The end of the toy story for O'DOODLES

The news is bad.

Bad for the weary, end-of-day Chestnut Hill West commuters who get off the train at Evergreen Avenue and stop by this fanciful place - not necessarily to buy something, but to be someplace fun.

Bad for the legions of frazzled parents of birthday-party invitees who have counted on it for a last-minute present and free gift wrap on a Saturday morning.

And bad for the guy who drove the hour-and-a-half to it from Jim Thorpe just to buy six pimple balls.

O'Doodles toy store, a fixture on Germantown Avenue in Chestnut Hill since 1997, is the bearer of the bad news: It is closing.

Evolving from a stationery store that Henry and Eleanor O'Donnell opened in 1954, O'Doodles has prided itself in the Internet age on its back-to-basics, "unplugged" inventory of games, puzzles, puppets, and simple-yet-enthralling stuff like Silly Putty.

Owner Fran O'Donnell, 52, of Flourtown, who heeded his father's advice to have a Plan B and got his real estate license in 2000, is making that his full-time vocation, having had a far easier - and lucrative - time lately selling real houses, rather than the play kind, with Berkshire Hathaway Fox & Roach.

"With retail being seven days a week, if I put that amount of hours into real estate, I'm going to be one rich son of a gun," a jovial O'Donnell, father of three, or "ToyDad," said during a Labor Day interview in his darkened store, closed for the holiday.

While the toy business is about fun and games, being an independent toy-store operator hasn't been lately, O'Donnell said. Among the killjoys: competition from Internet sales and big retailers, comparison-obsessed shoppers, and onerous minimum-order and payback requirements from a dwindling cadre of wholesalers.

Prices were generally about 10 percent higher at O'Doodles than at big-box stores, allowing for a 50 percent profit margin, O'Donnell said. Peak prerecession annual sales reached about $1 million and have dropped to half that now, he said, adding that his online sales were "minimal."

His "doll-houses-to-real-houses transition sale" begins Monday, with the store at Germantown and Evergreen Avenues closing for good when the shelves are empty. O'Donnell expects that will be in about a month.

Closing is not a decision the Chestnut Hill booster and former manager of its Main Street program is making without concern for the impact it will have on the commercial district, whose vacancies include where Metropolitan Bakery, Chestnut Hill Bootery, the Children's Place, and the original O'Doodles used to be.

"I'm in the game. I'll be the one to try to lease it out," O'Donnell said of the 2,100-square-foot O'Doodles property in the 8500 block of Germantown Avenue, owned by his sister in Massachusetts and a brother in Texas.

O'Donnell moved the toy store there - for smaller quarters - in June 2012 from the 8300 block of Germantown, where a giant purple crayon fashioned from an old light pole still enlivens the sidewalk. The move was meant to cut expenses as business got tougher.

Not convinced that big retail chains will want to have a presence in small towns, O'Donnell thinks Germantown Avenue in Chestnut Hill will become dominant in restaurants and small speciality shops such as its A Taste of Olive store, specializing in olive oils and balsamic vinegars.

Bill Fontana, executive director of Pennsylvania Downtown Center Inc., a nonprofit advocating for the revitalization of the state's "core communities," isn't convinced that chains have lost interest in small towns, but agrees their business districts are taking on a different look.

"Right now, there seems to be emphasis on downtowns as sort of social centers as opposed to retail," Fontana said. "By social, I mean the arts, brew pubs, coffeehouses, restaurants, and the desire for people to kind of have that sidewalk presence and be out on the street."

With an abundance of windows and a corner locale, O'Donnell thinks his toy store would be ideal for a restaurant.

That won't help longtime O'Doodles customer and Chestnut Hill resident Paula Riley with her birthday-gift crises, often handled with a call to O'Donnell.

"I would say in a panic: 'Girl. 4,' " Riley, mother to children ages 11, 9, 7, and 5, recalled last week.

She would arrive at the store a short time later to find the gift not only selected but wrapped.

"I'm crushed that he's closing," Riley said. "It's the end of an era of a business that was run by a really loving, caring family committed to family and to the community."

The site of the original O'Doodles, part of a complex comprising three addresses on Germantown Avenue, was sold to Bowman Properties, a major landlord in town, after Henry O'Donnell died in February 2001. His wife had preceded him in death in November 1997, about a month after the toy store opened and two years before O'Donnell's Stationery closed next door.

O'Donnell is certain his parents would approve of his decision to close O'Doodles.

"It feels real right," he said.

215-854-2466 @dmastrull