Alyson Pray Ward used to park her car outside 2256 Mt. Carmel Avenue and walk past it on her way to work every day. A former professional ballet dancer, she'd glance up at the second floor of the old brick building and think the same thing each time: that space would make a gorgeous ballet studio. The building had been sitting there for decades, first as a bowling alley, later as an eyeglass shop, mostly forgotten by anyone who wasn't squinting up at it the way she was.
Ward moved her barre and yoga business, Align Studio, into that second floor last year. She wasn't the first tenant to answer the building's second life, and she won't be the last. What's happened at Glenside Lanes since 2024 is less a single renovation than a chain reaction, one Glenside local recruiting the next, until a building that sat quiet for half a century turned into the kind of spot where you can take a yoga class, buy vintage vinyl, pick up a handmade gift, and get a pour-over coffee without leaving the block.
From Ten Pins to Eyeglasses to Nothing
The building at 2256 Mt. Carmel Avenue dates to the 1920s. It opened as a bowling alley and billiards hall, the kind of place where Glenside residents spent their Friday nights for decades. The alley closed in 1971, and a family of eye specialists took over the space, running a glasses store there for years afterward. By the time developer Kevin Burke bought the structure in 2024, it had sat underused for a long stretch, a solid brick shell with no clear second act.
Burke isn't an outside investor parachuting into Abington Township looking for a flip. He's a Glenside native, and his stated goal was to build a community hub, not just fill square footage. He's part of a broader pattern playing out across greater Philadelphia right now, where developers are converting commercial space hollowed out by online shopping and post-pandemic shifts into buildings that mix retail with things people actually show up for in person. Jenkintown's Yorkway Place is doing something similar a few minutes away.
What makes Glenside Lanes different is how it filled up. Burke didn't sign an anchor tenant and build outward from there. He found Rhiannon Punzo first, who runs The Dovetail, a shop of locally made gifts, and who had already been organizing art events around town through a company called CO Lab. Punzo became the connector. She brought in Lisa Schaffer, a longtime music photographer who had been telling people for years she'd open a record store eventually, maybe in five years, once she'd saved enough to make the leap. Punzo pushed her to move faster. Within months, Schaffer was running Vinyl Chickie out of Glenside Lanes instead of waiting out a five-year plan.
Ward came next with Align Studio, finally getting the second floor she'd been eyeing from the sidewalk. And this past summer, Raven Cafe opened on the ground floor between Punzo's and Schaffer's storefronts, pouring Philadelphia's Rival Bros Coffee and giving the building its first real coffee counter.
Who's Running the Storefronts
| Business | What It Offers | Owner(s) | Opened |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Dovetail | Locally made gifts | Rhiannon Punzo | Early tenant, helped anchor the project |
| Vinyl Chickie | Record store | Lisa Schaffer | Within months of Punzo's outreach |
| Align Studio | Barre and yoga | Alyson Pray Ward | 2025 |
| Raven Cafe | Coffee, Rival Bros. Coffee | Jason Dooney, Lara Witt, Rhiannon Punzo | Summer 2026 |
The micro-mall officially opened in May 2025, but the roster has kept growing since. Raven Cafe's arrival wasn't a cold business decision either. Dooney and Punzo had spent more than a year producing local music shows through CO Lab, including a 2025 summer residency by the Abington band Who In The Room?, before deciding a coffee shop was the natural next step for the space they'd already built a following around.
Why the Cafe Came Last
Dooney has been direct about what he and his partners were trying to build with Raven Cafe. He wanted something that felt like the 1990s or early 2000s, comfortable and a little quirky, not the sterile, over-designed coffee shop look that's become standard everywhere else. He's talked about wanting a proper third space for Glenside, somewhere people can hang out with friends and build something together, not just grab a drink and leave.
That instinct lines up with how Punzo describes the whole project taking shape. She's said the final business partner Glenside Lanes needed wasn't another storefront tenant. It was Glenside itself.
"The community said, 'We want this, if you build more we'll come.' They could've been just talking, but everyone who said it showed up."
That's not a marketing line. It's closer to a description of how the building actually filled its four storefronts: one local business owner vouching for the next, each one betting that the neighborhood would follow through on what it said it wanted.
What's Still Coming
Burke's plans for Glenside Lanes aren't finished. There's a music venue slated for the back of the building, which would give the space a live-performance outlet to match the recorded-music retail already happening at Vinyl Chickie and the informal shows CO Lab has been running. Glenside already has a marquee music venue in the Keswick Theatre a short distance away, so a smaller room built into Glenside Lanes would sit alongside that history rather than compete with it.
Burke's ambitions also extend past this one building. He's said he expects to open a similar multi-use project in Wyncote, applying the same model of pairing traditional retail with businesses people visit for an experience rather than a transaction. If that holds, Glenside Lanes won't be a one-off restoration story. It'll be the first location in a small local chain of buildings run on the same idea: find the people who already have roots here, let them recruit each other, and see who shows up.
For now, the building at 2256 Mt. Carmel Avenue is doing what an old bowling alley probably hasn't done since 1971, giving people in Glenside somewhere to go on a weeknight that isn't a chain restaurant or someone's living room. Ward still works upstairs, teaching barre classes in the space she used to stare up at from the sidewalk. Downstairs, the same coffee shop that grew out of a year of local music nights is settling into its first full season.
If you're already spending your Saturdays wandering into Vinyl Chickie or grabbing a Raven Cafe pour-over before an Align Studio class, you already know what this stretch of Mt. Carmel Avenue has turned into. If you're new to the block, the building's worth a visit on its own, no occasion required.
Matthew and Bri DeSantis keep close tabs on what's changing in Glenside and the rest of Abington Township, not just the listings but the small storefronts and side projects that make a block worth living on. If you're curious what else is shifting in the neighborhood, DeSantis Real Estate Team is happy to talk it through.
