Category Archives: Retail

January 19, 2011 · 10:00 am

Petco Repeating CVS’s Corrections

In November, GM lamented that Petco’s new Unleashed store underneath the Safeway was making a lot of the same mistakes that CVS used to make in terms of blocking up the street windows. Well, not that GM thinks he had anything to do with it, but Petco has recently taken down the walls blocking the window, as you can see above.

This follows CVS’s own move last spring to open up the view into their Georgetown stores. These moves dramatically improve the feel of the sidewalk. Also, GM speculates that it makes it a lot more likely that people will come in off the street when they can actually see into the store from the outside.

So huzzah to Petco for seeing the light.

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December 17, 2010 · 10:00 am

Terrible Twos: The Most Popular Article

This week in celebration of the Georgetown Metropolitan’s second anniversary, GM is counting down the five most popular articles from last year.

Today GM looks at the single most popular article from the last year: By Far the Most Expensive Thing at Safeway.

Like yesterday’s entry, this article came about simply because GM saw something funny and took a photo of it. Which goes to show that there’s no direct connection between the amount of effort it takes to write something and how popular it is. Continue reading →

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December 10, 2010 · 10:00 am

City Sports To Open Tuesday

Just in time to supply your New Year’s resolutions, City Sports will be opening its new Georgetown location next Tuesday. It will be located at 3338 M St (which you may remember as an illegal billboard).

With the addition of the Boston-based City Sports, the west end of Georgetown is getting saturated with sporting goods stores. There’s Lululemon, The Georgetown Running Co., and now this. Continue reading →

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December 7, 2010 · 10:00 am

Thoughts From A Georgetown Shopkeeper

Today GM is turning the mic over to another guest writer: Georgetown’s newest blogger Keith Lipert.

The Holidays are a wonderful time of the year. Our village community is at its best in so many ways. The streets look so pretty with lights and garlands. However the reality for the small shopkeepers of Georgetown is much more complicated. The past decade saw rents increase sizably and it appears that the economic turn down has not noticeably affected rents. This means the rent for retailers is a much higher proportion of sales than the past few years.

On the positive side, there are now a number of national retailers that have opened new stores here which will hopefully attract more foot traffic. The drawback is that it dilutes the independent retail look of Georgetown. Moreover, national groups do not “invest” in the local community in the same way that the independents do. The independents give disproportionately to the local charities as we tend to live and spend here.

Another very encouraging sign is the vibrant cooperation between the Citizens Association of Georgetown (CAG), the Georgetown Business Association (GBA), and the Georgetown Business Improvement District (BID). The community’s adoption and support for the Taste of Georgetown, Fashion Night Out, and Merriment is wonderful!  Continue reading →

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November 15, 2010 · 10:00 am

Petco Repeating CVS’s Old Mistakes

Last spring, The two CVSs in Georgetown under went minor interior redesigns that enabled the stores to open up the view into the store from the windows. This improved the streetscape on the stores’ blocks significantly and fixed a problem common with many CVS stores.

Way up on Wisconsin underneath the Safeway, the pet-supply chain Petco is making the same mistake that CVS finally corrected. The store is actually called Unleashed and is the chain’s smaller version. The store opened up last weekend. Continue reading →

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October 21, 2010 · 10:00 am

Three New Stores Open Up

As GM was biking up Wisconsin checking out the new CaBi stations, he noticed a trio of new stores that have rather suddenly swept in to Georgetown.

Muncheez Mania

The first is the somewhat unfortunately named Muncheez Mania at 1071 Wisconsin Ave. It advertises itself as a “hip and funky restaurant…offer[ing] fresh, homemade fare at a reasonable price in a lively, fast-casual dining environment.” DCist had this to say:

The main attraction is the hand-stretched bread called saj — a thin flatbread not unlike a pita, but stretched thinner and cooked on a saj (which looks like an upside down wok). The texture ends up being close to naan, but with the thinness of the pancakes you receive with Peking duck. The same dough is stretched less and baked in the oven for sandwiches and wraps.

Sounds tasty. And by staying open until 4:00 AM, this will likely be a popular post nightlife spot.

Interesting tidbit:

This is the work of Capital Restaurant Concepts, the people behind Paul Bakery, which should be opening up across the street later this year. It’s funny to think how this “hip and funky” and kinda tacky restaurant will be facing the (likely) staid and conservative Paul Bakery, yet have the same corporate parent.

And for what it’s worth, GM’s fairly certain that that sideways facing blade sign wasn’t approved by the OGB (or at least it shouldn’t have been). Continue reading →

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October 12, 2010 · 10:00 am

Some Updates to “Aren’t They Building…”

Up above GM has a link to “Aren’t They Building…” where he lists various projects around Georgetown and when those projects might come to fruition.

GM’s got to update the list, here’s what’s new:

UGGs Store: Open

Serendipity3: Still no word around the rumor mill when it’ll open, but GM’s guess of summer 2010 was clearly off.

Madewell: Still no firm date, but again GM guessed wrong about a summer opening. Continue reading →

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June 28, 2010 · 10:00 am

So Was is it Worth the Wait?

So here it is, after all that hullabaloo, the Apple Store is finally open. Now that the crowds have died down a bit, we can go in and judge how it all came together and compare the results back to plans.

First the exterior:

Here’s the exterior. As demanded by the Old Georgetown Board, the exterior seems to melt in with the Victorian commercial buildings around it. If you didn’t know it was built in 2010, you’d be excused for thinking it was built in the 1880s. Continue reading →

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June 16, 2010 · 10:00 am

CVS Brings Transparency to Georgetown

A couple weeks ago, Phillip Kennicott wrote a nice piece in the Washington Post about the death of the shop window in Washington. The thrust of the piece was that more and more, stores are blocking up their front windows in order to increase their shelf-space.

Around town, nobody seems to be more of a purveyor of these blocked windows than CVS. And so it’s with surprise that GM writes that CVS has recently made huge changes to the front of their two Georgetown stores which have opened up their respective shop windows.

Above is a photo of the M St. CVS. You can see that with the introduction of the self-check out kiosks, the store has removed the front counter. This enabled them to clear out the whole front window. Just compare it to what it used to look like:

A lot better don’t you think? (Although turning it back into the Biograph would be an even better step). Continue reading →

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June 15, 2010 · 10:00 am

Apple Store Opens This Friday

As you may have heard, the Apple Store is finally opening this Friday. Specifically, they’re opening at 5:00 pm:

Continue reading →

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