Some Musical Chairs Down on Grace Street

A happy game of musical chairs has taken place down on Grace St. recently. Some established shops have moved around and some new faces have appeared.

The Grace Street Collective is the brainchild of Jessica and Ezra Glass and consists of a series of commercial spaces on the north side of the street. Focusing on quality tenants with high co-tenancy (i.e. they work well together) the Glasses turned a sleepy side street into a millennial magnet. Walk into the space (at least pre-Covid) on any random day and it was packed with a decidedly young crowd sipping coffee, dressed in athleisure wear, chatting with friends.

Covid has changed some of that, but it’s also brought two standouts: the Georgetown Butcher and, now, Green Almond Pantry:

This highly regarded restaurant, which was formerly located in Shaw, took over the space that was formerly occupied by Sundavich (they closed late last year).

And more recently, Grace Street Coffee has taken over the former Rapha Cycling store space:

Back in March, GM understood that the Glasses wanted to reopen another store in the same vein as Rapha, but, at least for now, it appears that Grace Street Coffee will use the space solely for coffee. There is some bike connection, though, since it has now been somewhat merged with District Cycleworks next door:

Although obviously focused on bikes, District Cycleworks is not really the same as Rapha (and has been at this location already since last year). It was founded up on P St. across from Rose Park and focuses on extremely expensive new bike builds. Rapha focuses on extremely expensive bike clothes they mainly sell to MAMILS (like GM…)

It’s unclear what will replace Grace Street Coffee’s former spot down the block, but the Glass’s record so far would suggest it will be nice addition.