The State of Georgetown Preview

I finally got around to performing my annual-ish census of the state of Georgetown. This is the survey I do where I walk up and down the streets keeping track of every establishment that has either opened or closed since the last time I took the snapshot. I’m about 6-8 months overdue, so this snapshot is more like a little over a year and a half since my last one. So the numbers will seem a little more dramatic once I tally them all up.

I’m still sorting through and cleaning up the data. But here is a preview of the top line numbers:

• There were 88 establishments opened since Sept. 2023
• There were 77 establishments that closed since Sept. 2023
• Of the 77 closures, 25 spaces have already been reoccupied

Just for comparison, in 2023 I measured 62 openings and 45 closures. That covered a period of 15 months to the 2022 measure. That suggests an opening rate of 4.1 stores a month and a closure rate of 3 per month. This year’s snapshot covered 19 months of changes. So that calculates to a opening rate of 4.6 a month and a closure rate of 4. So the openings are up a touch but the closures are up a lot.

But even with the closures going up, they’re still behind the openings. So the overall numbers are up. In fact, my preliminary numbers suggest the total is now back over 500 for the first time since 2019. I’m still cleaning up the data, as I mentioned, so that could be a miscalculation. But if it’s roughly true, it would put us close to the highest count I’ve had since I started doing this way back in 2009. And that would be especially note worthy since that 2009 number was “inflated” by the Georgetown Park Mall, which was still open at the time.

The details are still to come, but any way you slice it, Georgetown is booming.