With the volatility on Wall Street recently, there’s talk again that Americans don’t have confidence in the economy, but in Lower Merion, businesses are showing confidence in the township’s traditional shopping districts. Storefronts that had been stubbornly vacant or come-and-go are filling up in 2011 in Ardmore, Bryn Mawr and Bala Cynwyd.

While a few are franchises or what could be called chain retailers, what’s notable is that most are local entrepreneurs who are bringing their creative ideas to life in brick-and-mortar settings, or expanding their existing businesses in new directions.

This week, Main Line Media News talked to three business owners in Ardmore who have opened their doors in recent months or will be opening soon.

In a future story, the focus will be on Bryn Mawr and Bala Avenue, which each have attracted new restaurants.

In a recent economic-development tour for business leaders and officials from towns across the Philadelphia area, Ardmore Initiative executive director Christine Vilardo stopped often to point out locations where new stores and restaurants have opened or are coming soon on Lancaster Avenue and sides streets like Rittenhouse Place and Ardmore Avenue.

Along with her was Lower Merion Township retail recruiter Heidi Tirjan, who has been seeing prospects she contacted three or four years ago turning to Ardmore for their next business step.

A year ago, Vilardo said, the vacancy rate in the area covered by the business authority was about 12 percent. Now it’s at 5 percent, with only 10 of 202 commercial properties empty. She and Tirjan see a couple of things happening.

Vilardo said property owners and brokers “are really on board with these businesses,” understanding that “they need some time and help to get established.”

“We have new businesses coming in, and we don’t have businesses going out,” she said.

Tirjan said it seems banks also “are getting a little more lenient with small-business loans,” after the near-lockdown after 2008’s financial crisis.

In that climate, entrepreneurs like Jean Broillet, at work now on his Tired Hands Brewing Company, a brew pub coming to Ardmore Avenue, are following their dream. Businesses like Nancy Smith’s Taste of Olive are opening new locations. Others, like Greenable, a design and home-improvement resource that offers clients eco-friendly, “green” choices in building materials, are finding synergy with new clusters of related businesses.

It’s an exciting time for Ardmore, agrees Sherry Tillman, owner of Past*Present*Future, who has seen Ardmore weather trying times, waiting for revitalization.

“I really feel like the town is alive,” Tillman said, after hearing last week that Money magazine had placed Ardmore 45th in its new list of the 100 Best Places to Live among America’s small towns. “It’s great to be in a place where you feel it was downtrodden and now, on its own, with all of these entrepreneurs, it’s making a huge difference.”

Several years ago, Lower Merion Township hired a consultant to draw up a retail plan for Ardmore, to identify the types of businesses that might foster a strong retail mix for its market.

One of the areas where it noted a potential niche was in home furnishings and materials for the home, building on the presence of longtime businesses like Rittenhouse Electric. The addition of high-quality window dealer Matus Windows and Gerhard Appliances’ expansion to a fully renovated store on Lancaster Avenue were in line with that concept.

Now the opening next month of Greenable in Gerhard’s former space is continuing the trend, with a still-rare environmental thrust.

Co-owner Lynne Templeton recalls that Tirjan visited her at the business’s first design showroom in Philadelphia not long after it opened in 2007 to talk about its potential fit in Ardmore. After a move to larger quarters in Northern Liberties, Templeton and partner Angelo Anastasio were looking for a Main Line location to expand.

“We searched the Main Line from Narberth to Paoli,” also considering Media and West Chester, she said. “A client said, ‘Come to Ardmore. Go to Rittenhouse Place. Gerhard’s is moving.’” Now Templeton said they plan to “move the main operation here,” keeping a smaller city venue while also opening a third location in Kennett Square.

Greenable emerged from Templeton’s experience in 25 years as an interior designer and Anastasio’s work to build an online resource for eco-friendly and sustainable materials.

An interest in such materials began to grow in the late 1990s, primarily in the commercial and corporate markets, Templeton said. The availability of products for residential use was sparse, and as she described it, “pretty crunchy and organic-looking.” She was convinced the “amazing” resources she was seeing in commercial uses could translate to home use. She reasoned: “Wouldn’t it be great to bring [those ideas] to the everyday person, all in one location, where people could see” the possibilities?

Today Greenable offers a range of products based on the principle that “every project you are familiar with has a safe and sustainable alternative,” from paints to cabinetry to countertops to flooring. It also offers design and architectural services and energy audits. “We offer alternative energy solutions – solar, green roofs, green walls,” Templeton listed.

Many of its products use recycled materials – countertops made from recycled plastics, glass and paper, and insulation made from recycled denim – or sustainable resources or reclaimed materials.

The showroom at 41 Rittenhouse Place is in progress now toward a Sept. 9 opening, using some of these same products for flooring, plumbing and lighting.

Meanwhile, Greenable remains one of a very few sources for green building materials in the area or even nationally, Templeton said.

It’s a myth, she added, that green materials cost more than traditional products. “The costs are comparable, quality to quality,” she said. “They’re usually more durable, and often more attractive.” After a while, she points out, even granite countertops “can be boring.”

More changes

Several other businesses have opened in Ardmore in 2011, or will be opening soon.

They include Gymboree at 24 W. Lancaster Ave., offering early-childhood development programs, play, and music and art classes for up to age 5. Close by is Love Bugs Children’s Consignment Boutique, which moved into a larger store at 28 W. Lancaster. The two stores are across the street from another children’s business, Nurture, creating another “cluster” of related businesses like the home-improvement businesses on Rittenhouse Place.

Optical Unique, a designer eyeglass store, opened at 45 W. Lancaster Ave., another new merchant-owned building.

As mentioned in a story last week, the Pet Valu pet-supply chain will open one of its new boutique-style stores this fall in the former Blockbuster building at Ardmore West Shopping Center, and a new dog-grooming spa and pet boutique has leased space on Station Avenue next to Peace-A-Pizza.

Again on Rittenhouse, the owners of Golden China are nearing opening of a new full-service restaurant, after a many-months-long renovation of a former beer-distributor business, while the former Wingers has changed its menu and name to Grape Leaves Grille, part of a culinary trend in the area toward a Mediterranean and Middle East-influenced theme.

The latter is an example of what Ardmore Initiative’s Vilardo sees as an encouraging trend. When the owner wanted to change direction, Budo Bunul, owner of Firinji, which opened late last year on Lancaster Avenue, worked with him to develop a plan.

“It’s one of the things I like about this town,” Vilardo said. The businesses “really cooperate with each other.”

Rather than seeing competition cutting into a limited pie, “they’re making the pie bigger for all of us,” Vilardo said.