Meet Gretchen Mercer: Centreville Civic Association president fights to keep village peaceful

Gretchen Mercer is the nemesis of those lead-footed motorists who speed through Centreville every day.

In fact, the Centreville Civic Association president has spent the better part of 10 years trying to slow them down.

And now that the long-envisioned traffic calming project dubbed the Centreville Streetscape is underway, Mercer said she’s happy to finally see some fruits of her civic-minded labor.

“I don’t think there are too many people in Pennsylvania who are going to be happy about it,” she said. “Tough toenails.”

Though traffic calming has become a bit of a crusade for Mercer, who’s been on the board of the Centreville Civic Association for the past decade, it wasn’t what spurred her to volunteer in the first place.

After retiring from a career in the research department of the Alfred I. duPont Institute (now the A.I. duPont Hospital for Children), Mercer searched for a way to give back to the community she has called home since 1967. When she received a notice in the mail seeking volunteers for the civic association, she decided to give it a try.

“Like most temporary things, I’m still there,” she said.

Talk of traffic calming in Centreville goes back 30 years to the civic association’s beginnings, she said, but she took up the mantle when she joined.

And she wasted no time. The project was almost started nearly 10 years ago, she said, but DelDOT backed out because of too much in-fighting between Centreville residents.

“At some of those meetings I almost expected them to come to blows,” she said.

And while compromise may have seemed a long way off in 2001, Mercer and the civic association helped broker a consensus and DelDOT took it from there, she said.

Traffic calming may be what’s gotten her name in the papers, but Mercer is proudest of the work she’s done setting up Centreville’s hometown overlay district.

Half the town is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, she said, and it reminds her of her own pastoral roots – Mercer grew up on a farm where the nearest town had a population of 1,500. Protecting that heritage is important, she said, and keeping historic homes from being leveled does more than add to the town’s character – it respects the town’s past.

But there’s more to Centreville than its past and Mercer has a hand in that, as well. She and the civic association are working to add more playground equipment to Canby Grove Park, she said. They recently had some toddler swings installed and their goal is to build a jungle gym next, she said.

And even though Mercer plans to step down when her presidential term is up in 2011, she said she has no intention of stopping her civic work.

“I’ve had the benefits of living in this beautiful area for 40 years,” she said. “If we don’t fight back, there’s going to be developers moving in every time you turn around.”