State of Georgetown 2025

I finally got around to crunching the numbers from my latest street survey and can now present the State fo Georgetown 2025:

I’ve been doing this survey since I started this website in 2008, and so the accumulated data reflects the ebbs and flows of the Georgetown retail community. And the overall message from this year is that Georgetown is still soaring out from the Covid depths.

But before I get to the numbers, I need to issue my typical disclaimer: First, it’s important to know that my counting is more of an art than a science. The term “establishments” or “store” as used here refers to just about all commercial establishments serving the general public: retail stores, restaurants, salons, gyms, etc. I don’t count pure office space. The rule of thumb I use is if you can walk in without an appointment, I count it. But again, sometimes it’s a close call (for instance, I count realtors but not lawyers). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Overall Picture

The last time I did this survey (about 20 months ago) the story was one of a neighborhood rebounding well from Covd. And the story of this survey is that that rebound has reached escape velocity. To put numbers to that: right before Covid, I counted 509 stores in Georgetown. While that’s still down from an overall peak I counted before the mall closed, it’s still on the higher end for the neighborhood. in 2021 I counted 451 stores, an 11% drop. By 2023, though, the numbers were already back up to 464. This year the numbers have continued to climb, up to 480. That’s still down from 2019, but it’s nearly there.

I measured 89 openings and 73 closures. While that seems a jump over the last measure (62 openings and 46 closures) I was very overdue for the survey. So as a result I was measuring a longer time period. If I calculate the number of openings and closings per month the picture is a bit clearer:

The opening rate per month (the blue line) jumped from about 2.25 coming out of Covid to over 4 in 2023. It’s stayed roughly there. The closure rate per month (the red line) obviously jumped due to Covid but has settled to a little above 3 per month. In other words, since 2021 there are an average of four stores opening in Georgetown a month with three stores closing. That’s a healthy positive surplus.

Independents vs. Chains

One of the main reasons I started conducting this count was to push back against the widely held perception that Georgetown is only mall chain stores. While it may sometimes feel that way (depending on what block you’re on), as a matter of pure head count, Georgetown has always had a clear majority of independent establishments.

(Just for clarity: I don’t have a hard and fast rule for whether something is “independent”. Basically I ask: is it based in DC? Does it have fewer than five locations? But even a “no” to either might still get an independent tag. It’s a gut thing.)

I counted 303 independent shops in Georgetown. That’s essentially the same I’ve counted over the last handful surveys. What that means is that the growth in stores has come almost exclusively from chains. I counted 158 chains in 2023. Now it’s 177. But that also means that independents still dominate in terms of pure numbers, with 63% of the total.

Store Variety

The variety of establishments has remained fairly stable over the years. The largest category remains restaurants, with clothing stores a close second, and salons comfortably back at third:

Last time I noted that I created a “cannabis” category for the first time and hoped it would be a smaller number the next time I counted it. In 2023 I counted 15 such shops. This time I counted 9. Progress!