March 8, 2007 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Local News

After 40 years, Wawa to close
Wawa cites lack of expansion space for decision to close the popular market.
by KRISTIN PAZULSKI

The Chestnut Hill Wawa will close this summer after 40 years at the W. Highland Avenue location. (Photo by Jimmy J. Pack Jr.)

Come July, Hillers will have to drive down Germantown Avenue to satisfy their cravings for a make-it-yourself milkshake or Kona coffee, when the Wawa on Highland Avenue closes its doors to make way for a new branch of Valley Green Bank.

The closing of Wawa, which opened on 23 W. Highland Ave. in 1967, ends a 40-year tradition in Chestnut Hill and closes a market that many locals consider a staple of the Hill.

“It’s hard to imagine Chestnut Hill without a Wawa; it’s been here so long,” said Patrick Conran, a Kilian Hardware employee, on his way into the store for a mid-day coffee.

Mike Yanni, a retired contractor who has lived and worked on the Hill for 48 years, said Wawa is part of his weekday ritual. In the morning he gets a hash brown and coffee and then he returns in the afternoon for another coffee.

St. Martin’s Station marred by graffiti
by Kristin Pazulski

The graffiti at St. Martin’s train station reminded the station’s committee president, Eric Werner, of New York in the ‘70s, but a quick SEPTA response has the graffiti covered now. (Photo by Kristin Pazulski)

In the early morning hours on March 1, graffiti artists tagged the tunnel underneath the SEPTA R8 tracks at St. Martin’s train station. A neighbor who heard the spray painters called the police, but none of the perpetrators were captured.

Eric Werner, president of the St. Martin’s Station Committee, which has renovated and overseen the station since the 1960s, said the graffiti was the most he has ever seen at the station.

“We were offended by it,” he said. “I’ve never seen that. To me, it looked like New York City in 1975. We occasionally get some random graffiti, but that was multiple people, and a lot of paint.”

The graffiti included offensive phallic drawings and curse words, and was created with black and yellow paint. The neighbor who called the police said he suspects the artists were “pro-level graffiti” artists.

Personality takes stage at mayoral forum
by JENNIFER KATZ

More than the daily increasing homicide rate and a growing school deficit, it was the contrasting style of the four candidates for mayor that took center stage at a February 26 mayoral candidates’ forum.

Flower shop to close

A bouquet of last-minute birthday or anniversary flowers at 1 a.m. will be harder to find when the Trolley Stop Florist, a 24-hour flower shop at Germantown Avenue and Cresheim Valley Drive, closes down.

12 Seats open in CHCA election

There are 12 open at-large director seats in the Chestnut Hill Community Association. All are for three-year terms.