The Delco 10 Miler hits the road for the second time Sunday. This year’s race will have a new course and a new pace, and is open to twice as many runners.
Here are a few of the runners to look out for:
Dad and son run for a personal cause
Will Getty, 8, is pumped to run the Delco 10 Miler, said his mom, Jessica, and dad, Mark, who will push him in an adaptive jogging stroller on Sunday. But it’s more than just a fun run for Will, who has cerebral palsy, and his family.
It is also part of an effort to raise money for an accessible playground at Wallingford Elementary School with help from the Kyle Pease Foundation.
Pease,41,who also has cerebral palsy, visited the school in 2025 to meet students and share his foundation’s purpose: creating inclusive opportunities in sports and endurance races for people with disabilities.
After his visit, teachers began brainstorming. What if Will and Pease participated in the Delco 10 Miler together? And could they support fundraising for the playground at the same time?
“It was a perfect opportunity to cheer them both on and to hold an event where we could raise the money and awareness of what we’re trying to do here,” special education teacher Lauren Bannon said.
The school, which is on the race course on Providence Road, will hold a festival with food, games, and a station to create signs for Will from 8 to 10 a.m. on the morning of the race. School officials recommended getting there early before Providence Road closes and using the school’s rear entrance on Kershaw Road.
The Kyle Pease Foundation donated Will’s jogging stroller and is managing fundraising for the playground. Donations can be made at https://givebutter.com/wes-loves-pease.
Will’s dad said a group of Wallingford teachers will take turns pushing Will to the finish line. Training has become a new way to bond for Will and his dad, and a playlist of Will’s favorite band, Coldplay, has been essential listening during practice runs.
“He sees people, waves to them, and if I put the music down for a second, he’s telling me to turn it back up,” Mark Getty said.
Allie Wilson won a heat in the women’s 800-meter run during the U.S. Track and Field Olympic Team Trials on June 21, 2024, in Eugene, Ore.Charlie Neibergall
Just a normal Sunday for Olympian Allie Wilson
Running 10 miles on a Sunday is part of the normal training routine for Strath Haven grad and Olympian Allie Wilson. This weekend, there will be a little more fanfare to it.
Wilson’s older sister, Val, is running the Delco 10 Miler and asked Allie to join her.
“I might as well have fun and get to be around other people for once, since I’m usually just running by myself,” Allie Wilson said.
Is a gold medal in the bag? It’s a little bit longer than her usual race, Wilson said, by 9½ miles.
“My race is 800 meters,” Wilson said. “It’s less than two minutes long. Like, I’m borderline a sprinter.”
But you don’t get to the Olympics without a competitive edge. Wilson originally planned to stick with Val in the race, but she said her sister told her not to.
“I know I’m going to get excited and I’m going to feel left out if I want to be trying to go with the people up front,” Wilson said. “We decided my competitiveness might come out too much.”
Next up for Wilson after the Delco 10 Miler: She will continue training with her sights set on a return to the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028.
Zach Miller crossed the finish line first at the Delco 10 Miler on Sept. 28, 2025.PEL Productions for Visit Delco
A run down memory lane for last year’s winner
The Delco 10 Miler charts a course through some of the most important parts of Zach Miller’s life.
The starting line is near Rose Tree Park, where Miller ran cross-country races in high school and later proposed to his wife, Heather. It goes through Media, where he grew up, and passes through Widener University, which is Miller’s alma mater and the place he met Heather.
“It’s these little nuggets that make the race kind of special to me,” said Miller, 43, of West Chester.
One more nugget to make it special: Miller won the inaugural 10 Miler last year.
He has been waking up at 5:15 a.m. on Wednesdays to train with longtime Downingtown West High School cross-country coach Scott Burns and a group of fellow runners.
“I really wouldn’t be training or, you know, competing at the level I am without the support and kind of accountability of that group,” Miller said.
Miller said he is excited for this year’s race but considers Steve Jordan, another member of his group who is also training for the Olympics, to be the front-runner.
This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.
If Jalen Brunson, who just won the NBA championship for the New York Knicks, and Shane Gillis, who broke two Guinness World Records for a one-night-only comedy show at Lincoln Financial Field, weren’t already having a good year — they’re now gracing the stage of Saturday Night Live’s 52nd season.
Brunson, who is known to many locals as the Villanova superstar who brought home two NCAA national championships to the Philadelphia-adjacent school, will host the season premiere on Sept. 26 with girl pop group Katseye as musical guest.
Gillis, a comedian from Mechanicsburg, Pa., who got his start in Philadelphia, will host episode three on Oct. 10 alongside Spanish singer-songwriter Rosalía. Gillis cocreated the West Chester-filmed Netflix series Tires, and was at one point hired and fired from SNL.
SNL is charging forward after more than a half century in the American cultural zeitgeist, bringing celebs into 30 Rockefeller to flub, break, and laugh through the jokes.
Pennsylvania showed up in a big way last season, too, with Quakertown’s Sabrina Carpenter, Downingtown’s Miles Teller, and West Philadelphia’s Colman Domingo (the latter of whom was honored by Mayor Cherelle L. Parker on July 4).
Joining the first slate of episodes, announced on Wednesday, are actress Dakota Johnson with Baltimore rockers Turnstile on Oct. 3. Inde Navarrette, a breakout star from indie horror film Obsession, will host on Halloween, with Gracie Abrams as musical guest.
SNL’s 52nd season will premiere Sept. 26 at 11:30 p.m. Philadelphia time on NBC. Stream episodes the day after they air on Peacock.
One of the year’s more closely watched Main Line restaurant projects now has a name, a chef, and a clearer identity.
Old Friend, a contemporary American grill built around live-fire cooking, is targeting a late-fall opening in downtown Wayne with former Fork executive chef Sam Henzy leading the kitchen.
The 86-seat restaurant — 78 in the dining room and eight at the bar — will be at 166 E. Lancaster Ave., in a newly constructed ground-floor retail space at Lancaster and Louella Avenues that is part of the Apartments at Wayne Station. It is amid Wayne’s restaurant row, across from Maison Lotus and Rosalie, and just a few blocks from At the Table, White Dog Cafe, and the North Wayne Avenue dining strip.
Rendering of Old Friend, 166 E. Lancaster Ave., Wayne.Stokes Architecture & DesignArchitectural rendering of the facade of Old Friend, 166 E. Lancaster Ave., Wayne.Stokes Architecture & Design
Old Friend is the creation of Larry Kagan and Chas McFeely, who met in 1984 at Welsh Valley Middle School and later attended Harriton High. McFeely, an advertising copywriter who lives in Alameda, Calif., has family ties to the Main Line and returns frequently.
Kagan, who works in financial services and is a partner in the Campus sports complex in Downingtown, offered the first public outline of the project at a March Radnor Township Board of Commissioners hearing for its liquor-license transfer, describing an unnamed grill restaurant “that’s going to have the soul of a steakhouse.”
Kagan told The Inquirer this week that the name “old friend” describes his relationship with McFeely: “It’s someone between friend and family — someone you can pick up at any time, you can be yourself.” The name, he said, also reflects the sort of relationship they hope to develop with customers.
Kagan acknowledges that neither he nor McFeely is a restaurateur. They brought in Stove & Co. chef-owner Joe Monnich as a consultant to develop the concept and assemble the operating team. Monnich will remain in a leadership role while continuing at Stove & Co., whose holdings include Stove & Tap and Joey Chops.
Sam Henzy in 2025, when he joined Fork as executive chef.Courtesy of Fork
The connection to Henzy came through Monnich. The two met at Morimoto when Henzy was about 20 and, as he puts it, “green as grass.”
“Joe was the first chef who pushed me really hard, but he did that great older-brother thing of pushing somebody while being there to answer questions,” Henzy said. “He really took me under his wing.”
They remained friends as Henzy built his career. He did not know the name of the Wayne restaurant until he recently visited the space with Monnich and the owners.
“When they told me it was going to be called Old Friend, it just made me smile,” Henzy said, “because that’s how I think of Joe.”
Henzy, who grew up in Delaware, is best known locally for his two years as executive chef at Fork in Old City. His resumé also includes Middle Child Clubhouse, Vernick Food & Drink, Noma in Copenhagen, and Quince and Angler in San Francisco.
Henzy’s experience with live-fire cooking began during a six-month internship at Noma. He remembers touring the cutting-edge restaurant and encountering a Josper charcoal grill set up in a makeshift shack out back.
“In that moment, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m taking that station,’” Henzy said.
He eventually did, spending the final three months of his internship on the Josper. Later, he sought out Vernick Food & Drink in part for its wood-burning oven. His most intensive live-fire experience came at Angler, where he was executive sous chef and the cooking line had no conventional stoves.
“It’s just fires,” Henzy said. “It’s fires everywhere you look.”
Old Friend will bring him back to that style of cooking. Its open kitchen will center on a charcoal-fired Josper combination grill and oven, which Kagan calls the restaurant’s “engine.”
Designed by Stokes Architecture & Design, the restaurant will feature reclaimed mushroom wood, an oak bar, and an open, firebrick-lined hearth that will put the Josper in view of the dining room.
Kagan calls Old Friend a contemporary American grill. The developing à la carte menu will move from small and medium plates to larger-format proteins intended for sharing. The wine list will be compact and closely matched to the food.
Fish — including some dry-aged fish — as well as poultry and other proteins will be cooked on the Josper. Henzy gained experience dry-aging fish at Angler and wants to explore the technique further at Old Friend.
“I think dry-aging fish is both an underused and a misunderstood technique,” he said.
Old Friend also represents a move away from what became Henzy’s signature at Fork. Pasta may appear on the menu, but it will not be a focus. At Fork, he said, its popularity “took on a life of its own,” sometimes overshadowing the rest of the menu.
“I’m really big on never resting on my laurels and taking on new challenges,” Henzy said.
After years away froma live fire-fueled kitchen, Henzy said, “I’ve really been itching to get back into the flames.”
Two years ago, every child in the kindergarten class at Eleanor Emlen Elementary in Mount Airy had vaccine protection against measles.
A year later, the school’s kindergarten immunization rate had dropped to just 80%, putting students and the surrounding community at risk of an outbreak of the highly contagious disease.
Emlen is among more than two dozen Philadelphia-area schools that saw double-digit declines in kindergarten immunization rates last school year — in many cases because parents are increasingly refusing vaccines.
The affected schools span a diverse range of communities, from city neighborhoods like Mount Airy to the outlying suburbs. In Chester County, for example, a small private school in Downingtown saw its vaccination rates plunge by 20%.
Even as countywide immunization levels remain relatively high, some 40% of kindergarten classrooms across the region became vulnerable to an outbreak during the 2025-26 school year, up from 33% the year prior, an Inquirer analysis of newly released state data found.
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That means that at least 249 schools had vaccination rates below 95%, the level at which scientists say a population must be vaccinated to prevent the spread of measles, one of the most contagious diseases.
Of these, 98 Philadelphia-area schools reported measles vaccination rates below 90%, presenting an even greater risk to students.
A sharp increase in parents opting out of vaccination for religious or philosophical reasons continued to drive down vaccination rates; exemptions in this category rose by 15% in the latest two years for which data are available.
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Pennsylvania is among a handful of states that allows parents to opt out of vaccine requirements for philosophical or religious reasons, often by simply signing a form.
The health department published more granular, school-level vaccination data this summer for the first time, after reporting by The Inquirer and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette made this information public for the prior school year, exposing pockets of vulnerability within counties with overall high vaccination.
The new data show the growing public health threat to the region from Pennsylvania’s growing measles outbreak, in which two people in Lancaster County have died, state officials reported Tuesday. They were the state’s first measles-related deaths in three decades.
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So far, nearly 400 cases have been diagnosed, with nearly half in Lancaster County. The rapidly spreading outbreak is edging closer to densely populated Philadelphia. Chester County, just west of the city, has reported the second-highest number of cases in the state.
At a news conference on the measles deaths Tuesday, Gov. Josh Shapiro stressed his concern about the rise in Pennsylvania parents opting out of vaccinations over the last 10 years.
“It has dramatically reduced community immunity in different areas of our Commonwealth,” he said. “Today, we see the consequences of a lack of immunization.”
The new school-level data on vaccines, he said, allow “everyone to see their school’s vaccination coverage and make informed decisions.” Lawmakers have also said they hope that having more access to data about their children’s schools will make families more aware of risks within their communities and encourage them to vaccinate their children.
Amid rising measles case counts and declining immunization rates, Delaware County’s health department launched an immunization campaign over the summer to encourage families to vaccinate.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
Emlen, which saw one of the steepest drops in protection, was one of 40 schools in the five-county region that reported 100% measles vaccination rates two years ago, only to drop below the 95% herd immunity threshold last year.
Philadelphia school officials say the changes at Emlen likely reflect increasing hesitancy among parents to immunize their children against measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) and other diseases. State records show that most unvaccinated kindergarteners at Emlen have philosophical or religious exemptions.
Some fluctuations in kindergarten vaccination rates are typical from year to year, but the rise of anti-vaccine rhetoric in federal leadership appears to be exacerbating fears around vaccination, said Kendra McDow, a pediatrician who serves as the Philadelphia school district’s medical director.
“What we’re seeing is reflective of what I believe are local and national trends,” McDow said. “Families are confused, and they want to do right by their children.”
In the latest federal vaccine maneuver — opposed by the medical establishment, prominent Democrats, and Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician — President Donald Trump signed an executive order this month asking states to “consider updating” laws to require fewer vaccinations for schoolchildren without any medical justification. He also advocated for splitting the MMR vaccine into three separate shots — even though no separate measles, mumps, or rubella vaccines are licensed in the United States.
The order came after a chaotic year in which Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy fired federal vaccination advisers and pushed to upend the federal vaccine schedule. Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, has promoted false concerns that vaccinations can lead to autism.
Families are faced with a barrage of misinformation about vaccines. Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
With Pennsylvania now experiencing its largest measles outbreak in three decades, Kevin Ressler, a healthcare nonprofit leader in suburban Philadelphia who was raised in Lancaster County, worries that declining vaccine rates reflect increasing political polarization.
“You don’t have to be a scientist to recognize that’s a problem,” said Ressler, the CEO of Alliance for Health Equity, a Coatesville nonprofit that works to improve access to health services. “A lot of this is rooted in whether we are able to hold trusted relationships.”
Philly-area counties all at risk
Philadelphia and its suburban counties overall remain well protected against measles, state officials say. The declines seen in the latest school year amount to less than 1% of all kindergarteners in each of the five counties in the area, an improvement from the drops that followed the COVID-19 pandemic.
But even small drops can be significant given the contagiousness of measles, which can linger in the air for hours and infect nine in 10 unvaccinated people who come into contact with it.
Mia Williams, a registered nurse, vaccinates a client at Delaware County’s mobile clinic in Upper Darby in July. Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
“The risk has definitely gone up because of lower vaccination numbers,” said Rene Najera, the director of public health at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
Najera says slipping vaccination rates especially endanger vulnerable students and community members beyond the schools, like pregnant women, cancer patients, or babies too young to be vaccinated. Parents of high-risk children should speak with their pediatricians about the risks of attending a school with lower vaccination rates, he said.
Last year marked the first time in more than 10 years that no Philadelphia-area county had reported measles vaccination rates above herd immunity.
Bucks County had the lowest MMR vaccination rate for kindergartners, at 93.7%, down by more than a half a percentage point from the year before.
Montgomery County, the only county in the Philadelphia region with kindergarten vaccination rates at herd immunity two years ago, slipped just below the threshold in 2025, to 94.8% vaccinated.
About 94% of Delaware County and Philadelphia kindergarteners were vaccinated last school year.
In Chester County, the only Philadelphia-area county to report cases in the current outbreak, vaccination rates for kindergartners have held steady at 94.5% for the last two school years. Some schools in the county reported steep drops in MMR coverage ahead of the current outbreak, which has seen 40 cases confirmed since June.
At Windsor Christian Academy in Downingtown, only one in four kindergarteners were vaccinated last year at a school that exceeded the herd immunity threshold the year prior. About 14% of the class had religious exemptions for vaccination. School officials did not return a request for comment.
Caln Elementary School in Thorndale saw measles vaccination rates drop from 100% to 74% in a year. Officials at the school declined to comment. (Caln closed at the end of last school year, and most of its students are transferring to the newly built Doe Run Elementary this year.)
Jeanne Franklin, Chester County’s health director, said she is “moderately” concerned about the current measles outbreak, given that many of the county’s most populous public schools still have high vaccination rates.
The school-level data improve the county’s ability to identify schools with lower vaccination rates.
Chester County health officials talk to school nurses, principals, and other administrators before the start of every school year to remind them of what to do if they identify a case of measles.
Under county policy, a single measles case in a school will mean all unvaccinated students and staff must stay home for 21 days.
This year, conversations that are usually hypothetical have taken on more urgency.
The health department has urged schools to take stock of who within their school is unvaccinated and develop a plan for how they will teach unvaccinated students who are sent home and staff classrooms of absent teachers.
“You don’t own getting them vaccinated,” Franklin said she tells administrators. “But you have to think through these things.”
Sisters A’zuri, 3, and A’Sara, 6, wait while their mother, Shania’ Jason, checks in at a vaccination clinic during the School District of Philadelphia’s sixth annual Back-To-School Bus Tour stop this month at Marcus Foster Memorial Stadium. Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Philly schools on alert
As the school district’s lead health officer, McDow worries about the threat of measles so close by, but believes concerted efforts in the city have kept vaccination rates “as high as they can be in this current climate.”
She’s also monitoring Philadelphia schools where the state data show declining vaccination coverage. (The publicly available school-level data does not include classes with fewer than 20 students, for privacy reasons, or schools that did not report to the state. About 90% of schools statewide reported data in 2025.)
In some cases, what looks like a decline can be explained by delays in data reporting due to administrative issues or staff absences. School vaccination records are reported to the state during the month of December.
For example, Mantua’s Morton McMichael School reported a 50% drop in MMR vaccination coverage, initially going from nearly nine in 10 kindergarteners vaccinated to just over a third.
But by the end of the 2025-2026 school year, records show 93% of McMichael kindergarteners were fully vaccinated against measles, district officials said, though the state data does not show the improvement.
McDow worries about drops at other schools, from Mount Airy’s Emlen Elementary to North Philadelphia’s James Logan Elementary’s 18.5% decrease in vaccination rates, which are likely related to parents increasingly refusing vaccines.
Pediatrician Amanda Bernard (left) talks with Shania’ Jason and her daughter A’zuri, 3, at a vaccination clinic hosted by the Philadelphia School District this month at Marcus Foster Memorial Stadium.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
The school district hosts vaccination clinics over the summer and during the school year, working with the city health department to target families with unvaccinated children and schools with low vaccination rates.
The district also works to ensure vaccination clinics are accessible to working parents, organizing some on weekends or evenings.
“We need to be talking to families and answering questions in transparent ways,” McDow said. “But we also need to be providing the opportunities for vaccination.”
Some families line up for immunizations
On a recent sweltering August afternoon, families lined up at a tent pitched on the football field at Marcus Foster Memorial Stadium in Olney, part of a back-to-school fair sponsored by the Philadelphia School District.
“IMMUNIZATIONS,” read a flag waving in the breeze. Business was brisk all day.
Some families who visited the tent were recent immigrants, getting caught up on vaccinations before their children started at their new schools.
“We’re vaccinated, my husband and I, because our parents vaccinated us. And I’ll do the same for my children,” said Betty Bachene, who moved to Philadelphia from Paris this summer. Speaking in French, she said she’s never been afraid of vaccinating her children, but does fear the diseases vaccines prevent.
Anaiya Burnham, a nurse, said she’d opted against getting COVID or flu shots for her two children, one of whom is entering kindergarten this year. But vaccinating them against measles was never a question.
“I would really be curious to know why anyone would opt out of the MMR, given the research,” she said.
Cianey Brown, 16, reacts and turns to her family after getting an immunization at a Philadelphia school district vaccination clinic this month at Marcus Foster Memorial Stadium. Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Philadelphia parents face a number of different barriers that keep them from vaccinating children — and not all of them are related to vaccine hesitancy, said Amanda Bernard, a pediatrician with Greater Philadelphia Health Action, the clinic offering vaccinations at the event.
Some lack transportation to get to a health center outside their neighborhood, or don’t speak English well enough to navigate the healthcare system, she noted.
“I think that these sorts of events are really a way that we could combat that,” said Bernard, who has heightened her advocacy around vaccination as Pennsylvania’s measles outbreak has spread.
“There’s almost a desperation in my education. I sometimes feel like I’m almost begging [families] to get it.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the name of James Logan Elementary in Philadelphia.
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A tornado touched down in Downingtown during a barrage of severe storms Thursday evening, the National Weather Service confirmed Saturday.
The tornado landed in the Chester County borough at 5:40 p.m. Thursday, the weather service said in a statement, as major thunderstorms passed through the area.
The twister was considered an EF-0, which is considered the least destructive on the Enhanced Fujita rating scale. The tornado touched down for less than a minute, according to the weather service, traveling just over a fifth of a mile along Quarry Road near the Quarry Crossings commercial development. Its winds reached speeds of 60 to 70 mph and brought down several tree branches, the weather service said.
Downingtown’s tornado was one of three to land in the region on Thursday, according to the National Weather Service. A slightly more intense EF-1 tornado touched down in Dover, Del., at 6:09 p.m., while a tornado with an unknown Enhanced Fujita scale rating occurred at 4:41 p.m. in Estell Manor, in Atlantic County, N.J., about 19 miles inland from Ocean City.
The tornado in Dover lasted roughly five minutes and traveled just over three miles with winds ranging from 100 to 110 mph, the weather service said. After landing in an open field, the twister caused “extensive damage” to the Dover Little League baseball diamonds at Schutte Park, the weather service said: Two scoreboards were crushed or knocked down, and several lighting fixtures were snapped.
Then the tornado struck the Van Sant Generating Station — a power plant owned by the City of Dover located across from Schutte Park — before zigzagging through downtown Dover, where it downed trees. The tornado dissipated at the intersection of Kings Highway and North DuPont Highway after peeling the roof off a motel, the weather service said.
The tornado in Estell Manor lasted approximately 30 seconds or less, according to the weather service, and landed in a wooded area across from the Great Egg Harbor River. There were no reports of associated damage.
Thursday’s storms were the latest in a summer marked by intense wind and rain. The storms arrived in the Philly region just after 5 p.m. and set off a barrage of flash-flood warnings for Philadelphia, the Main Line, and sections of Delaware and New Jersey. Portions of Delaware and Chester Counties were also under tornado warnings.
The downpours led to flash floods that made many streets impassable in the Montgomery County townships of West Norriton and Lower Providence, according to the weather service. And in Chester County, fallen trees cut off sections of heavily trafficked Route 322 in Honey Brook.
The forecast for the rest of the weekend was looking similarly wet.
“Multiple rounds of scattered showers and thunderstorms expected through tomorrow afternoon,” the National Weather Service at Mount Holly wrote Saturday on X, and forecasters “cannot rule out a few strong to severe thunderstorms” for Sunday.
Cristina Hartley watched her teenage son go from refusing to say more than two lines on stage to taking on the lead role in two performances, thanks to the confidence he built through theater production nonprofit Arts and Athletics Club.
Now, Hartley, who serves on the organization’s board, is worried about what the future holds for the all-ages theater group. The nonprofit, formally founded in 2019 after starting as a high school senior project, was based for roughly four years in the Exton Square Mall, and lost its space when the mall closed its doors in June. The group has struggled to find a new home and will be forced to take a hiatus until a new location is secured.
“The arts are always the first program to be cut out of schools, and there’s always a lack of budget to have that in schools or to expand these programs in schools, and we want everybody to have access to anything art-related, whether that’s drawing or trying to sing or trying to perform,” said Hartley, who has been involved with the nonprofit for six years.
“We know that there’s a space out there. There’s a landlord out there willing to work with a small nonprofit. We just haven’t found it yet,” she said.
The Arts and Athletics Club’s interior at the Exton mall. Finding a space for it to hold its productions and activities has been a challenge, leaders say.Photo courtesy of Arts and Athletics Club
For years, the mall declined from traditional retail, with only a handful of stores left when it shuttered after five decades. It was Chester County’s only enclosed mall.
But even as the mall’s staples dwindled, other organizations — nonprofits, a robotics club, a fencing center, and more — occupied the space, drawing what business leaders said was significant foot traffic.
In June, those still left at the mall received notice that they would have to be out by the end of the month. For nonprofits like the Arts and Athletics Club without robust budgets to quickly relocate, the abrupt end put them in a bind.
The Arts and Athletics Club was in the midst of two productions when its leaders learned they would have to vacate, said Chris Hutelmyer, executive director. They took June to move their things out, depositing belongings in people’s garages, and started the real estate hunt in July.
The two performances, Oh Happy Day and Twisted Tales, went on, albeit under changed circumstances, with one held in a park. After holding a summer bash Saturday, the organization will be on hiatus until it finds a space, Hutelmyer said.
The mall had been perfect for the group. An old Aéropostale served as its mini black box theater for four years. The former clothing store had no windows, which worked well for staging 10 productions each year, and it was accessible with ample parking. There were bathrooms, dressing rooms, and storage space. And it was a central location for its all-ages community, accessible from Malvern to Downingtown to Coatesville.
The cast of “Twisted Tales” poses for a photo. Arts and Athletics Club, primarily a theater production nonprofit, has struggled to find a new facility since the Exton mall’s closure in June. Its last production was held in a park, and it hasn’t been able to run a show since.Photo courtesy of Arts and Athletics Club
Trying to find a comparable space for the Arts and Athletics Club within East and West Whiteland Townships has proved difficult. But its leaders said they want to stay in the area, continuing to provide programming for participants from ages 7 to 70. The mall was the organization’s first permanent location, after performing in parks, libraries, and other community spaces.
The theater group, which offers its programming for free or little cost, has a limited budget for renting or altering a space to fit its needs. Another challenge has been finding an available location that is the right size: about 1,800 to 3,000 square feet of open space.
Group leaders have looked at retail locations, warehouses, and churches, and investigated partnering with community centers.
“We’ve been striking out pretty much everywhere that we’ve been looking,” Hutelmyer said. “It’s just been hard to find a direct match for what we need.”
It was a similar scramble for the Wardrobe, a nonprofit thrift store that accepts and sells secondhand clothing and also provides free clothes to those in need, after having to abruptly move out of the Exton mall.
Racing to find a new space to avoid laying off any employees, executive director Sherri Cole enlisted a real estate agent, she said, but struggled to find something affordable that also hit the right marks.
“Everything had to go out of the mall; it’s not like we could be like, ‘OK, we’ll go dark and we’ll move things when we find a new location,’” Cole said.
The old exterior of the Wardrobe, a clothing store that accepts donations and gives clothes to those in need for free, in Exton mall. The business will open its new location in Malvern in the fall.Photo Courtesy of The Wardrobe
By early July, the Wardrobe secured a pop-up location in the Plymouth Meeting Mall.
And this month, the nonprofit found a new, permanent home in the Lincoln Court Shopping Center in Malvern, about a 10-minute drive from the old Exton location. Cole anticipates the store will open by October.
The interior of The Wardrobe’s former Exton mall location. The nonprofit, which has called the mall home for the last few years, struggled to find a new location in Chester County after the mall shuttered in June.Photo Courtesy of The Wardrobe
Still, for both the Wardrobe and the Arts and Activities Club, it was hard to lose the Exton mall.
Out of the Wardrobe’s five locations in the Philadelphia region, the Exton mall location was its second-largest site for foot traffic and retail sales last year, Cole said.
It proved that people would still show up to a “dead” or “dying” mall if there was something they needed, Cole said. And it was meeting a need.
“There need to be spaces in the suburbs where everyone feels welcome, and often, the class divide in the suburbs is really stark,” she said. “It’s great that we’re able to find something that is still within the Exton, Malvern neighborhood where we can be providing these services, because even within the suburbs, poverty is really often overlooked.”
For Hutelmyer, still searching for somewhere for the Arts and Athletics Club to land, it was sad to see a community space like the mall go.
Housing a constellation of community organizations, the mall “wasn’t what people really expected it to be,” Hutelmyer said.
“But as it transformed into the community space, at least while we were there, it was still serving a lot of good, and I think that not being there is a big loss for the community,” he said.
This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.
A bridge replacement near Downingtown will stretch into next year, prompting a call to Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration about the extended closure’s impact on traffic flow through the borough and the sequencing of other projects — including another bridge replacement.
The elongated timeline is, in part, thanks to a change in the foundation design. After the original bridge was demolished, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation found a different type of rock from what was anticipated, which required a new design, said Helen Reinbrecht, community relations coordinator for the department.
The department expedited a redesign, which was completed in June. Construction is anticipated to be a bit slow into early August, as PennDot awaits proprietary materials, Reinbrecht said.
Deuso said in a news release Tuesday that the public was prepared for a one-year closure of the Boot Road bridge, but that the extended timeline is “a serious failure with real consequences for everyone forced through Downingtown each day.”
“Our roads, intersections, emergency routes, business district, and residents are paying the price,” she said.
She requested a review of whether additional crews, work shifts, equipment, and engineering support could make up for the lost time, and asked for help addressing traffic signal adjustments, detour enforcement, pavement and bridge condition monitoring, emergency-response planning, “and assistance with extraordinary local public safety and infrastructure costs.”
Following Deuso’s letter, PennDot press secretary Alexis Campbell said that the department “understands how vital the Boot Road Bridge is to the community and is expeditiously working to reopen the bridge as soon as possible.”
“The Department expedited the new design of the bridge and is working with the contractor to accelerate construction by adding additional crews and working through the winter so long as the weather permits,” she said.
That will not get underway until the detours from Boot Road and another effort — relocating the Downingtown train station half a mile to the east, where the Keystone Corridor crosses U.S. Route 322 — are completed, borough officials said. Deuso was concerned the Boot Road delays would also hamper the train station relocation.
The Boot Road bridge replacement is a $13.3 million project that replaces the 193-foot three-span bridge with a 105-foot single-span structure. It carried roughly 12,000 vehicles a day before its closure, officials said.
The full closure of the road, between Quarry Road and Southwind Lane, began in late September 2025. Motorists are being detoured to U.S. Route 322, Business U.S. Route 30, and Quarry Road. That is expected to continue until the work is fully completed next spring.
The bridge was structurally deficient, Reinbrecht said.
“I know it can be frustrating and time-consuming to have to use the detours. But this really will be safer and more efficient when the construction is completed,” she said.
This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.
If you’re taking a run through Wissahickon Valley Park next week and spot those signature Mark Ruffalo curls and determined glint in his eye through the tree leaves, worry not! The HBO series Task is filming its second season in the Northwest Philly park Monday through Friday.
On Monday, the Bells Mill West Lot will be closed to the public for filming and will reopen the next day. Visitors can park instead in the Bells Mill East Lot.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the trail entrance at Manatawna Avenue will not be accessible. Houston Meadow can be accessed through the Houston Playground entrance on the Yellow Trail.
The film crew is slated to park vehicles and equipment on some parts of Forbidden Drive. The trail will remain open, but hikers and runners may see stop signs warning them of “equipment ahead” or to go “slow ahead.”
The Delaware County-set series Task byMare of Easttown creator and Berwyn resident Brad Ingelsby centers on FBI agent Tom Brandis, portrayed by Ruffalo. In the second season, Brandis is leading a new task force and confronting his rival Philadelphia DEA agent Eddie Barnes, played by Mahershala Ali, the Oscar winner who starred in Moonlight, Green Book, and the third season of the HBO crime show True Detective.
The show’s first season also made its way around the city and suburbs. It featured scenes at the Rita’s Italian Ice & Frozen Custard in Collingdale, the Willowbrook Shopping Center in Boothwyn, and Marsh Creek State Park in Downingtown.
In the back of a classroom where she had just read to 20 attentive preschool kids, U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan was concerned about what the staff of the West Chester YMCA was telling her.
Nearly a third of the families who rely on the facility’s childcare programs — in the richest county in Pennsylvania, and one of the wealthiest in the country — receive financial assistance to cover the $1,900 monthly cost, the staffers said.
Houlahan, a Democrat who is soft-spoken when she is not grilling President Donald Trump’s cabinet secretaries or House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) on Capitol Hill, asked about the income qualifications for financial aid. At a certain point, the YMCA staff told her, some parents have a disincentive to earn more, lest they become disqualified and then stuck with a higher bill.
“It’s terrible, no matter how you do the math,” Houlahan said a few hours later at a Malvern restaurant, relaying the story to her daughter, Molly Rosa Houlahan, and daughter-in-law, Kristen Rosa Houlahan.
The YMCA’s fee was about the same amount the couple were paying for their 18-month-old, Lucy. With another child due in September, it is also an amount they still are unsure how to afford twice over.
“We’re very fortunate in our jobs, and we’re both trying to get promotions in order to be able to afford a second daycare,” said Molly Rosa Houlahan, 33, a local theater director and producer. “But we are not in that position yet. I don’t totally know what will happen when this second child arrives.”
From childcare to healthcare, groceries to gas prices, affordability concerns have remained top of mind for Americans this year — dominating discussions on Capitol Hill ahead of the high-stakes midterm elections.
Republicans, who control Congress and the White House, say they have made real progress in raising wages and lowering costs. They marked the first anniversary of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act — since rebranded by Republicans as the Working Families Tax Cut Act — this month by celebrating the law’s more generous tax refunds and other benefits, like new investment savings accounts for children under 18.
Democrats have pointed to the bill’s simultaneous cuts to Medicaid spending and food assistance for low-income families. They say Trump signaled he has no interest in lowering costs when he refused to sign a bipartisan housing bill and said he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation” when handling the war in Iran.
In this 2019 file photo, U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D., Pa.) arrives for a House Armed Services Committee budget hearing for the Departments of the Army and Air Force on Capitol Hill in Washington.Andrew Harnik
Houlahan, who has represented most of Chester and Berks Counties since 2019, routinely highlights the broader scope of cost-of-living issues alongside her colleagues. She has taken a leading role among centrist House Democrats to help craft a detailed “affordability agenda.”
Whether her party can advance any of those policies in Washington, even if it wins control of one or both chambers of Congress in November, remains an open question as Trump remains in office and the International Monetary Fund warns of a worsening global economy.
But as the fight drags out, it has also become increasingly personal for Houlahan and her family.
In addition to occasionally helping fill the gaps in their granddaughter’s care, Houlahan and her husband’s own home in Devon, Chester County, has transformed into a version of a so-called sandwich generation household within the last year. The couple’s other adult daughter, her husband, and both of Houlahan’s parents, who are 80 and 84, have all moved in.
The underlying circumstances for the multigenerational home, as they would be for any family, are various and personal. And Houlahan emphasized across multiple interviews that she is fortunate to have the means to welcome her family under her roof. (Houlahan is an Air Force veteran and a former executive at the athletic apparel company AND1. Her husband, Bart, is a partner at an investment research firm.)
But the larger realities — like skyrocketing costs for childcare and senior living — have also now played a role in her own life.Her mother has a Parkinson’s diagnosis, and her parents were unable to find a one-floor living space that was affordable and fit their other needs as they looked to move closer to their family.
“We’re having these conversations, and you know people all over our community are having these conversations,” she said. “It’s an acute issue for families in our area: How do you balance all of this?”
U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (center) has dinner with her family at Brick & Brew in Malvern, including her father, Andy Jampoler (left), her husband, Bart Houlahan, and her mother, Suzy Jampoler.Jose F. Moreno / Staff Photographer
‘A big balancing act’
Houlahan has shared parts of her family’s story as she has traveled her district this year — prioritizing events and meetings that aim for a deeper understanding of an affordability crisis that has not spared her home county, where the median household income is about $131,000, or 40% more than the statewide average.
On back-to-back days this spring, that meant a focus on the kinds of childcare and senior-care issues she has become familiar with.
“We call it ‘from zero to Edna,’” Laura Schoefield-Pierson, executive director of the YMCA of Greater Brandywine, said of the facility’s programs aimed at all ages, from infants to seniors.
Walking Houlahan through the pre-K classes and a gym with a dozen seniors playing table tennis, Schoefield-Pierson spoke about the organization’s exercise programs aimed at offsetting symptoms of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, and about the complexities of providing assistance for families with young children.
In addition to the “many children” whose care is subsidized through the state’s Child Care Works program — set for families earning 200% or less of the federal poverty level, or $66,000 for a family of four — others receive aid through the YMCA, Schoefield-Pierson said. The facility’s fundraising goal this year is $237,000, she said. On the day of Houlahan’s visit, Schoefield-Pierson said “the kiddos” were writing thank-you notes to donors.
U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D., Pa.) interacts with teachers and children at a childcare center at the YMCA in West Chester.Jose F. Moreno / Staff Photographer
Though the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends childcare should not exceed 7% of household income, Houlahan said she was surprised to learn a family would have to earn $327,000 to meet that benchmark at the YMCA for one child.
Nationally, the average annual cost of childcare in 2024 was $13,128, an increase of 29% over the previous five years and far exceeding the national recommendation for the average household’s budget.
“It’s crazy how much healthcare and childcare plays into your family planning,” said Helena Cordoba, a 35-year-old mother of two who said at a roundtable hosted by Houlahan that she had been hoping to grow her family.
A Colombian immigrant who owns Café Com Leite in Phoenixville, Cordoba said she thought she had been living the American dream. But a recent miscarriage and the rising costs of both childcare and healthcare, which she does not currently have, have made her rethink her family’s plans.
“I never thought I was going to say, ‘Maybe the miscarriage is a blessing.’ That thought on its own is very saddening,” Cordoba said. “I don’t know if we were going to be able to afford another baby. Our life would have been completely turned upside down.”
Others voiced similar struggles while Houlahan sympathized and shared her daughter’s own experience with a $2,000 monthly daycare bill.
Karessa, Amelia, and Zack Hathaway, pictured here in 2023, at Sweet Amelia’s in Kennett Square.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
Zack Hathaway, who owns the restaurant Sweet Amelia’s in Kennett Square with his wife, Karessa, said their business “makes just enough” to cover the $700 to $800 weekly cost for their babysitter amid a demanding restaurant schedule. Thomas Smith, who works at the Cleveland-Cliffs steel plate production facility in Coatesville, said he makes too much to qualify for subsidies for his grandchildren but still struggles to cover the cost.
“It’s like a big balancing act to be able to put your kids in a place that you want to feel comfortable with them being and with being able to afford it,” said Amarte Grove, another Cleveland-Cliffs employee and a father of five daughters.
In another tour focused on the other end of the agespectrum, Houlahan peppered staffers at Brandywine Valley Active Aging in Downingtown about their work to offer free meals, housing services, and activities to about 120 seniors daily.
According to the organization, Chester County’s homeless population has decreased in recent years — from 916 in 2023 to 747 in 2025. But the percentage of that population that is over 60 has increased from 9% in 2023 to 14% in 2026. About 45 older adults in the county were homeless as of early May, according to the organization, which works alongside other independent and government groups to connect seniors with stable housing.
“It is really difficult to live in Chester County,” said Jen Manthey, BVAA’s director of information and assistance. “It takes a long time for them to get out of homelessness, partly because it takes a long time for us to build the trust with them and get that rapport — that they trust what we’re saying, and there aren’t $400 room rentals out there that we’re just hiding from you.”
U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D. Pa.) visits with senior citizens at the YMCA in West Chester. She shares the burden of the “sandwich generation” caring for her elderly parents, opening her home to her adult daughter and son-in-law, and helping to care for her other daughter’s toddler.Jose F. Moreno / Staff Photographer
Nick Popov, BVAA’s chief operating officer, said demand remains high for the 5,000 free lunches the organization provides every month to individuals age 60 and older. The cost for those meals is reimbursed through the Pennsylvania Department of Aging, though the organization raises most of its funding in total, he said.
“The services are out there. We’re doing everything we can to provide them,” Popov said. “But it’s always a struggle to kind of balance the bottom line between our goals and what we can actually affordably accomplish.”
Houlahan’s parents said they had never expected to move in with their daughter. Even as they looked to move closer to their family and could not find a spot that fit their financial and physical needs, it took some convincing, mostly from their son-in-law, Bart Houlahan.
“It was an inspiration that permits us to enter old age — serious old age, not just the kid stuff right now — with greater confidence that our health will be sustained,” said Andy Jampoler,Houlahan’s father, a Holocaust survivor born in German-occupied Poland in 1942.
U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan poses at a family during dinner at Brick & Brew in Malvern, including her father, Andy Jampoler (left), her husband, Bart Houlahan, daughter Molly Rosa Houlahan, daughter-in-law Kristen Rosa Houlahan, and Houlahan’s mother, Suzy Jampoler.Jose F. Moreno / Staff Photographer
Turning experience into policy
In May, Houlahan introduced legislation that would require the federal government to collect data on the sandwich generation, a step she said is critical to creating better policies for an “undervalued role in the nation’s economy.”
It would require at least one federal survey to ask whether individuals provide unpaid care to both children and older adults. U.S. Sen. Andy Kim (D., N.J.), who has two young sons and cares for his father with Alzheimer’s, sponsored a companion bill in the Senate.
Sen. Andy Kim (D., N.J.) poses with his family and Vice President Kamala Harris after taking the ceremonial oath of office in the old Senate chamber on Jan. 3, 2025, in Washington.Steven M. Falk / Staff Photographer
Houlahan is also the chair of an “economic growth and cost of living” working group within the New Democrat Coalition, a group of self-described centrist Democrats that includes about half of the entire caucus. The group rolled out an “affordability agenda” earlier this year that is considered a framework for how Democrats would tackle housing, healthcare, energy, paid family leave, and much more if they win control of the House.
U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider (D., Ill.), chair of the New Democrat Coalition, credited Houlahan for her leadership with the agenda, describing her as having a “quiet wisdom that focuses on the core of a problem” while bringing her own life experience to the work.
“Everyone’s experience is unique, but her experience shares many of the aspects of what people across the country are facing,” Schneider said. “The sandwich generation, taking care of kids and parents, for whatever circumstance, while at the same time seeing the cost of just everyday living … is putting a burden on families.”
The legislation aims to incentivize housing construction, restrict large investors from buying single-family homes, help families with home repairs, and more. The president reiterated Friday that he would not sign it, allowing the bill to become law without his signature.
In her Capitol Hill office about an hour after Trump canceled that bill signing late last month, Houlahan described the president as “so obtuse that he can’t see in front of him that this is something that the people want.” After spending much of the last year calling out Johnson, the House speaker, for not standing up to Trump, she said there should be “counterinsurgents” and an “uprising” in the Republican Party.
At the same time, she expressed some hope. The housing bill may have been a rare moment of bipartisanship, but it was also a sign that Congress can still act on affordability even before the end of the year, she said.
“We don’t have time, for all of this stuff, to wait until somebody else is in charge,” Houlahan said. “We can do this ourselves.”
U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D., Pa.) sits between her father, Andy Jampoler, and her husband, Bart Houlahan, at Brick & Brew in Malvern. Houlahan’s parents recently moved in with her. Jose F. Moreno / Staff Photographer
Philadelphia and its surrounding counties are set for what could be a record-breaking $322 million in federal and state funding to go toward building new trails segments, say trail advocates.
The money is part of a larger $8.2 billion pool of transportation funding updated through the federal Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) for 2027 and spread over four years.
“We consider this to be potentially record breaking,” said Patrick Monahan, vice chair of the Circuit Trails Coalition in Pennsylvania. “It’s proof that the trails are being treated as essential infrastructure, making it safer and easier to walk and bike in the region.”
Pennsylvania gets its TIP plan updated every two years and the majorityof money goes to highways, bus and rail systems, trolleys, and ferries. It is part of an agreed-upon list of priority transportation projects. That list includes 344 projects.
In all, this year’s proposed $322 million in funding for trails would advance 27 bike and pedestrian projects across Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties.
The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) is set to vote on approving the allocations in July.
The trails, either begun or being planned, are part of the Circuit Trails, a network of hundreds of miles of multiuse trails throughout the Philadelphia region including southern New Jersey, which updates its TIP funding in alternate years.
$11 millionfor the second phase to extend the Schuylkill Banks trail in Philadelphia south from near 61st Street to Passyunk Avenue that would include a new park at the base of the Passyunk Avenue Bridge.
$58.5 million for Philadelphia’s Spring Garden Connector project that would link trail systems along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers and make Spring Garden Street safer for cyclists and pedestrians.
$50 million to improve safety for roadway users, including pedestrians and cyclists, on PA 291 from Irving Street to Ridley Creek. The project includes building a multiuse side path that will be designated as part of the East Coast Greenway, a trail system linking Maine to Florida.
$8.5 million for the Chester Valley Trail, a multiuse trail along the alignment of the former Philadelphia and Thorndale Branch, a former freight train route, including renovation of the Whitford Bridge and Downingtown TrestleBridge for bicycle and pedestrian use.
$10 million to develop a segment in Whitemarsh Township, Montgomery County, that would run from the existing Wissahickon Trail in Fort Washington State Park to the existing Cross County Trail near SEPTA’s Fort Washington Station.
