The Post ran this story on the growth on H Street over the weekend. The story focuses on the fact that much of the development thus far has been restaurants and bars, rather than retail. That's not exactly an unusual development pattern (nightlife thrives first, and retail follows). The story is pretty good, but a little more context might help. At times the piece just reads like a list, and this isn't helped by the proliferation of single sentence paragraphs. I'm also not sure I'd called Little Miss Whiskey's "a part-Western-part-voodoo-themed bar." But that's a minor point. The story also comes with video and a slideshow which are worth checking out. I also suggest you read this response from Richard Layman over at Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space. Richard's also got a link in there for his rules of restaurant driven revitalization. It's a good read if you haven't seen it before.
9 comments:
this article is a complete waste of space in the sense that it's been written many times before. Change comes, people get uprooted, people complain, life is unfair, yadda yadda. Nothing new here folks..move on
Couldn't have said it better myself, Anon 10.52
My issue with this article is it ignored the hot property market in the neighborhood and the number of people living here now that don't disappear back into NW after hitting the bars. We walk a couple blocks home. Also, many of the people that are coming here now, especially on the weekends, were afraid to come to NE just a few years ago. I would call that progress.
nightlife thrives first, and retail follows
Is that the case?
I thought the photo of the shopkeeper who complained about his business being off was a great touch! He was stretched out on the floor of his shop napping.
Great way to run a business.
Just to add onto a couple of the earlier comments, I live a couple of blocks south of the section of H that has a growing concentration of bars & restaurants (10th to 14th). Particularly on Friday and Saturday evenings, but also sometimes during the week, I see couples and small groups walking past my house who are presumably headed to H street (i.e., they are dressed to go out). I don't recall seeing that at all when I first moved here six years ago. The point being that H street is clearly drawing customers who live in capitol hill, not just folks from elsewhere. The fact is, there are quite a few people who live on the Hill who have discretionary income, and up until recently those people, for the most part, left the Hill to spend it. Now, these new businesses on H are keeping some of that money at "home", and the local customer base is only going to expand (particularly with the new apartments going in at both ends of H). I'm quite optimistic about the future of H as a thriving retail corridor.
1:04,
I wasn't implying a direct causal relationship, just specifying what pattern I meant.
Anon 1:15am -- you might want to look at that photo again. It's not of the shopkeeper, but instead of a little boy.
You know, maybe one of these days the reporters churning out vast quantities of copy on H St NE will finally get it through their thick skulls: the construction on H St was not just the streetcar line -- that was just one part of an overall street improvement project. Sheesh.
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