Spending locally is more than shops and restuarants

Sunday, January 17

An unusual Sunday for me – usually a work day, but nothing planned. 

We start the day with coffee and the paper.  I’ve been reading the Philadelphia Inquirer for decades, and am not about to stop.  Ken subscribes to the Reporter on-line.  He’s a bit more modern than I.

This one is a tie:

Lansdale Shopping Score:  Zero (But I could have)

Lansdale Shopping Score:  1

Reading is, as they say, fundamental.  And keeping up with current events both in our local area and region is important.

Support The Reporter.  I can’t imagine life without a hometown paper.  If it wasn’t for people like Dan Sokil, who seems to cover every local municipal meeting as well as other local news stories, I would never know much about what is going on around me.

After the paper, it’s off to visit my mother for brunch.  She lives in a retirement community not too far from here.  But I’m going to use this opportunity to talk about a similar community right here in Lansdale Borough.  Elm Terrace Gardens.

Elm Terrace Gardens is a Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC), as is the community my mother lives in.  What does that mean?  CCRCs are retirement communities with accommodations for independent living, assisted living, and nursing home care, offering residents a continuum of care. A person can spend the rest of his or her life in a CCRC, moving between levels of care as needed.

As our population ages, and more and more baby boomers become seniors, we will need more and more communities like this.  And we are so lucky to have one right here in the borough.

Elm Terrace Gardens is a winner of Lansdale’s Business of the Month award.  This well run facility is currently undergoing expansion so they can provide more and better service to the seniors they serve.

Elm Terrace Gardens is also a nifty adaptation and reuse of an old structure.  Located on North Broad Street, the facility started out as the North Penn Hospital.    When the hospital needed space to grow, and moved to neighboring Hatfield Township, this building could have just sat there.  Becoming an empty eyesore.

But instead, we have a vibrant community in the heart of town. 

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young once wrote a song – “Teach Your Children.”   But if you remember, the second verse turned the tables:

And you, of the tender years can't know the fears that your elders grew by,

And so please help them with your youth, they seek the truth before they can die.

Teach your parents well, their children's hell will slowly go by,

And feed them on your dreams, the one they fix, the one you'll know by.

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,

So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

So – if you know someone living in Elm Terrace Gardens, please give them a call or stop by and visit.  Remember, the way you treat our seniors today will be the way you are treated by the next generation when you are a senior.

After brunch, it’s time to pick up some furniture we had ordered for our sun room.  We again go outside of the borough, because you really can’t find a lot of furniture in the borough.  We used to have furniture stores.  But after Furniture-rama closed, so closed the era of dedicated furniture stores.  Sure, you can still find some neat stuff at places like the Shabby Attic – but no real full service furniture store.

So I will score this:

Lansdale Shopping Score:  Zero (I would have if I could have, but it’s something not available in the borough)

I’m going to talk about our sun room for two reasons.

First, I realize that there are some major expenditures I have made that I will be unlikely to reproduce in this year of shopping.  So I will talk about them as they fit in.  And this is one.

Our sun room was a room we never did anything with since we moved in.  When we moved in, all of the walls, windows, trim, ceiling – everything – was painted an industrial blue-grey.  Everything except the wood floor, which was painted an orange-brown.  But all we did was fill up the room with cast-off furniture from our parents and call it a day.  Yes, we used the room, but it was never anything special.

Click picture to enlarge and see Kelly's great paint job!

Until we decided to do something about it.  Let me tell you a bit about the room.  It started life as an open porch.  Then, in stages, different owners enclosed it.  The main part of the room is a 40 foot by 8 foot expanse.  Very long.  But narrow.  So when we started talking about remodeling, I thought it would make a great bowling alley.  Ken nixed that idea.  Sigh.

We knew the painting job would be too much for us.  It was so much wood, trim and windows. And there was a lot of damage that needed to be fixed first

So we hired a local, Lansdale Borough painter.  Have you ever met someone in a social situation, and they tell you they are a painter?  And you ask if they are a house painter or an artistic one for clarification?

Kelly Bean can answer both!  The artistry she incorporates into her residential painting is amazing.  She turned our industrial blue tunnel into something really special.  The detail and trim work she did made me see things in this room I had never paid attention to.  I have never seen a painter who worked cleaner.  Her attention to detail is amazing.

Plus, she is local.  Supporting local tradespeople supports our town.  It allows money to stay within our borough, to then be spent on other local establishments.

So – if you need painting or light handy work done, Call Kelly Bean.  She is absolutely outstanding.

Lansdale Shopping Score (but from a few months ago):  1

So this brings up my other point for the day.  We all want a vibrant town.  We all know that a vibrant town will help with our home values.

What else can make our business district thrive?  The best residential areas we can have.

When new businesses come to explore Lansdale, they don’t just look at the store they might rent or buy.  They look at the neighborhoods.  Because they want to see the type of homes their future clientele live in.

Don’t count on the business district to raise the value of your home.  It’s a continuous cycle.   The better we make our neighborhoods, the more attractive we make our business district to new shops and restaurants.  The better shops and restaurants we get, the better our neighborhoods become. And then you'll see rising housing prices.

So be a part of the solution and invest in your home!  I see so many of my neighbors doing this.  Inside and out.  Join us in our 2016 journey and pledge to make one capital improvement to your home.  Inside or out.  To help your community as a whole.

Who knew that the rest of Sunday would turn into a snow day.  Snow on the window sill, playoff football on TV.  It doesn’t get much better than this.

So, today’s score:

TWO opportunities to shop/eat in Lansdale met.

ONE need not fulfilled by a Lansdale establishment.

ONE need met outside the borough when I could have stayed here

Let’s see what today brings!