The Georgetown Metropolitan

As previewed Monday, GM has finally performed his annual census of Georgetown’s shops and restaurants and is ready to present his results.

Before we get to that, a couple of caveats first. When GM uses the word “store”, he is including all retail stores and restaurants, as well as just about any commercial operation that accepts walk-ins. So he includes realtors, but not lawyers. A children’s arts classroom but not the elementary schools. It’s not a scientific distinction, but GM had to draw the line somewhere.

With that said, to the numbers!

Overall

There are an overall 496 shops in Georgetown as of February 2013. This continues a steady decline since 2011 when GM counted 527 shops and last year when he tallied 510. Part of this decline can surely be attributed to the recession and anemic recovery, but the bulk of the reduction can be attributed to the mall closing. In 2011 there were nearly 100 shops in the mall, now there is only the Washington Sports Club. In fact, if you set the mall aside completely, Georgetown has been adding more stores than it’s lost over the last couple years.

Looking just at the openings and closing, this dynamic plays out. Overall there were 56 closings and 43 openings. But if you take out the mall from consideration, there were only 43 closings and still 43 openings. Not gangbusters, but enough. (Although, for what it’s worth, there were only 40 non-mall closures in 2011.)

The 43 openings matches exactly the number of openings in 2011. And that is higher than the 2010 number: 22.

On a more troubling note, the vacancy rate increased a good deal last year, even after ignoring the mall. There were 44 non-mall vacancies in 2011, there are 60 right now. It’s worth noting, however, that a bunch of these vacant spaces already have future tenants in place, but most don’t.

Independent vs. Chain

Independent shops still make up the majority of shops in Georgetown (of course, they probably don’t make up the majority floor space, but GM can’t measure that). There are 341 independent shops in Georgetown, or 68.8% of the total. That’s a small tick down from last year when the percentage was 70%. Not to sound like a broken record, but that drop can mostly be attributed to the mall closing.

Another contributor to the declining independent shop numbers is the fact that of the new stores, more were chains than independents. Specifically, 55% of the stores that opened last year were chain stores. In 2011 that number was 42%. In other words, not only are independent shops not opening up enough to replenish their current numbers, they aren’t opening enough to remain the majority. Continue reading →

Every year GM performs a census of sorts of all the stores and restaurants in Georgetown. It was originally inspired as a way to rebut the accusation that Georgetown is mostly full of chain stores (it isn’t). But GM has continued to build his database each year, adding stores he missed the previous year.

GM has performed his review for 2013. However, he still has to do some error-checking and other edits before diving in with a full blown review of the state of Georgetown.

That said, today he’s offering a quick preview of the data: what opened and what closed?

Between the 2012 survey (which was done in February 2012) and this year’s survey (which was done last weekend) there were 56 store closings, 43 store openings, and 7 stores moving locations within Georgetown.

That’s a drop in closings from last year’s (probably record) high of 79 closings. Last year’s number was mostly so high because the mall was getting cleared out. This year’s number is also inflated a bit by the 13 mall stores that were still around last year. Oddly, in 2012 there were also 43 openings, just like this year. Continue reading →