The Boston Globe

With new shops, Centre Street starts to turn the corner

10/04/2004

For Carline Chery, the South End was parking-starved and JP was just plain too expensive.

So when she decided to take the entrepreneurial plunge and open an art gallery, she chose a spot in her own neighborhood: on West Roxbury's Centre Street.

As she began rehabbing the one-floor studio this summer, passersby stopped to welcome her and applaud her for creating L'Essence Art Gallery -- a first in the neighborhood.

They commended her for bravery, she said, not only because of the business risk but because of the location.

''There are no art galleries in West Roxbury," said Chery, a former financial analyst with a heart for the arts. ''I knew something was missing. I feel I am adding something to the neighborhood. It was the ideal spot for me."

The weakened economy hit this suburban-styled neighborhood business district hard. Places such as Radio Shack, Decelle's, Value Village, and West Coast Video shut their doors in the past three years as ''For Lease" signs proliferated in storefront windows.

Over recent months, however, residents have been discovering an emergence of new tenants on the block: Small independently owned businesses -- including a children's clothing store, an Italian boutique, restaurants, and Chery's gallery -- are helping resuscitate the area in hopes of making it more of a destination for shoppers from outside West Roxbury.

On its way for next year: an old-fashioned street clock -- often considered a giant welcome mat to a community -- like those in Boston neighborhoods such as Ashmont and Cedar Grove.

Michael Macrides, who has owned Hercules Press on Centre Street since 1988, has seen the district's commercial ebb and flow over the years. One of the founding members of the neighborhood's Main Streets program, he thinks the ups and downs along Centre Street reflect the economy as a whole.

''A business district is like a nervous system," he said on a recent afternoon as traffic zipped up and down Centre Street. ''It disorganizes before it reorganizes. The market drives it. Main Street guides it."

He has often heard the comparison between West Roxbury's business district, which is a winding main street, to other neighborhoods' districts, such as nearby Roslindale's, which is more compact and filled with small stores and restaurants.

But he says the comparisons are like apples and oranges.
''It's a whole different scale. Roslindale was driven by the saturation of Jamaica Plain," he said, noting West Roxbury's high concentration of single-family homes. ''We have a healthy mix of national chains which act as a magnet and locally owned shops that feed off each other. It's a big district, and it has a good mix, and it's getting better."

West Roxbury's new businesses reflect a changing neighborhood and consumer needs that no longer require residents to go out of the way for a Frappucino, a baby crib, or abstract art.

The soon-to-open children's store, Baby Belle, at 1780 Centre St., will cater to the community's under-18-population, which rose 20 percent in a decade to more than 5,600, according to the 2000 US Census.

After years of watching nearby Roslindale revive with its vibrant dining and shopping scene, West Roxburyites are relishing the rebound in their district. Signs of commercial life -- from ''Coming Soon" to ''Now Open" -- are surfacing up and down the street.

The district has been getting a boost from its own version of Main Streets, the city program championed by Mayor Thomas M. Menino to help reinvigorate Roslindale and other communities through public-private partnerships.

Residents and business owners have been meeting since 2002 to discuss ways to lure more chain anchors as well as smaller independent stores. Restaurants were also on the agenda.

''People want restaurants," said Kelly Tynan, executive director of Main Streets and a lifelong resident of West Roxbury. ''It helps bring people in. If you look at Jamaica Plain, every block has Mexican, Thai, and other restaurants.
''People in other Boston communities think West Roxbury is the other side of the world," said Tynan, who wants to get out the message that ''West Roxbury is a viable place to open businesses."

Word seems to be spreading along the 2 miles of Centre Street, the main thoroughfare in this neighborhood of mostly single-family homes.

Since the June opening of West on Centre Street across from Chery's gallery, the eatery has been filled with customers, mostly families bringing children in for burgers and macaroni and cheese. But the restaurant also offers dishes for more adult tastes such as roasted chicken and swordfish.

The Spring Street Cafe, another new restaurant in the 02132 ZIP code, specializes in home-cooked-style Italian meals just off Centre Street, and a new restaurant called Vintage will replace the veteran West Roxbury eatery, Fontaine's, which closed this summer.

They join the anchor of the neighborhood, an expanded Roche Brothers supermarket, a Hallmark store, and a new Starbucks, which came to Centre Street last year.

And more may be on the way. A developer is talking about turning the three-story Decelle's building into a mixed-use space of residential and retail units, according to Nancy Kressin of the local Main Streets program.

The city's second phase of a sidewalk renovation project on Centre Street, from Mount Vernon Street to Holy Name Rotary, is spiffing up the area with new facades and potted plants outside of storefronts, Tynan said as she strolled on Centre Street on a recent afternoon.

On a sunny September day, sunlight flooded the windows at Starbucks coffee shop, where customers twirled straws in their lattes and lightly tapped the keys of their laptops. A crowd of travelers poured out from an MBTA bus onto the freshly paved brick sidewalks, replete with benches, along the boulevard. Mothers wheeled baby strollers with other children in tow.

Lawyer Rosemary Purtell has taken note of the high number of strollers on the streets.

''We are a community of kids," said Purtell, another West Roxbury entrepreneur who wanted to work close to home and family, so she decided to open her own business, Baby Belle.

The store, which is scheduled to open this month, will sell baby and children's clothing for special occasions such as first communions, christenings, and parties. She also plans to sell decorative cribs and bedroom furnishings.

The idea for the store was born when Purtell noted a lack of nearby places for parents to buy clothes and children's gifts.
''When Decelle's closed in West Roxbury, everyone in the community felt it," said Purtell. ''You couldn't get a pair of girls' underwear unless you went to the Chestnut [Hill] Mall. To get a baby gift now, you have to go to Dedham.

''I wanted to give something to the community, too, something they didn't have."

Purtell knows her market well: She has a 4-year-old daughter, and her neighbors are mostly mothers with young children.

At the other end of Centre Street, another West Roxbury resident, Teri Mancini Cunningham, is putting the final touches on her new boutique, La Stella, which opens this month. Looking to build on her Italian heritage, Cunningham will sell high-end women's clothing, fragrances, and accessories at ''affordable prices." Customers would be treated like guests in her home, she said. They will be served tea and espresso while Italian music plays in the background.

The shop will mark Cunningham's first attempt to become an entrepreneur, something she always wanted to be and a career choice she said her late father would have been proud of.

''I felt I could do something that would fulfill my dream, something my dad wanted me to do and something the community needed," she said.

And it's not just the new mix of stores that denizens hope will make West Roxbury more of a destination. They hope the arts will be another incentive to visit West Roxbury.
Ann Donaldson, an arts advocate who moved to West Roxbury in 1998, two years ago founded West Roxbury ArtsNet, a network resource designed to inform artists and residents about upcoming events in the community. Donaldson is also part of Arts Centre, which features the works of young artists at Boston University and more established local artists. It has exhibits at three Centre Street businesses: Brookline Bank, Hyde Park Savings Bank, and Cafe Le Royale restaurant.

Six paintings by local artist and Boston University grad student Kyle Bowen are featured at Hyde Park Savings through mid-November. On Sept. 13, the bank held a reception and an open house for the artist and the community.

''It certainly has brought life to our walls, and they are such a conversation piece with our customers," said Susan Carter, a marketing assistant at Hyde Park Savings, which opened its West Roxbury branch on Centre Street in March. After Bowen's exhibit at the bank, another artist will come in and showcase his or her work for eight weeks.

The idea is to promote experienced and emerging artists through the Centre Street businesses, said Donaldson.
''Art provides a destination like restaurants do," she said. ''Having places where you can go and see and go and eat and go and do things in a business district of a community is a natural way to gather people."

Of the changing face of Centre Street, she said, ''It's turning a corner very quickly."