Right now, it doesn’t look like much.

The small corner in the back of a quirky historic property sits dwarfed by rooms containing vials of herbs, spices, and vitamins, and stands filled with greeting cards and incense. It’s quirky.

But Smile Herb Shop co-owner Linda Wolfe said she’s expanding. Within the next two weeks, Wolfe said she will be adding Wi-Fi, fair trade coffee and a few tables to the tiny room at the back of her store to create “a Starbucks kind of thing.”

Smile Herb Shop dates back to the 1970s and is one of the few commercial enterprises still standing in Berwyn’s historic downtown area. The stretch of old storefronts houses a book-maker, gym and vegetarian restaurant Berwyn Café, but the remaining few spaces have been left empty for years. Yet Wolfe and the owners of Berwyn Café are still hopeful for a future in which the empty shops to either side of them are filled and more students venture into the neighborhood.

Berwyn Café employee Paul Baranson said he plans to start handing out flyers near some of the new apartment complexes popping up on Route 1, such as Mazza Grandmarc and the University View’s second building to attract more student patrons.

And the StarView Plaza apartment complex, which broke ground in December 2009, is only a block north from Berwyn Road on the opposite side of Route 1.

“We’re excited to have some new neighbors, and we hope to see their faces,” Baranson said.

District 2 Councilman Bob Catlin, who lives in Berwyn, said it’s hard to predict what impact StarView will have on student interest in the café and herb shop.

“There’s not a whole lot of need to cross Route 1, with the Paint Branch Trail taking you south to campus,” he said.

The tiny commercial district, just a stone’s throw from the campus, looks more like small-town America — not College Park. Hidden among single-family homes blocks off busy Route 1, the strip remains half empty, and besides the herb shop and café, it offers few destinations.

Although the herb shop’s clientele is a relatively small niche, consisting mostly of those interested in herbal health care remedies, Berwyn Café sees a strong turnout at its Friday open mic nights, at which undergraduates frequently perform.

“A lot of students show up, not a particular group,” said senior government and politics major Jon Berger, who lives in Berwyn. “It’s mostly students who live in the neighborhood; sometimes people from TerPoets will perform.”

Residents in the neighborhood said they’ve been spreading the word about Berwyn Café, and have seen more students — typically upperclassmen or graduate students — venturing over.

Human development graduate student and Berwyn resident Erica Zippert said a friend recommended she stop by the neighborhood, and so, she did.

Zippert said most students would probably like the healthy vegetarian food and quiet place to work with Wi-Fi but guessed many had no idea the Berwyn neighborhood existed.

The city has poured thousands of dollars into extending a bike trail through the area, redoing sidewalks and installing street lamps and some signage on Route 1 alerting passerby to the neighborhood, but more small businesses taking up shop in Berwyn’s downtown seems unlikely.

While the area houses a number of student rental properties, they are fewer and farther between than those in Old Town near downtown bars, fraternity and sorority houses and the campus.

And the Berwyn neighborhood itself hasn’t been bustling for decades. Foot traffic has diminished multiple times over the neighborhood’s history: when the trolley car from Washington stopped running in the 1960s, when the Motor Vehicle Association moved to Beltsville and when zoning was made more stringent in the 1990s.

Zoning limits the commercial uses of many properties, meaning many types of businesses are not able to move in.

For example, though there had been some interest in opening a yoga studio, the would-be owners were unable to obtain a permit, Wolfe said.

To further complicate things, the owner of most of the buildings in the city’s downtown district, Alvin Jenkins, is locked in a dispute with Berwyn officials over ownership of a gravel lot that cuts the bike trail in half. And the city isn’t willing to give him what he wants until he settles the suit.

So for now, students will have to settle for Berwyn being a step back in time, to a simpler and quieter America.

“It’s kind of like a retreat,” Zippert said. “It’s not something you’d expect to find in College Park.”

apino at umdbk dot com