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Marcus Hook may be the next big thing Lesley Lane, the owner of Andrea's Attic, a thrift shop in Marcus Hook, is a resolute optimist. She calls the tiny Delaware County riverfront borough, sandwiched between two oil refineries, "this precious little place." "There is so much promise here," says Lane, 62, who so believes in Marcus Hook that she and her husband have used their savings to buy the property her store occupies. "The location is phenomenal. It has a wonderful history. I feel it has the potential to become another Manayunk." That may seem quite a stretch, especially to those unfamiliar with the progress Marcus Hook has made in the last 30 years. Its two-block-square commercial district may seem more hospitable to engine shops and pizza parlors, and it has yet to sprout yuppie-infested sidewalk cafes or trendy boutiques. But neither is it a depressing dead zone of vacant and boarded-up storefronts. New businesses, such as an Italian restaurant and a grocery store, have joined the old, such as the hardware store and pharmacy. As the economy splashes red ink on many municipal ledgers, Marcus Hook may be better conditioned to survive, even thrive. Long beset by the woes typical of tattered industrial towns, the Hook, as its denizens fondly call it, is accustomed to dealing with seemingly intractable problems. The experience has endowed the town with perhaps its most valuable natural resource, even more dear than its riparian location on the Delaware: a remarkable reserve of grit and resilience that has turned the borough into a Petri dish for dreams and dreamers. "We're a hardworking class of people who have always pulled together through tough times," Mayor (and retired police chief) George McClure, 70, says of his 2,300 fellow Hookers. The town already has much to recommend it: sturdy, affordable houses (price range: $90,000 to $105,000), some dating to the 19th century, and a reclaimed waterfront with a community center and fishing pier. Plans call for creating a recreational lane on 10th Street where it widens outside the commercial district so it can safely accommodate bikers and hikers as part of the East Coast Greenway, an urban Appalachian Trail from Florida to Maine. Other dreams about to be realized include the state Department of Transportation's replacement of the dilapidated Market Street Bridge, which carries Route 452 over the Amtrak tracks and into town, creating a more appealing "front door." The borough is also trying to attract developers to build shops, offices and apartments - a so-called transit-oriented complex - in the area around the train station. One of the first to impose his dreams on Marcus Hook was Joseph Newton Pew, the founder of Sun Oil Co., who in 1901 bought 82 acres so he could build a refinery. Today the 781-acre Sunoco refinery, which can process up to 175,000 barrels of crude oil a day, covers nearly half the 1.1-square-mile borough. To the north, a smaller piece of town is occupied by part of the ConocoPhillips refinery, most of which lies in neighboring Trainer. The refineries dictate the borough's physical character, which is primarily industrial. The residential district, mainly twins and row houses, is confined to a narrow strip between unlovely landscapes of smokestacks, pipelines and storage tanks. Besides the Sunoco refinery and an adjacent 14-acre Sunoco polymer plant that makes polypropylene, Marcus Hook is host to a chemical plant, a supplier of rare hardwoods and moldings, and an ice cream distribution center. On 25 acres formerly occupied by cellophane maker FMC Corp., borough officials hope to see an office and business park. The positive side of so much industry, and nearly 100 businesses, is that Marcus Hook has an adequate tax base. Between property taxes and a 1 percent earned-income tax paid by more than 800 employees, Sunoco contributes about a third of the borough's $3 million budget. Real estate transfer taxes, an important source of income in more affluent municipalities, are a pittance in Marcus Hook, Borough Manager Bruce Dorbian says, so the flat real estate market has had a negligible effect on town coffers. Surprisingly, very few refinery workers - maybe only a dozen or so - live in Marcus Hook. With overtime, many earn handsome wages and can afford more bucolic suburbs. The labor situation at the refinery is in flux, with a contract set to expire March 1. Tim Kolodi, president of United Steelworkers Local 10-901, which represents more than 550 workers at the refinery, says the company has proposed shutting down parts of the plant and possibly cutting as many as 90 jobs. A Sunoco spokesman would not confirm the possibility of job cuts. The company is studying all its costs, he says, and plans for staffing have not been finalized. For much of the last century, the Hook may have been a lucrative place to work but not always an agreeable place to live. In the 1940s, the borough had 36 bars - more taverns per capita, legend has it, than any other town in the nation. Rowdy sailors and seamen fresh off the tankers, and the pavement princesses who sated their lust, prowled the streets. The lowest point occurred in the 1960s and '70s when motorcycle gangs adopted Marcus Hook as their headquarters, and the borough became synonymous with thuggery. The renascence began in the late '70s when native son Curt Weldon, now a retired U.S. representative, became mayor and joined other plucky citizens in striving to rescue a town that had nowhere to go but up. The town's trajectory since then has been generally ascendant. Dorbian, 60, the borough's first and only manager, has held the post for 25 years. One index of the town's evolution: When he arrived, the borough had 19 bars; now there are only six. Dorbian, who has a master's degree in public administration, combines expertise and passion. Widely respected in the community, he is an aggressive hunter and gatherer of grant money and skillful at leveraging the town's resources. During a tour of the town, his technocratic reserve yields to proprietary pride as he points out evidence of the borough's extreme makeover: the enlarged and refurbished elementary school; the ballpark named after Marcus Hook big-league baseball star Mickey Vernon; the seven new houses built through the impetus of the Marcus Hook Community Development Corp., a nonprofit that works to reestablish the residential character of the potentially quaint Market Square neighborhood near the riverfront. Ed Jenks, who is building River Place Homes, 14 houses starting at $225,000, on a prime site near the riverfront, grew up in Ridley Park and uses an unflattering anatomical metaphor to describe what people thought of the Hook in those days. "Then I went into town one day to look at an apartment building," recalls the 64-year-old retired IBM senior manager. His response was, "Wow, this is a different Marcus Hook! They've done a really great job of fixing the problems and managing the town well." Not everything is rosy, of course. More than half the town's houses are renter-occupied. Through stricter code enforcement, the town is trying to reduce the number of rental units and transients and encourage home ownership, a boon to stability and civic virtue. The town is much safer and quieter than it used to be, folks say. Fewer hoodlums hang out on the corners. "At 2 a.m., you can walk around here without a problem," says Ron Beachboard, 66, a longtime resident who owns several properties in town. "That's the big plus about the Hook." The most telling change in Marcus Hook may be a renewal of civic vigor. The town has always been famously patriotic, with a blue-collar affection for American rituals. War memorials are ubiquitous, and the borough's Memorial Day parade is notable for its size. But there is also an abiding and dauntless spirit of engagement, involvement and possibility. "I can see only good things happening here because of the many good-hearted people who care about this town and care about each other," says Marie Horn, 48, who owns the Star Bar & Hotel and recently revived the borough's business and professional association. "I really believe Marcus Hook is going through a renaissance. As more people see what Marcus Hook is really all about, and how many wonderful things are going on, it's going to be a really hot spot, I predict."
(ED HILLE / Staff Photographer) Liz Batter grew up in Marcus Hook and returns often- recently to take her infant daughter, Nellie, to Market Square Memorial Park on the borough's prime riverfront.
ED HILLE / Staff Photographer) The classical columns of Marcus Hook Borough Hall frame a not-so-lovely sight: the Sunoco refinery. But there are stirrings in what one entrepreneur called "this precious little place."
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