The Georgetown Metropolitan

As promised, today GM presents his compiled numbers for his survey of Georgetown. In the course of cleaning up the data, he revised (yet again) some of the preliminary numbers he shared earlier this week. So without further ado, the results:

Well, sorry, some more ado. GM would like to insert his normal caveats here. First, it’s important to know that it’s more of an art than a science. The term “shop” as used here refers to just about all commercial establishments: retail stores, restaurants, salons, gyms, etc. GM doesn’t count pure office space. The rule of thumb GM uses is if you can walk in without an appointment, it’s a shop. But again, sometimes it’s a close call (for instance, he counts realtors but not lawyers). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Overall Picture

GM counted 451 shops this year. That is a sharp drop from the historic numbers. It was 509 when GM counted in 2019 right before Covid. It hasn’t been below 500 since GM counted 498 in 2016. The last time GM counted so few shops was back in 2010 when he counted 443, but that was one of the first couple years GM did the survey and was missing a ton of shops from his count.

There’s always a bit of an error rate. GM missing some shops that opened or closed each time he goes out (sometimes is genuinely hard to tell whether a business is still in business or not!) But that would only account for a handful of shops in either direction. The drop from 2019 to 2022 was 58, or over 11%. This was a genuinely sharp decline.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Nine unexpected summer experiences in Georgetown.
• GU building a lot more student housing…way across town.

Yesterday GM published his initial top level numbers of his retail survey of Georgetown. One of the numbers that really jumped out was the vacancy number.

The total was 169. This was way above the recent tallies of vacancies for the neighborhood. But it occurred to GM that he may be over-counting that number a bit. That’s because over the years as he’s built up his database, he’s included some spaces that formerly contained a retail use but no longer do. This could be as simple as a space being converted to residential or office use (which GM doesn’t count as a retail use). Also, some “vacancies” were spaces like the old Smith and Hawken, which became the second floor of the Brooks Brothers. That should never really have been included as a vacancy. Other spaces were simply lost to time and GM can’t even figure out what address he was even talking about or they were torn down, like La Madeleine.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Georgetown Sweets Tour June 25th!
• Nice write up on the Voices of Zion production.

GM finally got around to performing his census of the Georgetown retail neighborhood. This is an (ostensibly) annual survey where GM walks up and down the streets and counts every store, restaurant, etc. He then tracks how many places closed, how many opened, what sort of places are there, and on and on.

The last time he did this was November 2019, i.e. right before Covid hit. He’s been a little hesitant to do another one too soon as it might not paint an accurate picture since so much was in flux. Also he was lazy.

But things seemed to have settled into a new normal, so GM finally got out his sheets and walked the streets. He is still compiling the data. But here are the overarching numbers:

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• If the Queen’s Jubilee has got you feeling Anglophilic, you can see the Mystery of Edwin Drood at Visitation this week.
• The robins left the nest but they haven’t left the garden yet…

Last month, DCPS held an informational meeting on the future high school that Georgetown students will feed into. Here is some key takeaways from that presentation.

First, just as a recap: the city is planning a new high school to address crowding at the only “west of the park” general public high school: Jackson-Reed (fka Wilson High School). Right now, both Hardy and Deal middle schools feed up to Jackson-Reed. The plan calls for Hardy students to start feeding into the new high school.

The location of the new high school is the former lower and middle school of Georgetown Day School on MacArthur Blvd. GDS consolidated its entire school into the former upper school campus on Wisconsin Ave. near Tenleytown. The city bought the MacArthur Blvd property in March 2021.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Capital Bikeshare is running a bike corral until July 4th at Wisconsin and the canal. What that means is that you can just walk up and leave a Capital bikeshare bike with them without worrying about a station being full.
• Big contractor moves its offices out of Georgetown for Reston.