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As previewed last week, GM has performed his annual census of stores and restaurants around Georgetown and is ready to present the State of Georgetown 2016:

Before going further, GM should insert his typical caveat. First, it’s important to know that it’s more of an art than a science. The term “shop” as used here refers to just about all commercial establishments: retail stores, restaurants, salons, gyms, etc. GM doesn’t count pure office space. The rule of thumb GM uses is if you can walk in without an appointment, it’s a shop. But again, sometimes it’s a close call. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

GM also has no capability to measure square footage or annual sales, etc. Check out the BID’s annual report for that sort of detail. This is more a pure head count.

That said, here we go:

Overall Picture

This year GM counted 498 shops in Georgetown. That’s a tick down from last year’s 506, but that represents only a drop of 1.6%. And some of that is just noise from GM sometimes finding shops he missed the previous count (or realizing he may have over-counted the previous year). The numbers of pure closings and openings is this:

• Closings – 25
• Openings – 23
• Moves within Georgetown – 3

And, as mentioned on Friday, this year’s census comes only 10 months after last year’s tardy census. So it’s a slightly shorter review period.

These numbers would represent a fairly typical year for Georgetown. We add some, we lose some, but it’s mostly horizontal. At least a handful of these closings are for spaces that have already been “claimed” by incoming businesses. Next year they’ll be openings. Continue reading →

Photo by Andrew Griffith.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• What you can do with a unique canal-side home.
• San Fran-based pop-up in the space previously occupied by Uggs.

3200 block of Volta Pl.

Sure you might want to read a Georgetown Metropolitan article right now, but GM thinks you ought spend that time reading a different article instead. The New York Times published a moving article yesterday about Georgetown University’s effort to track the descendants of 272 slaves that the school sold for financial reasons in 1838. Just read it.

Photo by Mike Procario.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• You can’t buy the Hope Diamond, but you can buy another of Evalyn Walsh McLean’s properties.
• $5000 a month goes a lot less far in Georgetown than other places.

3000 block of M St.

GM finally got around to his annual survey of the stores of Georgetown last weekend, and he’s compiling the results. But just as a preview, he’ll give you the totals for closings and openings.

Last year GM did the survey in late June, so this year’s totals reflect a shorter 10 month time frame. That said, here’s the preliminary results:

Closings

There were 25 closings over the past 10 months. That’s significantly fewer than we saw for last year’s report (51). If we normalize both years to 12 months, we’d have 30 closings for this past year and 41 closings for the year before. So we’re definitely losing stores at a much slower rate than we did last year. But it’s about the same that we saw in 2014 (33). Continue reading →

Photo by Andrew Griffith.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Don’t expect the Circulator expansion up to the Cathedral any time soon.
• Don’t worry that they didn’t pick up your trash this morning. Trash pickup was shifted to tomorrow due to Emancipation Day.

3200 block of N St.