Keep New Hope weird, say shop owners who worry the town’s eclectic downtown will go mainstream

The busiest downtown intersection in New Hope has a Starbucks, a Dunkin,’ an empty storefront, and a shop called Love Saves the Day.

“We’re trying to keep New Hope weird,” said Stasia Kauriga, whose store at Bridge and Main Streets is a showcase for vintage clothing and pop culture memorabilia. It’s a signal that this is no ordinary town.

“Places like Love Saves the Day are what make New Hope funky,” said Lori Stagnitto, founder of a Facebook page called Save New Hope’s History & Funky Soul.

“New Hope is a 250-year-old patchwork quilt of buildings that together tell a beautiful story,” she said. “But now the story is all about developers ripping out buildings and replacing them with synthetics.”

A Bucks County borough of 1.4 square miles and 2,700 people, New Hope overlooks a scenic stretch of the Delaware River between the metropolitan expanses of Philadelphia and New York. The town has long been known as a welcoming place for artists, artisans, eccentrics, LGBTQ people, lovers of antiques, and proprietors of unusual small businesses.

Day-trippers and vacationers are drawn by the town’s cachet as well as by the proximity of vibrant downtown Lambertville, N.J., a short walk across the New Hope-Lambertville Bridge.

But higher rents in the five-block-long Main Street historic district have put the borough out of reach for many emerging artists and aspiring entrepreneurs. Service workers who staff the restaurants, hotels, and other businesses are having to commute.

“Young people are being priced out by the gentrification of everything,” said Hope Gaburo, 24, a painter. She’s one of six artists renting discounted studio space at New Hope Arts. Otherwise she couldn’t afford to make art downtown, she said.

Plus, the pandemic boosted residential sales to out-of-towners looking to relocate, according to real estate professionals, borough officials, and developers.

“Twenty years ago we had maybe 35 homes worth a million or more, and today we have a couple hundred,” said Larry Keller, an antiques store owner who has served as New Hope’s mayor for 26 years.

“I remember when artists moved to New Hope because it had inexpensive housing,” said retiree Dick Evans, 81. “But the people moving in now are tearing down lovely old Victorian homes.”

Nicholas Esser, a Realtor with Addison Wolfe Real Estate, said: “I do not think New Hope is going to lose its vibe and charm. Some things may be lost, but a lot more will be added.”

A hot real estate market led to the 2019 closure of the Raven, a hotel and restaurant complex on the outskirts of town that had been popular for decades with LGBTQ patrons. Three other New Hope LGBTQ bars had previously closed, although one called the Cub Room reopened in 2023.

The Raven was torn down to create a valet parking lot for the River House at Odette’s, on the south end of New Hope. The new resort is named for Chez Odette, the French restaurant and cabaret the Paris-born actress Odette Myrtil ran on the site during New Hope’s postwar years.

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“Developers are completely altering the town,” said former Raven bartender Michael Gardner, a drag artist known as Miss Pumpkin. “So much has been torn down and replaced by what looks like a strip mall trying to look historical.

“They’re trying to make New Hope into an enclave for the very rich. But New Hope has always been a place where you see a drag queen next to a biker next to a millionaire.”

Aside from the makeover and reopening of the Bucks County Playhouse, a community anchor since 1939, the transformation/expansion of the Logan and the Mansion Inns is perhaps the most dramatic downtown development in recent years.

With roots in the 18th and 19th centuries, respectively, the Logan — which reopened in 2021 — and the Mansion, where an addition is under construction, are among a trio of New Hope projects envisioned by a company called Landmark Hospitality. The family-owned firm invested $38 million into the two properties, adding a total of 32 guest rooms as well as space for two restaurants.

“The theater and the hotels are what keep the vibe and the energy going and keep downtown filled,” Esser said.

Developer Frank Cretella, who grew up on Staten Island and founded his company with his wife, Jeanne, specializes in renovating vintage buildings and incorporating them into deluxe hotels, fine dining locations, and wedding venues. Landmark has properties in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, including Elkins Park, Montgomery County.

Cretella proposed a resort complex called the Landing on a mixed residential and commercial block of North Main Street. It would have 36 guest rooms, space for two artists-in-residence, and a public walkway along the river.

Stagnitto and other critics said the walkway would frequently be underwater due to rising tides. They also took issue with the size, location, and elements of the proposal that called for moving two existing structures and demolishing part of one.

Cretella withdrew the proposal last month. “I’m only paused. I’m never defeated,” he said during an interview from his North Jersey office. “I have invested $2.5 million toward ownership of this property, in stages, and I am proceeding.”

The New Hope Borough Council, he said, ”is made up of people who have an agenda that is not in favor of any more development.”

“If that’s his opinion, fine,” council president Ken Maisel said. “But I wouldn’t entirely agree with it.”

He described New Hope as “a little town that has found burgeoning development to be a blessing and maybe a curse at times.” Developers “who have good intentions and are willing to work within the guidelines” would be welcome.

First-term council member Kelly Whitman said she sees development as “a challenge,” rather than a problem.

“It’s great that people want to move here and start new businesses and expand their businesses here,” she said. “Welcoming new businesses and residents and historic preservation don’t have to be mutually exclusive.”

Said second-term council member Louise Feder: “I completely understand where [development opponents] are coming from ... about the scope and scale of development.

“We have to be mindful when we try to decide what the future of the town is going to be. I don’t think that means we’re antidevelopment.”

Last year, as Cretella was revising his Landing proposal, preservationists lost a battle some are still smarting over: When the more than 200-year-old Cintra Mansion was found to be geologically unsafe, it was bulldozed.

Meanwhile, after years of debate, studies, and other preliminary work costing $600,000, a divided borough council shot down a proposal for New Hope to build a $2 million, 152-space, multilevel parking garage that would have been handy to Route 202 and within walking distance of downtown.

“Ultimately, it would have been too expensive to build and operate,” said Maisel.

Mayor Keller is among those who said they saw parking in downtown New Hope as more a matter of perception than need.

But Alexander Fraser, producing director of the Bucks County Playhouse, said parking is the playhouse’s biggest challenge as it works to build an audience. The 459-seat theater is running at about 60% of capacity and expects to reach 80% in the next five years.

While “killing the parking garage may have been a testament to democracy,” Fraser said, it underscores what may be downtown New Hope’s biggest challenge.

“It’s a shame that in 2024 New Hope still lacks a consistent vision of what this town is going to become,” he said.

New Hope’s most recent comprehensive plan dates from 2011, and the borough council has begun a process to create a new one. Doing so will involve “a lot of public meetings and a lot of planning” over the next 18 months, Maisel said.

Although supportive of the effort, Stagnitto contends that “all of the ammunition we need to stop developments” such as the Landing already exists.

“If we lose our history, we lose our soul, and we lose the main reason people come to New Hope,” she said. “They come here because it’s unique.”

Said Love Saves owner Kauriga: “Change is inevitable, and that’s fine. But how about we find a balance, keep the quirkiness, and work the ordinary in as well?”

“People come here for the unordinary,” she said. “And I think the ordinary is starting to take the fun away in New Hope.”