought a 95,000-square-foot tract on Ridge Avenue in 2001 because it came with city tax advantages. They did not immediately envision a market.
They rented a section in the rear to a sheet-metal fabricator, and made space in the front for a fitness center and the offices of an event planner. With these three thriving, the Baskins courted renters for the remaining 22,000 or so feet.
When nothing developed, Jeff Baskin, who previously owned and operated a produce stand at Pike Place Market in Seattle, decided to create the Marketplace at East Falls.
The historically significant building housed America's first commercial computer, and for the opening in November, Baskin put enlarged archival photos of the 16,000 pound Univac on the walls of his Marketplace.
The market's closest neighbor, the Victorian-era Laurel Hill Cemetery, draws visitors from around the world, so the Marketplace should be easy to find. But it may be difficult to enter.
A median blocks southbound drivers from turning left into the market, and the next opportunity to turn is in North Philadelphia.
Lisa Berger Baskin is working at the city and state levels to get the go-ahead for a left-turn lane.
Undaunted, the Baskins hope to open additional vendor space in 2008, and they say the market's first bar mitzvah party is scheduled in the spring. "The community has really embraced us," Jeff Baskin said.
Why on a side street? Not far from the market sits Mark Sherman, the native-son real estate investor. Sherman grew up in public housing, served as a cook in the Navy, became a roofer, and then made a fortune buying and selling homes in University City. In 2000, Sherman said, he started selling those holdings, estimated at $20 million. He turned his attention to East Falls and now owns a considerable amount of well-placed acreage in much of his old neighborhood.
But he has invested the bulk of his time and attention - and $30 million of his money - into an unconventional enclave on Scotts Lane.
Sherman Mills, the development he hopes he will be remembered for, is an amalgam of luxe living spaces, working studios for emerging artists, event space popular with the corporate crowd, and a cozy cafe where they all can mingle. The Pennsylvania Ballet company is at home here, at least for the next six years.
Sherman envisions his Mills as a venture so unusual it will one day be a stop for the Philly Flash bus tour, bringing visitors from across the country. This leaves some Fallsers scratching their heads. They wonder why Sherman is investing millions to create Shangri-la on a side steet, and doing what appears to be the minimal with his properties in the neighborhood's retail core.
At Midvale and Ridge - the spot designated in the community's master plan as a future gateway - Sherman owns the building that houses the popular beer-and-burrito bar Johnny Mañanas, noted for the gigantic chile pepper that adorns the exterior.
Diagonal to that, Sherman owns a hulking Masonic hall that sits empty, awaiting the proper tenant. One would be hard-pressed to eat in the area without encountering a Sherman property. He owns the buildings that house two bar-and-grills, Buckets on Midvale and the Pour House on Ridge; Franco's Trattoria (formerly Verge), the area's only white-tablecloth restaurant; and the soon-to-reopen Catfish Cafe.
Critics, among them former Sprigs restaurateur Sally Ferry, wish Sherman had done more to save the eateries that went under in buildings he owns - Verge, Indigo, Sprigs and Well Grounded - perhaps giving the owners a temporary break on the rent. Others say he should lower his retail rents across the board, just to get occupants.
But Manayunk developer Dan Neducsin dismissed that idea. "Rent is just one factor of your business," said Neducsin. "I think Sherman's charging less than I'm getting in Manayunk."
Gila Williams, who owned the coffee shop that went under, Well Grounded, said she couldn't blame Sherman for her tough economic times.
Rising gasoline prices cut into her customers' discretionary spending, she said, and a Dunkin' Donuts opened nearby with off-street parking.
Carolyn Sutton, who at one point owned the successful Borgia Cafe in Society Hill, said East Falls needed a balance of restaurants and retail. "Every time a restaurant doesn't make it here," she said, "a store won't, either." Sherman agreed, and said renting to shopkeepers or restaurateurs whose businesses are likely to fail does more harm than good. "When a business closes," he said, "it is a setback for the whole neighborhood."
So instead of letting his properties languish, Sherman said, he has backed businesses - sometimes to the point of hiring managers and staff - to keep places such as the Pour House, Buckets, and the Cafe at Sherman Mills running until a permanent owner can take over.
That's a help, said Robert Inman, who teaches public finance and urban fiscal policy at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. But there is a debate among economists, he said, about what it takes to create the snowball effect needed to revitalize a neighborhood. Inman doesn't buy the notion that one big-ticket venue, such as the soccer stadium planned in Chester, can do the whole job. "And I don't think new restaurants are enough to turn a neighborhood around, either," he said. "My sense is that it takes new residents. When higher-income, educated residents move into a neighborhood, they create a demand for restaurants and retailing they can walk to. Once those new businesses develop and thrive, word gets out beyond the neighborhood, and the snowballing builds."
That seems to be where East Falls is headed.
For Sherman, who describes himself as a guy who doesn't like to stay in one place too long, that's good news. When the time is right, Sherman said, he'll sell his East Falls holdings, just as he did in University City, because he enjoys setting things up more than keeping them going. "My position in the world is to empower others and then go away," he said.
Room for growth, considering that it took 20 years for Manayunk to morph from an industrial backwater, East Falls has accomplished much since 2000. "Besides, we don't want to become Manayunk," Snyder said. "We want the kind of development here that benefits residents - not pushes them out. "Even with all the projects on the books so far, the community will have room for growth.
But at one potentially desirable tract - the site once occupied by the Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute -development will be stalled at least three years. The city's Youth Study Center, which is being pushed out of Center City to make way for the Barnes Foundation, will move to that spot in East Falls while awaiting its permanent home in West Philadelphia.
Small steps, and some steps backward, "are part of the definition of economic development," said Ken Weinstein, the developer who brought the Trolley Car Diner to Mount Airy and hopes to make the old public pool house by the river, Bathey House, a charming cafe. "Somebody does a project that encourages somebody else and so on. East Falls is getting there, and it is absolutely going to make it."
Contact staff writer Dianna Marder at 215-854-4211 or dmarder@phillynews.com. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/diannamarder
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