In Upper Darby, coffee and a cultural crossroads

After 15 years in Morocco, Steve and Judi Bowman wanted to return home to a diverse community in the United States.

So they settled in Upper Darby. The couple renovated a building across from the township building and opened it last year as Five Points Coffee.

But Five Points is more than a coffee shop.

The Bowmans also started a nonprofit organization, with a vision of serving international students, immigrants, and refugees. Their shop has become a regular meeting place for English conversation groups for nonnative speakers, a local church's SAT tutoring, and the township's multicultural committee.

"Since we had lived overseas, we knew what it was like to be an immigrant in another country," Steve Bowman said. "And we wanted to be engaged in helping the immigrant community here."

The focus on multiculturalism fits in Upper Darby, a Delaware County township of 82,000 people that has grown more diverse in recent decades. As local officials push to revitalize the main retail area, Five Points Coffee "is the type of concept I would like to see right down the whole street," Mayor Thomas Micozzie said.

More than 90 percent of Upper Darby's population in the 1990s was white, according to U.S. census figures. By 2000 that number had dropped to 77 percent, and by 2010 it was 56 percent. The Upper Darby School District has students from 70 countries.

The demographics attracted the Bowmans to open their shop on Long Lane, near the five-points intersection that lends the shop its name.

"We're not very monocultural people," Steve Bowman said.

Steve Bowman, 51, grew up in Lancaster County, and spent 15 years in Morocco running a business that exported furniture and handcrafted goods.

As his son and daughter prepared to return to the United States for college, Bowman and his wife decided to move home as well and pursue their dream of opening a cafe. "And somehow we wanted to use our cross-cultural experience," he said.

The shop is decorated with photos and other mementos from Morocco. Attached to it, the Bowmans added a dormitory, where five students from Saudi Arabia rent bedrooms, a shared kitchen, and common space. The Bowmans live in an upstairs apartment.

"One of the upsides, benefits, of living in the house [is] it's connected with the cafe, so we can practice English with the customers," said one of the tenants, Ali Alkhathami, an English student at the University of Pennsylvania.

Alkhathami, 38, said he was at first hesitant about living in Upper Darby because the township had a reputation as unsafe, and it was not very close to school. But he said he has enjoyed living in the community.

The living arrangement allows Alkhathami to practice English more than he would with other homestay families, he said, because there is always someone to speak with at the coffee shop.

Micozzie, who supported Five Points through a complicated zoning approval process to allow for the dormitory units, said its owners' business model brings life back to its street. Micozzie said he was impressed with the Bowmans' idea, and would now like to see more housing for international students in Upper Darby.

"Those students would then support the stores and nightlife on the street," he said.

Beyond students, Steve Bowman said, he hopes to use his nonprofit organization to help immigrants living in Upper Darby, but added: "We don't want to reinvent the wheel or do what other people are already doing."

Business is Bowman's area of expertise, so he hopes to launch a business course for immigrants in the coming months.

Still, many Five Points customers come just for its coffee, its owners say. Some walk across the street from the township building. Others stop in on their way to work in the morning, or sit to read the newspaper.

Ruth Manokore of Upper Darby uses the shop's quiet upstairs room to study for the distance-learning courses in international relations she takes at the University of Delaware.

"You know, the 69th Street area can be really crazy," she said. "And all the sudden I stumbled across this place, and it's like a breath of fresh air."

610-313-8116 @Lmccrystal