Three Years Goes Fast
As GM gets older, he tends to forget when his birthday comes up. Well the same can be said for the Georgetown Metropolitan. It turned three years old last Tuesday.
On December 13, 2008, the first post of the Georgetown Metropolitan was published. Three years and 2,130 posts later, and it’s finally out of its terrible twos.
GM takes these anniversaries as an opportunity to look back at the most popular posts of the prior year. So without further ado:
- Number 5: Paul Bakery Finally Opening. Turns out GM misread the press release, and the restaurant didn’t open for about six more months. Oh well…
- Number 4: All You Need to Know About the Georgetown Metro Stop. GM walked through the history of the Metro and Georgetown and why it could finally come someday.
- Number 3: Water Ballon Fight Planned for the Waterfront. There’s no need to explain why this was popular: it had the phrase “water balloon fight”.
- Number 2: The Great Georgetown Flood of 2011. GM didn’t really have a ton to add to this story, but sometimes it pays to have a catchy title.
- Number 1: Barnes and Noble Closing. It seems like every year that the most popular post is one of the articles GM writes in a hurry when other article ideas fall through. That’s what happened when GM broke this sad news. The store is closing awfully soon, so better stop by for your last chance to linger in this third place.
Filed under Events
The Morning Metropolitan
Photo by Vpickering.
Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:
- The Georgetowniest home in Georgetown?
- Terrible, terrible news from the Key Bridge.
Filed under The Morning Metropolitan
What To Look Forward To in 2012
It’s that time of year when we start talking about what happened for the last twelve months and what we expect to happen in the next twelve months. GM might get around the former, but today he’s talking about the latter.
So what sort of projects around Georgetown can we expect to come online in 2012? Here’s GM’s guesses:
EastBanc Projects
EastBanc has a lot of projects on the drawing board. Some rather ambitious, others less so. On the ambitious side, we have the Exxon condos and the Verizon parking lot condos. The Exxon project has run into design approval delays. The most GM expects to happen in 2012 is that a design is finally approved and maybe, maybe towards the end of the year the gas station will close and preliminary work will begin.
The Verizon parking lot, on the other hand, has already received design approval, so GM expects to see some visible progress on that project by the summer. By December 2012, GM expects to see some significant progress on this project.
On the lighter side, there is the post office project. This project began life as an ambitious plan to construct a dozen or so townhouses with a bunch of condos. It got scaled down and converted into an office project. Then it got scaled further down and converted back into a residential project. Finally it was determined that the part of the building that EastBanc planned to demolish was actually historical, so the project got even more scaled back and returned to an office project. The final product includes minimal exterior changes. It has been approved. Barring delays over the disposition of the property from the USPS to EastBanc, it should see significant progress (if not complete progress) in 2012.
Finally, the wildcard is EastBanc’s recently revealed plans to create a mini-Cady’s Alley behind the Coach store. Neighbors are lining up against it, but EastBanc may have some by-right development rights, and they still have plenty of good will from the original Cady’s Alley. GM’s not sure where it will be by the end of 2012, but he predicts we’ll be talking about it a lot regardless.
The Mall
This really is the elephant in the Georgetown retail room. We’ve seen a steady stream of evictions as Vornado creates a blank slate in preparation for bringing in new tenants. GM understands that the overall approach of Vornado includes a “de-malling” of the mall. In other words, a removal of the interior spaces of the mall. The end result would be single store spaces running from M back to the canal. It’s an intriguing idea (albeit one that is inherently incompatible with the small shops that currently inhabit, or rather recently inhabited, the pre-de-malled mall). Continue reading
Filed under Development
The Morning Metropolitan
Photo by Ehpien.
Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:
- The urtext on the Georgetown boathouse issue.
- Would stockades work better?
Filed under The Morning Metropolitan
M St. Cycletrack Will Extend to Georgetown
Photo by Ajfroggie.
Last week, DDOT presented to the Bicycle Advisory Committee its map of bike lanes that it expects to construct in 2012. In the map released by the BAC, it showed the highly anticipated M St. bicycle track (it’s a two way, separated bike lane that looks like the lanes on 15th st., shown above). But the version released on Monday showed the lane not going west of New Hampshire Ave. in the West End.
GM followed up with DDOT to ask why the lane won’t make it all the way to Georgetown. Turns out the map was wrong; the bicycle track will extend right up to Pennsylvania Ave.
Filed under Transportation
The Morning Metropolitan
Photo by Daquella Manera.
Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:
- Some reports from the NPS boathouse meeting.
- One would have to guess that the off-roading took place outside of Georgetown.
Filed under The Morning Metropolitan
The Georgetown Metropolitan 
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