69th Street's unending struggle to stay vital

One step forward, one step back.

That's often how it goes for an aging commercial area like Upper Darby's 69th Street as it fights perpetually but optimistically to keep itself vital.

"It could be better, but it's better than it was," a shopper, Pete Davis, said the other day. He meant it as a compliment, a salute to the toughness of the community's attitude.

Born with the first El train that rattled in from Center City in 1907, the dozen square blocks around 69th and Market Streets long have been an alternative downtown on the suburban fringe of Philadelphia.

Five years into its latest renewal effort for 69th Street, Upper Darby has spruced up the streetscape. The area has attracted new investments in retailing. And it continues - far more than Philadelphia and most suburbs - to be revitalized by an influx of immigrants from all over the world, both as shoppers and as merchants.

But the struggle against decline never ceases.

Theodore Hershberg, director of the Center for Greater Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania, said it was important for the region to keep places like 69th Street going.

Just the recent work to add new lighting, trees, and traffic islands can make a difference by elevating spirits and conveying the sense that somebody cares.

"You can do it and should do it in places that have special value," Hershberg said, "and 69th Street is one of those places."

Shopper Davis, pausing with a newspaper under his arm at 69th and Chestnut Streets, could look along 69th and see a lot of what the area had going for it.

Down the hill, at Market Street, stood the 69th Street Terminal, where 109,000 people pass through each week, disembarking from the El and from suburban buses, trolleys, and light-rail cars. The challenge for local leaders is to get more of them to walk out of the terminal and shop.

On the east side of 69th Street, the churchlike spire of the Tower Theater rose from among the flat roofs of neighboring shops. Here was a regionwide drawing card, a rock-music venue where Jennifer Hudson and the Indigo Girls would perform in coming days.

Along the street, Davis could see a few vacant stores, but not many. Several top-brand women's stores, including New York & Co., blended with discount chains such as Payless and Family Dollar. Among bigger stores were Marshalls and Sears.

"It's pretty healthy," said Davis, 58, of Philadelphia's Overbrook section. "They still need to get more stores, a better variety of stores - and more restaurants. The place is kept up, I'll say that."

For Shaliah Mitchell, 17, 69th Street is a transfer point en route from her home in Southwest Philadelphia to Archbishop Prendergast High School in Upper Darby, where she is a senior.

Crossing 69th in her burgundy-and-gray school uniform one day last week, she was on her way to start an afterschool job at a Foot Locker store on Chestnut Street.

"I like it," she said of the area, despite some complaints about the United Artists multiplex.

"I don't like the movie theater anymore. It's dirty," she said. "I wish there were more stores - and a better movie theater."

To Burma Umstead, a West Philadelphia retiree who was waiting for the Route 113 bus, 69th Street was a glass half full, a glass half empty.

She could remember way back, to when Gimbels and Lit Bros. had department stores on the street, and it was always bustling.

"It's not as good as it used to be, from my standpoint," she said. "It's cleaner than most parts of the city. It was always cleaner up here."

In 2004, in a plan for Upper Darby's future, township officials wrote that "despite the abundance of retail activity, 69th Street is primarily limited to daytime use and carries a negative perception as dangerous during the evenings."

For proud Upper Darby - a long-time Republican bastion that ranked as Pennsylvania's fifth-largest municipality in the last census, with 82,000 people - the fight to save 69th Street is of the highest priority.

Since 2003, with its Market Street Gateway Project, it has worked with Delaware County and its neighbor, Millbourne, to shape up the main traffic route headed into and out of West Philadelphia.

Similar work was done on 69th Street starting in 1997.

Total cost for both projects: about $3.7 million.

A planned parking garage, on the site of an old White Castle hamburger haven, has run into environmental issues, but is still in the planning.

In 2005, in a move that gave a surge of hope to local officials, a real estate company in New York bought most of the existing stores on both sides of 69th Street for several blocks.

Local officials say the company, Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., invested more than $90 million.

Upper Darby Township Mayor Thomas N. Micozzie said: "To put that much money into our community - that goes a long way to say there is viability here."

Ashkenazy also owns Barney's New York and shops at Washington's Union Station, as well as shopping malls in several states.

Though it has not built new stores on 69th Street, its national profile puts it in position to attract national stores, local officials said.

Ashkenazy officials did not respond to requests for comment.

In 2006, hope sprang again when a shopping strip with four big new stores opened with much fanfare atop the hill on 69th. But already, two of the stores - an Old Country Buffet restaurant and a Staples - have gone out of business.

Thomas P. Judge Jr., the township administrator, said the closings were a blow.

So, too, he said, was the decision by Verizon to close a telephone company office near the township building.

Judge said community leaders always, stubbornly, have to believe the best is yet to come.

"The point is: You can't stop thinking of opportunities to revitalize," he said. "If you stop, then you're not doing your community any justice."

One of the biggest boosts to community health in the past generation has been immigration.

The influx, which accelerated in the '70s with refugees from Vietnam, has continued. Today, the Upper Darby School District has students from 67 countries speaking 73 languages or dialects. Among the latest arrivals are Liberians, Ecuadorans, and Mexicans.

Sukhjeewan Singh, a priest at the Sikh Society, just off Market Street, said 500 to 700 Sikh families from India had moved into the 69th Street area.

The area is more affordable than more-outlying suburbs, but cleaner and safer than the inner city, he said.

Compared with newer arrivals, the Korean population is almost old school. On Terminal Square, whole blocks of Korean stores have been joined recently by a national retailer of Korean foods - H Mart.

Judge said the company put $1 million into five old storefronts, which now include other Korean businesses on an upper floor.

"The H Mart brings in a lot of business and traffic," he said.

For Mary Wong, the H Mart has become a destination of its own.

Shopping there with her parents, the 23-year-old from Ridley Park offered a mixed assessment of of 69th Street.

"It used to be a lot worse," she said. "I remember there used to be gangs. But it's getting better."