"We'd like to stay in the area," said Woehr, 63, a bubbly woman who pitches in with the baking. "But when our lease is up, the rent will go up substantially. The owner already has tried to buy out the two remaining years of our lease. If we have to, we'll move to Paoli and even as far west as West Chester."
The bakery and other small businesses, many in houses converted to commercial uses, are feeling the squeeze as Narberth - with easy access to such major office centers as Bala Cynwyd (five minutes by car) and Center City (17 minutes by train) - becomes increasingly desirable to developers of office buildings.
Narberth has other attractions: no city wage tax, less expensive rents than neighboring office markets, and a limited amount of land still available for commercial development.
"It's the last piece of commercial space available for development along the Main Line," said John Duffy, president of Duffy Real Estate in Narberth and president of the Main Line Board of Realtors.
George Goldstone, president of Herbert Yentis Real Estate in Philadelphia, which manages the building occupied by the bakery, said he had been offered $25 a square foot by another business seeking to rent the building at 920 Montgomery Ave. Woehr pays $11 a square foot.
Goldstone acknowledged that $25 a square foot was a bit steep, but he said that demand for commercial space along the avenue was forcing rents up. Buildings like Woehr's are renting for about $16.50 a square foot and, he said, probably will go as high as $19 a square foot by the time Woehr's lease is up in two years.
"The rents along Montgomery Avenue are escalating faster than other commercial rents," Goldstone said. "The rents jumped about 10 percent during the high inflation years of 1980, 1981 and 1982, and have been escalating at a rate of about 4 percent per year since then.".
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