In November, GM lamented that Petco’s new Unleashed store underneath the Safeway was making a lot of the same mistakes that CVS used to make in terms of blocking up the street windows. Well, not that GM thinks he had anything to do with it, but Petco has recently taken down the walls blocking the window, as you can see above.
This follows CVS’s own move last spring to open up the view into their Georgetown stores. These moves dramatically improve the feel of the sidewalk. Also, GM speculates that it makes it a lot more likely that people will come in off the street when they can actually see into the store from the outside.
So huzzah to Petco for seeing the light.
The Georgetown Metropolitan 
While I am all for businesses not blocking up their street windows, the one bad side effect in the case of CVS was the loss of the wonderful vintage neighborhood photographs that each store use to display. This was a great educational opportunity for the public to learn about their neighborhood history. Unfortunately, I don’t expect to see these folks coming into local history special collections like the Peabody Room, Washingtonia, and the Historical Society of Washington to view similar images.
bravo!