Mount Holly might be the underdog, but here’s why it could be N.J.'s best downtown

Just over 1,000 freshly carved jack-o'-lanterns lined a portion of the 200 block of Clifton Avenue near downtown Mount Holly this week, stretching about 40 feet down the sidewalk and rising about five rows high. The pumpkins stretched back to a three-story, Victorian house and lined the façade up to a spired roof with a wind vain. The house, minus the pumpkins, easily fits into this town of just under 10,000 residents in 2.8 square-miles that was settled 99 years before the American Revolution.

The pumpkins were lit at night by a wiring setup that could easily be the envy of the Griswold family in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

The occasion was the 16th annual Mount Holly Pumpkin Festival. The event is not even on the town’s official calendar, but it is now part of a tradition that keeps people coming back. Rich and Deanne Denisar spend nearly $4,000 of their own money each year to buy the pumpkins and help children to carve their own design, none the same, from stencil kits.

It probably shouldn’t be a surprise to the regulars at the Pumpkin Festival, which includes plenty of adults, that Mount Holly is a finalist in NJ.com’s 2019 Best Downtown competition. Other finalists include Cranford, Morristown, Pitman, and Westfield.

Even though the locals are not bashful about bragging on their quaint, little town “with a twist” – more on that later – one of its most ardent supporters was still surprised to find out it was a finalist in the competition.

“We’re all a little shocked and thrilled that Mount Holly is up there,” said Heidi Winzinger, 54, a state farmland preservationist and part-time musician who has lived here for most of her life. “When I first heard it, I thought, ‘really?’ It’s a pretty big leap. There are a lot of great towns in New Jersey. Usually, people vote for the pristine towns, not ours. But we’ll take it.”

Winzinger, her mother and two sisters have a lot to do with turning around the once-gritty downtown of this seat of Burlington County. Her family started buying up storefront buildings in the early 1980s. The plan then was to follow the national Main Street America program, which provided strategies to revitalize aging small downtowns.

“My mother owns a number of buildings,” Winzinger said. “In 1983, we thought others would follow the lead. It just didn’t happen for a really long time.”

Winzinger and her family helped establish Mill Race Village, a historic restoration and neighborhood preservation project and haven for entrepreneurs, artisans and professionals.

The quarter-mile stretch of winding pathways and narrow streets starts with an ornate, metal presidium from High Street, Mount Holly’s historic main drag.

The shops offer a variety of hand-made collectibles, fine art, jewelry, clothes, books, accessories and furniture.

Many of the shopkeepers can be found creating wares on site, including baskets, paintings, furniture, teddy bears and quilts.

But it wasn’t always like this.

“A big problem when we started was drugs on the corner of Church and White streets,” Winzinger said.

Her sister, Robin, who owns the Robin’s Nest café, one of the village’s “anchor stores,” had a friend who wanted to open a teddy bear shop.

“We offered her a spot free of rent on the drug-dealing corner but we told her she had to be open in the evening when the dealing was happening, have the corner well-lit and have displays out front and music.

“It turned into the uncool corner,” Winzinger said. “They didn’t want to be next to an 8-foot tall teddy bear with music playing.”

Time, now, for a bit of irony.

It turns out one of the acronyms that fuels development strategies for Main Street America, and the state’s Main Street New Jersey, is DOPE.

“It stands for Design, Organization, Promotion and Economic Vitality,” said Robert “Rocky” D’Entremont, 76, a real estate agent, retired insurance entrepreneur and former president of the local Urban Enterprise Zone. “It’s all to make your town more fun. That’s the bottom line.”

D’Entremont had been cooking up schemes to draw people to downtown businesses for more than three decades. One of his first ideas, along with another Winzinger sister, Audrey, was the Fire & Ice Festival.

The daylong event in mid-January, usually the weekend before the Super Bowl, features public displays of ice-carving and a competition to crown the best local chili.

“Mount Holly is a county seat,” said D’Entremont, touching on the thing Winzinger said give’s Mount Holly a little twist. “The thing that goes along with the county seat is courts, legal systems. It’s not fun.

"That was what we were trying to get away from. When you read the newspaper, the header is Mount Holly and they talk about which crime they’re reporting on or which court system. We said we got to get away from that.”

So, along with Fire & Ice, D’Entremount, the Winzingers and other inspired locals dreamed up the Witch’s Ball, which Heidi Winzinger calls “an adult, adult,” Halloween costume contest set to disco music. Then there’s the Hollystock Music and Arts Festival in September featuring multiple stages and a variety of bands. The reenactment of the Revolutionary War Battle of Iron Works Hill is often held in December.

A weekend of Renaissance Faire fun transformed Mill Race Village one year for a winter Pillage the Village invasion of Barbarian Hordes. It included lessons on ax throwing and bow shooting and the annual Saint Patrick’s parade is also a hit.

Local leaders agree part of the flavor that makes Mount Holly work is its affordability. The development of the Mill Race Village area was done by changing zoning laws from residential to a mix of commercial and residential. It allowed the development of storefronts downstairs and residents upstairs that drives the town year-round even when there isn’t a festival going on.

The Village Idiot microbrewery and Train Wreck distillery, along with four restaurants and a local theater company in a converted warehouse, keep the good times rolling.

“I live a block from the county prison on High Street,” Winzinger said. “The old courthouse and prison are now a museum. They had a mass wedding at the prison museum on Halloween. What town has that? How frigging cool is that?

Voting is on now to crown the 2019 winner of NJ.com’s Best Downtown competition. Click here to vote for your favorite. You can vote once per day, and the poll is open until 9 a.m. on Nov. 7.

Bill Duhart may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @bduhart. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips.

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