The Georgetown Metropolitan

The official fiscal year 2016 D.C. budget was approved yesterday, and two Georgetown projects received significant financial support: Hyde-Addison School and the proposed Georgetown gondola.

The Hyde expansion has been in planning for over five years. And many proposed start dates have come and gone. But having finally obtained approval from the Old Georgetown Board earlier this year, the project was finally and truly set to begin in June 2016 (if not June 2015). But Mayor Bowser proposed to push the start date back to 2017. Thanks to successful community support and the intervention of Councilmember Jack Evans, Hyde’s gym project was restored to the start date that it had before Mayor Bowser cut deeply into the school reconstruction budget. Continue reading →

Photo by Citron Smurf.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Mayor Bowser speaks to CAG.
• Smalest condo in DC is in Georgetown, and could be yours.

3100 block of P St.

Next Friday, the Friends of Volta Park is holding its annual spring cocktail party and auction. You should go! It’s fun and for a great cause, namely keeping the beautiful park that so many of us use beautiful.

And if you need more reasons, check this out: one of the items now up for bid is a 24 hour test drive of the highly rated Tesla Model S.

Now, GM’s not saying you should spend most of those 24 hours flooring the car in the “Insane Mode”, but he’s not not telling you to do it:

This could be you!

Photo by Alan Kotok.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Mayor Bowser attending the CAG meeting tonight.
• Speaking of the Mayor, she proposed a budget item to help to fund the gondola study.

Georgetown Waterfront Park

The Alexander Memorial Baptist church complex on N St. is currently being converted into condos and a single family residence.

And above is a photo of what the interior looks like right now as shared by the project’s realtor. Makes you wonder what the sanctuary could have been made into if the plans for its conversion to a single family use had gone through. Continue reading →

Photo by Jason Vines.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Nice profile of the pasta chef the works in Filomena’s window.
• Cat cafe opening in June.

Key Bridge

The Georgetown liquor license moratorium is broken and we’ll continue to get mediocre bars and restaurants, or none at all, until we fix it.

Even a cursory review of the recent liquor license history in Georgetown supports this conclusion:

In 2012, after business and community leaders reached an agreement, the city reauthorized the liquor license moratorium but added an additional seven licenses to the cap. This was done in recognition that seven licenses had “left” Georgetown since the moratorium began and thus the cap was even lower than when the moratorium was enacted. It was also done with the express hope that “new blood” would be good for the restaurant scene, which most agreed had grown stale.

What happened to these new licenses? Pretty much nothing. Six went to restaurants that have either since closed or never opened in the first place. The only license that remains in use is the license to Paul Bakery, which was already open before it acquired the license.

In 2014, ABRA released four additional licenses that had been turned in. What happened to those? So far, again, pretty much nothing. None of the planned restaurants have opened. For instance, there was supposed to be a brick oven pizza restaurant at 1419 Wisconsin Ave. Amazon Andes left months ago, there’s a for rent sign and no sign of any restaurant construction.

And yesterday ABRA announced four more licenses were now going to be available. The BID cheered this news, writing:

In the past year several critically acclaimed concepts opened their doors in Georgetown, including Fiola Mare (led by James Beard award winner Fabio Trabocchi), Chez Billy Sud (from restauranteurs Eric and Ian Hilton), and a revamped Grill Room (led by James Beard award winner Frank Ruta). These debuts drew Washington Post editor Tom Siestma’s conclusion that restaurant happenings in the neighborhood are “looking skyward.”

Those three restaurants have definitely attracted a lot of attention and changed many people’s opinion of whether Georgetown is still a place for fine dining. Continue reading →