The Georgetown Metropolitan

3000 block of N St.

It was only April when the long awaited After Peacock Room finally opened on P St. near 27th. Now there’s a sign in the door saying the restaurant is closing for most of the summer in order to “restructure” the kitchen and outdoor patio. The upside is that the restaurant will offer a full dinner menu when it reopens.

Obviously this doesn’t bode extremely well for the establishment. The reviews have been fairly good so far, so it’s not clear why the restructuring is needed. Opening a restaurant this deep into the neighborhood obviously carries risks and zero foot traffic, but that’s all the more reason more time is necessary for it to catch on.

Let’s hope it all works out well for the restaurant.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• A heartfelt tribute to Ed Lara, the owner of Georgetown Hairstyling who died suddenly last week.
• The Eastbanc Verizon building (aka 1055 High) is already sold out.

Volta Park

GM has learned that Hyde-Addison elementary has hired a new principal to replace Dana Nerenberg, who is resigning this year in order to move to Portland. The new principal will be Elizabeth Namba who is currently a vice-principal at Alexandria’s Mount Vernon Community School.

From her bio on Alexandria’s school’s website:

Ms. Namba will be entering into her third year at Mount Vernon and her second year as assistant principal. Ms. Namba is originally from Connecticut and has worked at schools in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Moscow, Russia, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and New Delhi, India. This year she is very excited to be leading curriculum and instruction at Mount Vernon Community School.

How’d she end up getting taped to the wall like that, you ask? It’s from an event at her school several years ago when students were being encouraged to walk or bike to school and thus not “get stuck” in the pick-up lane. In that spirit, students were encouraged to bring duct tape to school in order to tape Namba to the wall. Cute stunt, but she had GM at “from Connecticut” and “encourage kids to walk or bike”. Continue reading →

Photo by Michael Cisneros.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Is $1695 a deal for a 1BD in Georgetown?
• The Q&A Cafe will be all about getting drunk and talking sports this Thursday.

1200 block of 30th St.

Last Friday, the Deputy Mayor of Education released a revised proposal to overhaul the District’s school zones and feeder patterns. The first version of the proposal was released in April, and drew immediate negative responses regarding the inclusion of “choice sets”, which would remove the guarantee that children could attend their local school. The new proposal removes that concept, and makes a few adjustments to the map changes earlier released.

The concept behind “choice sets” was this: you’re not guaranteed a spot at your local school. You are assigned to one of three nearby schools. You could express a preference for one over the others, but assignment was to be decided by lottery. Not surprisingly this was strongly disliked in neighborhoods with solid schools due to the possibility that it would bar kids from attending the sought after neighborhood school.

To be fair, only one of the three scenarios originally proposed contained choice sets for elementary school, but it became the immediate focus, with both major mayoral candidates rejecting it. (Actually, Bowser initially issued a release praising the choice sets as a good idea, but she quickly backtracked once she saw the furor.)

The new proposal scotches choice sets entirely. It would maintain the traditional system of a guaranteed spot at a designated sequence of elementary, middle, and high schools. Thus Georgetowners would retain rights to attend Hyde, Hardy, and Wilson.

The original proposal also called for Burleith, Foxhall Village, and parts of east Palisades to be rezoned into Hyde. This drew protests from Burleith (as GM covered here). The revised proposal, however, only tweaks the original proposal slightly by removing the Palisades portion from the move. So under the new proposal, Burleith and Foxhall Village (the part east of Foxhall) would still be rezoned into Hyde.

Will any of this come to fruition? Who knows? Catania and Bowser both have stated that should they win that they’ll scrap the plans and start from scratch. GM, however, somewhat doubts that the winner will really do this. It would be a waste of a huge amount of time and energy. Moreover, these are tough decisions that nonetheless have to be made. It would be politically smart for the new mayor to enact the final proposal and shift the political heat to the outgoing Mayor Gray rather than start from scratch and be responsible for all of it.

Photo by Joe Newman.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• $11 million mansion for sale on Prospect.
• Oh by the way, last week GM mentioned that Eno Wine Bar had World Cup specials, but didn’t think that they were actually showing the games. Turns out they brought in tvs to show the games.

Georgetown Waterfront