The Georgetown Metropolitan

Photo by Butch.

Good morning Georgetown, and happy new year! Here’s some of the news GM missed over the holidays:

• J. Paul’s is now closed. Sadly the beautiful huge bar has already been removed, so any future restaurant there won’t have it.
• The BID lost its transportation director, Will Handsfield, who is taking a job with the city running the bicycle program. He will leave big shoes to fill.
• Patagonia has moved to M St. The future of the old location on Wisconsin Ave. hasn’t been announced yet.
• The Wawa opened.
• Anything else?

GM’s knocking off for the holidays. Have a merry happy! And see you in 2019!

3200 block of M St.

Exactly ten years ago today, the modern Georgetown Metropolitan was born. And 6,460 posts later, it churns on. And the nearly 7,000 comments received suggests it has reached an audience, for good or ill.

GM started the Georgetown Metropolitan as an outlet for all the information he found himself gathering, either simply from walking around or from digging into issues that interested him. And one of the central goals of the website was to present the radical notion that Georgetown was a neighborhood of more than chain stores or filthy rich doyennes. That is was not just the loudest nimby voices, nor the most rote clichés. And while surely he hasn’t lived up to that fully, he has made his best stab at it.

Fatherhood and the simple ever increasing complication of daily life has meant fewer longform articles or coverage of late ANC meetings. But GM hopes that he has continued to provide a service to the neighborhood. It has been a project of love, love for this beautiful neighborhood, its fascinating inhabitants, and the community we build.

GM can’t guarantee another ten years. But he honestly thought fatherhood was going to end his ability to continue, and yet it didn’t. So who knows?

Thank you for reading.

Photo by Mike Maguire.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• The pro-gondola coalition.
• The Peabody Room now has a stained glass window from the Peck Memorial Presbyterian Chapel that once stood at Pennsylvania and M.

Tudor Place

This week GM is celebrating his tenth anniversary by revisiting some of the bigger stories he covered over that time. And today brings us to, well, today. Here are some of the bigger stories of the last several years:

The End of the Liquor License Moratorium

By the time it came to an end, the liquor license moratorium was getting ridiculous. Originally adopted in 1989 to limit the seemingly endless growth of rowdy bars, the moratorium became simply a way to make existing liquor licenses worth more than they ought to have been. When the city released licenses it created a gold rush, where parties claimed the licenses with no concrete plans to actually open a restaurant.

The idea to actually end the moratorium came from the BID in 2015. Initially the idea was met with some skepticism from the community groups. But after some open and frank discussions, common ground was found. As GM wrote in 2016:

Did the moratorium end Georgetown’s partying ways? Certainly not immediately. But it arguably put a ceiling on its growth. And as neighborhoods across the city grew into nightlife destinations of their own, much of the energy was drained from the Georgetown nightlife scene. And the moratorium was not only no longer necessary, it was detrimental.

So egged on by the BID, neighborhood leaders came back together last year and agreed that the moratorium needed to go. After reaching an agreement on how to proceed, the groups requested that the ABC Board not extend the moratorium this year.

Continue reading →

Photo by Bekah Richards.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Chez Billy Sud named one of the country’s top 100 restaurants.
• Do you recognize this package thief?

Washington Harbour

This week, GM is celebrating his tenth anniversary by going through some of the notable stories he covered over the years. Today he is strolling through the middle years, from 2013 to 2015.

Georgetown 2028

One of the bigger projects from this period was the BID-driven Georgetown 2028 plan. This was a report filled with recommendations for what changes Georgetown could make to best position itself to continue to be a thriving neighborhood in 2028. And while it was led by the BID, the committees guiding it had residents as well as business owners (GM served on the steering committee).

The final report had recommendations covering topics as wide as transportation, street furniture, the canal and the neighborhood’s gateways. But perhaps the most eye-catching parts of the report called for a Metro stop in Georgetown, and, until then, a gondola. Both those ideas are still but dreams, however the push for the gondolas continues.

The report also led to the creation of Georgetown Heritage, the non-profit established to restore the canal. They are responsible for the massive project to rebuild the third lock, which was in danger of completely collapsing. With its completion, the canal boat will be able to return for tourist rides. Continue reading →