The Georgetown Metropolitan

Please keep an eye out for a lost cat! The cat, named Luna, disappeared from around 33rd and Dent on February 19th around 5 pm. She is a beautiful all black cat. If you see her contact her owner at 202-906-0265.

While she’s been gone over a week now, there’s still hope! A foster cat of ours got out in December and went missing for over two weeks. He was finally found up a tree a couple blocks away, despite the temperature having dipped well below freezing several nights. With the help of some nimble tree crews, we were able to get get back home (and he’s still available for adoption!). So keep your fingers crossed for Luna and keep your eyes peeled!

As promised, here is the agenda for the ANC meeting next Monday night at 6:30 pm. As I mentioned Monday, CM Pinto will be there for a presentation and Q&A funding. If you have any questions, please submit them to me at 2e02@anc.dc.gov.

Also on the agenda will be the Volta Park renovations. These plans are going before the Old Georgetown Board, so this is another opportunity for the public to get an update on the project, which has been quite delayed.

Here is the agenda!

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Martin’s closes for renovations.
• Speaking of closures, I’m hearing reports that the J. Crew might be closing.

With winter’s chill beginning to relent, spring’s peak is right around the corner. Here is my annual list of highlights for the season:

The Georgetown House Tour

First of the two grand dame tours, the Georgetown house tour will be held this year on April 20th (it’s 91st year!) It is held every year to benefit St. John’s Episcopal church. As the title states, this tour gives you a chance to walk through 8-10 of Georgetown’s nicest homes. The patrons party is always the place to hobnob with the nobbiest hobs.

The Georgetown Garden Tour

Of the two tours, the Garden Tour is probably my favorite. Like the house tour, you get a chance to look behind the gates of 8 or so homes, but I just think there’s something more interesting about gardens than interiors. This year the Garden Tour will occur on May 11th. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Georgetown Garden Club, which sponsors the tour. So help them celebrate!

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Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Landmark Prospect House to hit market.
• Helpful guide for a Georgetown wedding.

The ANC will be meeting for our March edition next Monday at 6:30 pm, back at Visitation.

The draft agenda is not ready yet, but I wanted to get out the word that Councilmember Brooke Pinto will be attending. Following her presentation she will participate in a Q&A session. While the questions from the ANC will come first, we want to open the floor to the public as well.

To that end, if you have a question for Brooke, please email myself (2e02@anc.dc.gov) and Gwen Lohse (2306@anc.dc.gov) by Thursday. In the interest of time, we are going to try to condense the questions where possible.

Additionally, for my part I will be asking the city to present its updated plans for the Volta Park renovation. These plans are before the Old Georgetown Board in March, so this will be one of the last opportunities to weigh in if you have any strong thoughts.

I will circulate the draft agenda once we pull it together.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• New exhibit at Tudor Place highlights the stories of the enslaved residents.
• Excellent self-guided tour of Mt. Zion Cemetery.

Dramatically altered plans have been put forward for the development of several parcels along Wisconsin Ave. in upper Georgetown. Although the site had previously received approval to move ahead with a single apartment building with 40 units, the new plans would call for the construction of nine connected townhouses instead.

As I reported last week, Sherwin Williams is moving out of this lot up to Glover Park. I guessed that this might mean the plan for constructing the apartment building would move forward finally (after having been approved a while ago):

But a filing with the Old Georgetown Board indicates a different direction altogether. As mentioned above, the new plans call for nine rowhouses, which will be connected by a common courtyard. The residences will sit on top of 3,400 sqf of retail along Wisconsin Ave.

The front of the homes will be oriented inwardly to a inner courtyard, which you can see in these drawings. The residents would access their homes from a common entrance on St. that leads to the elevated common courtyard:

The application cites several local examples in Georgetown of precedents for this style (and some international examples too). One specific example it cites is Pomander Walk, in that it is a grouping of a little fewer than a dozen rowhouses faces a narrow common entryway. Coincidentally an even more on point example is another Pomander Walk: Pomander Walk, New York, NY. This fairly anachronistic development in Manhattan that was built in the 1920s has the same design as the Georgetown proposal with a group of small rowhouses built around a common, elevated courtyard.

(It’s not really a huge coincidence that two Pomander Walk developments are similar in design. They’re both named after an early 20th century play about a small street in London built in the same style.)

It’s a bit of a shame that the original apartment building is no longer being proposed. As mentioned above, that would have resulted in 40 units (with 48,000 sqf for residences and 8,000 sqf for retail). The new plans only result in 9 units with about 29,600 sqf for residences and 3,400 sqf for retail. That will likely result in fewer residents moving into a stretch of Georgetown that could use a lot more foot traffic.

But on the flip side, it will result in units averaging more like 3,200 sqf instead of about 1,200 sqf. Clearly the developer thinks that is in more demand. In either event, I’m eager to see something here that contributes more to the neighborhood than a parking lot and a couple of (now) empty storefronts.

A new restaurant appears set to replace the short-lived Sticx restaurant at 1728 Wisconsin Ave. According to an Old Georgetown Board application, the restaurant will be called Han Palace. It will be the third location for the Chinese restaurant. The website indicates it will have a soft open on Feb. 24th.

No word yet on whether they will use the upstairs wine-bar space. Sticx–which had the bad timing of opening right before Covid–had amusingly called this upstairs space Stonz (get it? sticks and stones?). It’s also unclear–with Shanghai Lounge so close–if there’s demand for two Chinese restaurants literally feet from one another. Time will tell.

In either event, it’s great to see this space come back to life after being vacant for so long. Before Sticx opened in 2020, the building had been empty since 2015 when P.O. Boxes Etc. moved out. Lets hope this unlucky run has come to an end.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• New chef at L’Avante Garde.
• Female students navigate a male-dominated student senate.