Power: Sherman’s Last Stand

Developer Mark Sherman has poured millions into reviving troubled East Falls. So why do the Fallsers just want him to go away?

That growth may be a lot to expect from a neighborhood that’s been stuck on the edge of a breakout, on the precipice of hipness. “Most developers go into an area that’s proven,” says Dan Neducsin, of Neducsin Properties. “That’s where we’re similar. He took a risk. It took a lot of guts.” Neducsin knows a little something about the art of the gamble. Back in 1988, Manayunk’s Main Street, like parts of Ridge Avenue in East Falls today, was dotted with boarded-up buildings — until Neducsin bought everything in sight. He laid the groundwork for that neighborhood’s ongoing economic boom, but also contributed to what has become a Neverland for College Kids Who Won’t Grow Up, a post-grad haven that feels like the real world but is still just a stumble away from a frat-house row of bars and late-night pizza joints. That’s exactly what the Fallsers, as longtime locals down the river from the ’Yunk are known, don’t want. They want to know Sherman won’t open some body-shot-and-dollar-beer bar, or pack their already jammed streets with double-parking shoppers. And a few of them want to know why, if he’s so interested in community-building, his rents are so damn high, and so many of the storefronts along Ridge Avenue are still empty.

Gripes aside, East Falls has benefited from $130 million invested by Sherman and others since 2003, and Sherman doesn’t hesitate to take credit for kick-starting the neighborhood’s renaissance. “There is no doubt in my mind that Sherman Properties put East Falls on the map,” he says. “People didn’t know where East Falls was.” He did, though. He grew up here, in the now-extinct Schuylkill Falls projects that would have looked down on this riverside utopia he’s raising. Who’d imagine that a have-not reform-school kid would grow up to try to restore Grace Kelly’s old address to its long-forgotten glory? Gazing out across his fiefdom, Sherman shares his vision of what he hopes these studios and $1,250-plus-a-month lofts will become. “The whole idea of this place is healthy living. Good food, creating art, having a positive interaction with others. All the hustle and bustle of city life — this is the antithesis of that.”

Before we muddied up, Sherman’s tour of the Mills began in the $2,500-a-month apartment of Carole Powers Gordon, a party planner/designer/earth mother with five dogs, passionflower vines creeping along her walls, and a makeshift greenhouse in her tub — exactly what she imagined her living space could be. “Mark Sherman took my sketch and made my dream a reality,” she gushes. Sherman is not of her world of dried flowers and spiritual balance in the universe, but he’s polite while she gushes about his brilliance. “I don’t know anything about art,” he admits. “I just have an appreciation for it, and that people enjoy it.”

That’s Sherman — can’t tell a Degas from a Matisse, but his future hinges on attracting the city’s creative class to live and work in his Mills. Didn’t know a thing about horses, either, but now he’s got a stable full of them. Dropped out of high school, and now sits on the board of Freire Charter School in Center City. Didn’t know restaurants, so he teamed up with Jay Gubin, co-founder of the Restaurant School, and opened one up. Just as he hopes the Mills will reflect the opposite of the urban experience, take a closer look at Sherman himself and you’ll see he doesn’t much resemble a developer with a portfolio valued at upwards of $55 million, more than half of which is tied to East Falls. This brings us back to a few of those places where Mark Sherman shouldn’t have showed up, but did, and somehow made it work for him.