Stores on Horizon

The OGB agenda for this month reveals a few new stores on the horizon. They are:

The jeweler, Swarovski, is apparently taking over the space currently occupied by Wolford at 1234 Wisconsin Ave. This would be a fairly quick swap-out, since Wolford has only been there since 2023.

The next filing is somewhat cryptic. It is for 1420 Wisconsin Ave, the former M&T Bank (and legendary Commander Salamander before that). The materials do not even hint at what is proposed to take over this space, but I have been told that a restaurant is planned. The application itself is for minor changes to the windows and the rear of the building, so we’ll just have to wait more to find out what the ultimate plans are.

One more OGB filing far from the commercial corridors may raise some eyebrows. The application relates to 2920 R St., the Beall-Washington house, or more popularly known at the Katharine Graham house. It has been owned for over 20 years by Mark Ein, but it has remained vacant and in increasingly poor shape over that time. Ein has previously proposed to make renovations of the house, which were objected to by the immediate neighbors. You can read about the testy affair here.

That article details the fight in 2014 over the proposed addition. The proposal was not approved. But in a testament to how long this fight has been going on, the new materials include elements of the eleven year old submission, showing the current conditions. The new plans again call for an addition to the east side of the historic building:

I think everyone in the neighborhood looks forward to this historic property finally being restored and brought back to life (beyond getting used once a year to host Ein’s parties). But as far as I can tell, this new proposal is not substantially different from the earlier proposals, which were shot down. So it remains to be seen whether the outcome will be different this time. We’ll see.