Here's how gyms, salons and ice cream are changing America's Main Streets

MilkShake Factory, Maroons Creamery and Hey Yogurt are among the many dessert shops in downtown Ridgewood, N.J., which is seeing a shift from retail to services. Thalia Juarez for NPR hide caption

Change sprawls constantly across the storefronts on the postcard streets of downtown Ridgewood, New Jersey.

The big avenue, East Ridgewood, cuts across streets called Walnut, Chestnut and Oak, and then abuts the train station that connects this commuter suburb to New York City. It's a town where anything is reachable within five, 10 minutes of driving, and its center is the proverbial Main Street.

"Ridgewood has always been known as the place to go shopping," says Joan Groome, who has lived here since 1968, when she opened a ski shop above a family-run store selling gifts and art.

Over the years, Groome watched a wave of big-box chains sweep through Ridgewood and then a wave of banks. Local retail like hers strived and survived or went under; doors have shut on a beloved stationery store, a family-owned pharmacy, a hardware shop.

Joan Groome (right), who runs the Ridgewood Chamber of Commerce, visits a local jewelry store on Ridgewood's main downtown avenue. Thalia Juarez for NPR hide caption

Now a new shift is reshaping this downtown, as it has many around the U.S.: Stores that sell things are giving way to shops that sell services — spas, gyms, restaurants.

"We have now 11 barbershops in town," says Groome, now the executive director of the Ridgewood Chamber of Commerce. Around her, on just this one block, three ice cream cafés have opened, with a milkshake shop opening soon.