Karen Heller: For Fairmount, a 2-woman win

The U.S. recession continues to take its toll on the retail sector and job market. . . . Another 73,000 stores will close in first-half 2009.

- International Council of Shopping Centers

Fortunately, Ali's Wagon is not one of those doomed stores, and this is not one of those sad stories.

Jessie Menken had a vision. A social worker by training, a connector - a catalyst for building social connections - by personality, Menken wanted to establish a place in her Fairmount neighborhood for new mothers like herself.

"It's so isolating to be a new parent, and so important to have a support network," says Menken, 32.

She sits on a cherry-red sofa in the boutique and parenting center named for her friend Allison Wenger, who died in 2005. Mothers meet here regularly to learn about baby issues from a pediatrician or a post-partum adjustment counselor. It's a place to converse and even complain. For Michelle St. Pierre, the Friday new-moms gatherings - $10 a get-together - are a lifeline. She attended a helpful sleep workshop: "Now, I know that it's bath, boob, book, bed."

Because it offers affordable housing near Center City and the park, Fairmount is home to many families. The place is remarkably fertile. "If you're a 55-year-old man and drink the water here," mother-of-two-under-2 Katie Kelly DeFalco jokes, "you

will

become pregnant." Fairmount is also home to many bars and restaurants. What it's not home to is family-oriented businesses or indoor spaces where parents can comfortably congregate and their babies can be babies.

In February 2007, Ali's Wagon fixed that. It was hugely successful, garnering loyal patrons and enough proceeds for Menken to hire help so she could spend more time with daughter Lily, now 3.

But last fall was hard. Then, it was horrible. Menken and her husband, Nat Weston, an environmental scientist at Villanova, decided to close the store after a less-than-joyous holiday season.

This month, a sign went up in the window, a notice was posted on the Web site, and word went out on local electronic mailing lists organized by the mothers. They were despondent. Ali's Wagon, DeFalco says, "is the hub of the community." Though inundated with sympathetic calls, Menken began to let go.

Then one mother e-mailed, "I would hate to see such a wonderful resource for parents vanish. What would it take to keep you open in this rough patch in the economy?"

She was serious. The next day she wrote again: "I truly believe your store/parenting center fills a necessary void in our neighborhood," noting that Ali's Wagon is "so clearly a creation of love." The mother of three young sons offered to be a financial backer, "an investment in which everyone in the neighborhood wins."

The women knew each other but weren't close, which made the offer even more extraordinary. They met on Martin Luther King's Birthday, and again a few days later to sign papers promising to back the store and center for five years with an investment of $25,000.

"Ali's Wagon is NOT Closing!!!"

That's the joyous post splashed across aliswagon.com. "Miracle on Fairmount Avenue!" the sign reads in the 750-square-foot store.

On Sunday, Menken attended a New York gift show to buy fresh inventory, housewares, gifts, baby goods. She took Nat with her because their second child, a son, is due any moment.

The investor is over the moon but asks for privacy, astonishing at a time when people want a lot of credit for so little. "I didn't do it for the spotlight," she says. "I'm doing this for the store and community. I'm fortunate enough to be in a position to help Jessie continue her dream."

Now two women are making a difference in Fairmount. In these brutal times, stores are shuttered all the time. Ali's Wagon, though, is experiencing the miracle of rebirth.