The Georgetown Metropolitan

Photo by Ehpien.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Capital One signage now going up on old Nathans. Blech.
• The fantastic story behind one of the piano players at the Georgetown Piano Bar.

3200 block of P St.

The Dean and Deluca is now officially dead. The end of a 27 year era. But what would you like to see replace it?

As GM reported, there is a federal law mandating that the building be used as a market. But that could be lots of different concepts. Here are a couple possible models that could likely satisfy that mandate:

Photo of Balducci’s in NYC by Riccoboni6.

Another High End Grocery Store

This would probably make a lot of people happy. There probably isn’t any grocer out there that replicates the high-boogie offerings of Dean and Deluca (or at least the Dean and Deluca of yesteryear). But there are a handful that would aim for the same experience within the same smaller footprint that the building offers (versus, for instance, a typical Whole Foods). Balducci’s and Wagshall’s are two regional grocers that could probably fit that bill. There are other grocers not based in DC that also deliver a market along these lines. Citerella in the New York area would be a great candidate, but there are many more just like it.

Photo of Eastern Market by Zach Stern.

Eastern Market-Style Market

Rather than having a single grocer using the space, the building could return to its roots as one of the constellation of markets that once dotted DC, including the still operating Eastern Market. Under this model, the building space is chopped up into booths with a vendor taking each space. Continue reading →

Photo by M.V. Jantzen.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Although they said they’d stay open till August 1st, the Dean and Deluca closed permanently on Friday.
• In other restaurant news, Moby Dick’s is supposedly closed for renovations (after just having done renovations a few years ago) but a disturbing video of rats running loose on the inside might complicate those plans.

1300 block of Wisconsin Ave.

Photo by M.V. Jantzen.

Water, water everywhere, and not a place to take a dip? That’s the attitude most people have taken to the idea of swimming in the Potomac river by Georgetown. But if an ambitious effort is successful, Georgetown will be ground zero for river swimming in DC.

WAMU wrote this week on steps the city and others are taking to make the Potomac and the Anacostia rivers swimmable. Specifically:

In 1971, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency pressured city lawmakers to ban swimming. They passed a law making swimming or wading in the Potomac, Anacostia or Rock Creek punishable by a $300 fine or 10 days in jail.

Fast forward almost 50 years: Billions of dollars have been spent cleaning up the rivers, and some environmentalists and swimmers say it’s time to get back into the water. City leaders are talking about relaxing — if not lifting entirely — the decades-old swim ban, and discussing where swim platforms or beaches could be located.

The article concludes optimistically that within five years it may be safe and legal to swim in one or both of the rivers. This would largely be due to massive projects of DC Water to stop raw sewage from being dumped into the river.

It seems crazy that even in this day and age such a thing could occur, but it does happen with just about every heavy rain fall. That’s because in DC’s older sewage pipes, stormwater drains (i.e. the drains on the street) run into the same tunnels that take away our sewage. When rains get so heavy that these pipes can’t handle it all at once, the overflow has to go somewhere. Rather than send it back up the storm drains (or our toilets) the overflows are dumped into the area’s waterways. These spots are called combined sewage overflows, or CSOs.

To prevent the pipes from overflowing, DC Water has been building a series of gigantic underground pipes that can act as temporary reservoirs of the water until the Blue Plains treatment facility can work through the backlog. By 2023, authorities hope to be able to divert 98% of sewage overflows from the Anacostia. Additional tunnels in Alexandria and DC will be open by 2025 and 2030, respectively, which will keep similar amounts out of the Potomac. So within 12 years or so, the rivers really ought to be about as pristine as they’re going to get.

But what about swimming now? Continue reading →

Photo by M.V. Jantzen.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• A shop that specializes in DC-made goods is opening a location in Georgetown.
• Indochino is moving into the old Cusp space.

1500 block of 35th St.

Photo by Beyond DC.

The Georgetown Dean and Deluca is closing August 1st. This should come as no surprise to anyone following the chain’s recent troubles. It has recently closed locations across the country. And the Georgetown location has been in a depressing state for a while now, with half empty shelves and out of season items filling the abundant gaps. This will be a loss for the neighborhood.

GM would write a retrospective, but frankly he didn’t shop there that much, and the Washington Post’s Maura Judkis already wrote a fabulous one:

I remember walking through the Georgetown market, in its historic brick building, and looking at all the cheeses and smoked fish and exciting ingredients — not that I even knew what to do with half of them, at the time. I remember marveling: This is where fancy people buy their groceries. I think I bought one of the prepared salads, displayed behind glass in ceramic bowls. For less than $20, Dean & DeLuca made me feel like I could be a fancy person, too.

What GM can do is give you a little context about the building’s possible future.

The market building itself was built in 1865. There had been a market building at that location dating to as early as 1795. Throughout this period, the property was owned by the city of Georgetown. In fact, it’s still publicly owned. When Georgetown was subsumed into the District of Columbia in 1871, the ownership of the market passed to the District. And to this day the property is owned by DC. Continue reading →

Photo by Bill Starrels.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Georgetown real estate: still pricey.
• Dean and Deluca to close August 1st. (more on this later)