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Polished to perfection, Life Time opens its “diamond” level club in Suburban Square this week.
All that’s missing?
Beds.
Not kidding. The “healthy way of life company” – now ensconced in the old Macy’s – wants to be your fitness center, your hair-and-nail salon, your restaurant, your spa, your babysitter – and now, your office.
Not just a “laptops-welcome-free-wifi” of office.
But a real one, totally tricked out.
They called B.S.
Fed up because they don’t feel safe in school, thousands of Main Line students walked off the job Wednesday.
For 17 minutes or more, classrooms became ghost towns, the halls were mostly quiet.
There would be no repercussions. Lower Merion, Radnor and T/E Schools were of one voice: students would not be penalized for commemorating Florida’s fallen 17 and demanding #NeverAgain.
As a precaution, parents were cordially not invited to attend – forbidden, in fact, from entering schools that became “closed campuses” from 10 to 11 a.m. Local police stood at the ready, their services, thankfully, not needed.
It’s a Main Line mystery: Twin buildings – perhaps the most opulent ever built in these parts – sitting idle for years in the heart of Devon.
Unleased.
Unsold.
Ripe for the taking but no one’s biting.
What happened to this modern-day Taj Mahal, its hushed, lifeless halls worlds away from the bustling Whole Foods across the street?
Great balls of fire! Wayne’s about to get what Ardmore’s had for years: its own live music hall.
118 North will open on N. Wayne Avenue Feb. 15, adding a touch of Austin/Nashville to our fair town.
To which we say: Rock it to us.
For years, downtown Wayne’s movie theater has been slugging it out with the big boys: the Regals, the AMCs, the Movie Taverns, and, to a lesser degree, the Bryn Mawr Film Institute.
Slugging it out and, er, losing.
But the tide may turn yet.
Because dear old Anthony Wayne – built in 1928 and sagging with age – is making his last stand.
The theater’s operator, Reel Cinemas, just launched a “Save the Anthony Wayne” campaign and the stakes couldn’t be higher: Raise $2 million to modernize, compete and fill the seats.
Or raise the white flag and go dark for good.
Don’t think it can’t happen.
Pop some corn: seems the western Main Line is going to the movies.
One of the nation’s largest movie chains is THISCLOSE to inking a deal with Uptown Worthington, the long-time-coming lifestyle center near the Malvern Wegmans.
The center’s owner, developer Brian O’Neill, tells SAVVY that a dine-in theater with full bar plans to take 43,000 sq. ft. and should open in a year or so. Two prior deals with movie chains cratered a few years back, but we’re told this one should be a wrap by early January.
O’Neill also tells us he’s nearing a deal with Main Line restaurateur Marty Grims. The White Dog Café/Autograph Brasserie/Moshulu owner wants to open a “super hip” spot at Worthington
Guilty as charged. A former teacher’s aide has admitted to the repeated sexual assault of a Conestoga sophomore – in his school office, his car and her bedroom – during the 2016-2017 school year.
After pleading not guilty at his April arraignment, Arthur Phillips changed his plea to guilty last Tuesday and was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in state prison.
If Phillips had been younger, Chester County Judge Patrick Carmody said he wouldn’t have accepted the plea deal. “You’re 67, Do you understand that you may never leave jail, that this might be a life sentence?” he asked the defendant.
Phillips said quietly that he understood.
The judge was clearly disgusted by Phillips’ crimes.
Local Democrats are still pinching themselves – perhaps nowhere more so than in Tredyffrin, where the party’s candidates went 12 for 12 last Tuesday.
A sweep.
Three Democrats ran for township supervisor seats: incumbent Murph Wysocki plus Matt Holt and Kevin O’Nell.
All three won.
Four Democrats ran for T/E school board: incumbent Scott Dorsey plus Kyle Boyer, Tina Whitlow and Heather Ward.
All four won. (Whitlow and Ward ousted current board president Doug Carlson and Virginia Lastner.)
So, for the first time in township history, three of seven supes and seven of nine school board directors will be Democrats.
Just in time for Halloween: scary times at the King of Prussia Mall.
Last Saturday afternoon, a woman returning to her car in the garage between Nordstrom and Lord & Taylor was held up at gunpoint. Police say an armed man hopped in her backseat as she opened her car and pointed a gun at her head, demanding her purse.
He then sped off in the SUV he had allegedly just hijacked from an 87-year-old man in Delaware.
So, yeah, an armed robbery at 3:30 p.m. on a weekend afternoon at one of the busiest malls in the country.
But wait; it gets worse.
What a difference a decade makes.
Hang out with the Tankels’ in their Malvern living room and you’d never know this observant Quaker family was nearly destroyed by drugs.
Teasing and cracking jokes, they clearly love being together. Like the “normal” Main Line family they weren’t – for six harrowing years.
Truly, if walls could talk, the Tankels’ home would scream: of stolen money and pilfered pills, of school expulsions and shouting matches, of multiple car crashes and surprise drug tests, of Visine and baggies, of trust faithfully extended and repeatedly betrayed. All of it fallout from Eric Tankel’s addiction to pot, to pain pills, and ultimately, to heroin.
Six of his close friends died from their addictions.
But Eric, thankfully, is very much with us.
