Yorkway Place Filled Up One Crowd at a Time

In 2023, Melissa Hager and her partner, Mike O'Donnell, turned her herb and tea store on Yorkway Place into a meadery called the Keep Easy. The Herb Shop had struggled. The bar took off. Borough Manager George Locke told The Philadelphia Inquirer that the meadery "might've been the catalyst," and summed up the whole approach in one line: "The secret was getting that foot traffic in there."

Before that, the bricked, 1930s Tudor-lined walkway running into Route 611 had mostly offices and empty storefronts, and few people walked it. "I still meet people today who don't even realize it's there," Jenkintown resident Ross Abel, who bought a building on the alley this year that now houses a café, told the Inquirer. Three years later, it's the busiest small-business block in the borough. Each new tenant signed on because of the crowd the previous one had already brought.

Each tenant arrived on the last one's foot traffic

The order the businesses arrived in tells the story. Each one filled a part of the day the alley didn't yet cover.

1. The Keep Easy brought evening customers to a street that had none.
2. Carminati Creamery, a gelato shop from Glenside, came next and added a stop for families. "The ice cream store is the first thing that drew us in," Mayor Gabe Lerman, who has school-aged children, told the Inquirer. "Whatever we do for dinner, we can just walk up to Carminati's."
3. The Lore Café, an upscale all-day coffee shop, brought in the morning crowd.
4. Capricorn Books moved in because of those morning visitors. The Inquirer reported that the café's traffic gave owner Jackie Botto the confidence to relocate.

"We took a gamble. I did not plan for it to be so busy." Jackie Botto, Capricorn Books, speaking to The Philadelphia Inquirer

Capricorn closed its old shop at 605 West Avenue in late June and reopened at 745 Yorkway Place after the Fourth of July weekend, Glenside Local reported. By the borough's September committee packet, the move was finished and the store was open. In August, the shop took part in the Philadelphia Bookstore Crawl from Yorkway Place for the first time. The Inquirer says that crawl is usually the store's biggest day of the year.

Two more businesses make up the rest of the alley: Mankind, a custom jeweler and haberdashery, and Clover Nail Bar.

The recruiting happened by text message

When the Inquirer asked how the vacancies got filled, Botto credited one person. "It's been Mel," she said, meaning Hager, who has been contacting prospective owners whenever a space opens up. Hager put it more simply: "I was texting everyone I know."

The borough's help has been small and specific. Locke said Jenkintown began helping owners get sewer permits from the state several years ago, and each permit takes him 20 to 40 hours. Lerman added that the borough recently put in free 20-minute parking spots, which helped stores across town. Lerman also said many of the alley's owners live in the borough, and he described the goal as "a place you can feel good about sending your kids with a few bucks to get a gelato, or a book."

Events have kept bringing in people who'd never been. The Inquirer pointed to a Nic Cage bar crawl and Jenkintown Festivus. Festivus is a December cocktail crawl. Its third annual run took place last year on Dec. 21, according to Glenside Local.

Upstairs from the meadery, a room built for the late hours

The next business on the alley comes straight out of the first one. The Reign Dear Room is planned for the space above the Keep Easy as a 21+ bottle bar for wine and beer with a board game library. Keenan "KT" Thomas, a local entrepreneur who tends bar at the Keep Easy, owns and manages it, Hager told Glenside Local. In early October, Glenside Local reported plans for a soft opening on Oct. 11, with a grand opening expected in early November.

The design looks to the next tenant, too. According to the plans, the room will feature vinyl record players and a cozy reading nook, which Glenside Local described as a nod to the record store planned for the alley. It is also set to include a retail area selling bottles, cans, merchandise, card and board games, and plenty of nonalcoholic and low-ABV options.

That record store is Smelly's Vinyl Vibes, which Jenkintown resident Greg Wagner has planned for 744 Yorkway Place, right next to Capricorn's new address. Updates are posted on The Reign Dear Room's Instagram and Smelly's Instagram. "This is such a cool little street," Abel told the Inquirer. "All these new shops are helping people to discover it."

The overflow is reaching York Road

The alley's momentum is now spilling out to the surrounding blocks.

Kat Smith's Wild Ones was listed among Yorkway Place's incoming businesses in the Inquirer's August story. It ended up around the corner at 423 York Road instead, in a former Allstate Insurance office, and soft opened on Sept. 27. The shop sells art supplies and stationery and runs a drop-in craft café that doesn't take reservations. You order from a seasonal starter menu, get a guide, and sit down to work. Smith is a Jenkintown resident and an Abington native. She told Glenside Local that local artists had been left with big-box stores since Allegheny Arts moved out of town. She also said Wild Ones would begin artisan-led classes and holiday-themed activities closer to November.

A few doors down, Gabby Ye's Go Bananas Frozen Yogurt at 401 York Road held its grand opening on Sept. 25. Capricorn's move freed up space as well. The borough's October committee packet lists Red Seeds Floral at 605 West Avenue, the bookstore's old address, among Jenkintown's recently opened businesses.

That's three storefronts outside the alley with new occupants since summer, and one of them became available because a business moved onto Yorkway Place.

Holiday dates downtown

This is the alley's first holiday season with the café, the gelato shop, the bookstore and the meadery all open, and the downtown calendar is filling up around them.

Showtimes are on the Hiway Theater's site. The Jenkintown Creative Alliance lists the Dec. 5 Winter Craft Fair, and the borough calendar lists a Holiday Market at Town Square for the same day and hours. The Creative Alliance also has a Small Business Saturday listing for Thanksgiving weekend, with local shopping and holiday gifts at Immaculate Conception Church, 604 West Avenue, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Town Square is a short walk from Yorkway Place, so the Dec. 5 market and the alley's shops fit easily into one afternoon.

If you'd like to talk about how a block like Yorkway Place shapes daily life in Jenkintown, or about the downtown streets just around it, the team at Keller Williams Main Line knows these blocks well and would be glad to talk. Contact Us.