The Engine Of Change

Still, he knows demography is destiny: "At some point, we will see a Latino mayor and a predominantly Latino council only because the demographics are shifting."

The challenge for Reading is to hammer out a post-outlet economic future to support its inexorable demographic future. The civic missionaries, the business community -- including the relatively new Berks County Latino Chamber of Commerce -- have faith. To them, "renaissance" is a verb, and greater Reading is "renaissancing." They see the bright side, such as all the manufacturers still in business, typically the higher-end ones, specialty steel and so on.

The same cannot be said, alas, about the York Peppermint Pattie factory, which is supposed to close this year, exporting jobs to Mexico (and Mexico returns the favor by exporting laborers to cultivate mushrooms outside Reading).

But what's not to like about the new Miller Center for the Arts down by the river, four professional (minor league) sports teams, a symphony orchestra, a historic district of stately Victorian homes -- and look at the GoggleWorks! That's an old industrial safety goggle factory repurposed as a home for artists and crafts, modeled on the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria. A Maryland developer recently announced a billion-dollar waterfront project. Last fall NBC's "Today" show named Reading one of four top "up-and-coming neighborhoods."

Latinos will have a place in this bright future, if it comes to pass. Some will make the beds in the hotels and cook the food in the restaurants, while others will live in the waterfront condos and serve on the boards of the fundraising balls.

Reading will endure, McMahon maintains, appealing to his basic faith in urban resilience: "Cities have always been the place where people gathered and faced change and created something new. That's the beauty of cities."

A New Horizon

At the corner of 12th and Buttonwood streets, directly beneath the pagoda, sits the red brick mystery of an institution called the Ivy Leaf Association. The door is locked. Ring the bell. Welcome.

Leave behind the Dominican front-porch culture outside and step inside a place where old amazing vanished Reading still exists, in stories, in the mind's eye.

Okay, it's a bar. But it's a special bar. It is a 122-year-old "gentlemen's club." It started admitting women as members in January.

The Ivy Leaf is not, nor was it ever, one of those snooty rep-tie men's clubs, the kind the owner of the Reading Railroad might have frequented. Set among the rowhouses where the white immigrant working families lived, it was for working people of good character. If you got laid off, you could sleep upstairs. The co-founder, according to current members, was an Irish cop.

Today's denizens are the cigarette-smoking, 75-cent-draft-beer-nursing, pension-collecting native sons and daughters of Reading, who still love the city -- even if they think it has gotten harder to love, what with all the changes, you know.

Obama might say these people "cling" to the Ivy Leaf, with its ancient slate-topped pinochle table and the wedding reception hall hung with pictures of ghosts. For the record, most people here seem to be Clinton supporters.

Talking about Reading -- the Reading of their memories -- their faces light up as much as Gabby Polanco's face lights up, and the students' faces light up, when they talk about Reading. Same city, different point of view.

"Good old Penn Street," the main downtown drag, says Bob Schell, 64, who started working in the knitting mills, and later became a trucker. "I miss downtown Reading."

"The movie theaters, the stores, restaurants," says his wife, Chris, 68, who was a stocking pairer in the knitting mills.

"This was a boomtown," says Wayne Gass, who served in Vietnam and worked for a manufacturer that kept changing hands until the Reading operations closed. "It was magic."

Now instead of wedding receptions in the big room, they rent the hall out to Latinos for parties. When the fiesta organizers come to make arrangements, they bring a child to do the translating, because the adults don't speak English, according to the Ivy Leafers.

The Latino adoption of Reading itself is similar, Gass says. "They're coming in, they're using it," he says. "We put our sweat and blood into it. That's what sticks in people's craw. They want to be a part of it, they got to put sweat into it. Get a job. Learn the language."

As it happens, sitting in the middle of the bar, is one object of such talk, which takes place out of his earshot.

Emmanuel Fernandez, 35, an Obama supporter -- "I'm looking for change; what do we got to lose?" -- is not a member of the club. He is a guest of Richard Burns, 49. Fernandez is slightly higher on the pecking order of the plastics factory where they work on the same line.

"This guy," Burns says, slapping Fernandez on the back, "he gave me an even break. We became friends."

Son of a Dominican father, Fernandez was born in New York and moved to Reading for a job and a more affordable lifestyle.

"When I moved in 13 years ago, Reading was a nice place," Fernandez says. But that changed. His older daughter was having trouble in school. A bad element was coming to town.

"The Latino community is trying to do good things in Reading," Fernandez says. "There's a lot of good people trying to make a difference. But I can't wait for it to happen. I have to take care of my family."

So in December, Fernandez, with his wife and two daughters, joined the cutting edge of what may be the next change: Latino flight. A repurposing of the suburbs.

Researcher Karl Evanzz contributed to this story.