Photo by cfpereda.
Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest (today’s theme is Housing Complex):
- Herb Miller abandoning Georgetown.
- Eleanor Norton weighs in on the Jack’s Boathouse situation…
- …but the DC Attorney General won’t.
The Morning Metropolitan
Filed under The Morning Metropolitan
The Georgetown Metropolitan 
Good riddance to the man who helped to drive the mom and pop businesses he now appreciates out of the village.
Don’t blame Herb Miller for being a smart developer. He certainly wasn’t the only person or institution whose actions helped reduce Georgetown to a nearly unlivable theme park.
Greedy property owners jacked up commercial rental rates that drove out the services essential to a real community, and a lot of other things, too, like Savile Books, Learmont Records, and J. Clinton Tribby, jewelers.
Too many liquor licenses were distributed or renewed by the DC Govt. without judgment or consideration of the effects of critical mass nightlife on the community. Who wants to pay a fortune for a house and then have to endure a nightly invasion of loud-mouth drunks, public urination, and a perpetual wave of petty (and sometimes not-so-petty) theft and propety vandalization?
Zoning for redevelopment of the area south of “M” Street was far too dense and provided far too much office space. If you can find them, take a look at the National Capital Planning Commission studies from the early 70s; they showed low- to mid-rise residential development south of “M,” with ground-floor retail and commercial space. Too, too bad: what a lost opportunity.
For Georgetown, the “upside” of development in Logan Circle, Columbia Heights, “U” and “H” Streets is that, with a diffusion of entertainment districts in the city, Georgetown might cool down a little, and have to share its status as an in-town nightlife destination with these new, hip, venues, leading ultimately to a more residential, and resident-friendly, community.
Nemo, when you talk about “Greedy property owners” you are talking about Miller, and Lanier, Jamal and their ilk.
I guess Herb no longer likes shopping at “his” Georgetown Park anymore…