How DC Eats Reveals So Much About Who We Are

The Story:

Three eagerly anticpated restaurants open downtown:
-- Marcel's chef Robert Wiedmaier opens Brasserie Beck at 1101 K St.

-- Cintronelle's Michel Richard opens Central at 1001 Penn. Ave.

-- Three-Star chef Antoine Westermman consulted on Cafe du Parc at 1401 Penn. Ave. in the Willard Hotel

What It Means:

-- Downtown has changed with these more casual restaurants. Casual? I looked forward to quaffing beef with my enormous mussels at Beck, but felt compelled to order wine. The space was just too cold to do otherwise. As for Central, Richard is as warm as Hilary Clinton at a $10k fundraiser. (Unless, of course, you are Hillary Clinton and we're sure Richard warms right up.) Cafe du Parc is the only truly casul one of the three and people are confused by its plate du jour simplicity and sophisticated touches. (Which one is it?!?, they ask.)

-- So maybe DC hasn't changed. It's stuffy, even if the marketing crew at the latest restaurants say otherwise. Is it the town's southern roots that provides the formal edge? A lack of sophistication that requires a certain propriety or else eveyone's inner-frat boy emerges? Perhaps the answer is all of the above, plus a few other factors I have not thought of.

-- But things are different. The fact that three high-profile chefs chose to locate new businesses downtown, not in Georgetown or on K St., shows how far the center of gravity has shifted in DC. Every day it seems to move further and further east. It's not just downtown, but also H St. NE, where in ten years the newest crop of culinary imports likely will land.

Over at GPLiving they seem to be upset that a planned building at 704 3rd St. NW will feature commercial space only, but no retail, no condos, no apartments.

Considering for how many decades downtown went with virtually only commercial development and considering how much residential it has experienced (along with neighboring hood) of late, DC Bubble has to now respectfully say maybe we have struck a good balance.

Mixing commerical and residential development produces an 18 hour neighborhood. Retail can cater to officeworkers and residents from 7 am until 1 am. Coffee and bagels, lunch and soft goods, dinner and a movie and drinks afterward.

Now please don't construe this post as a criticism GPliving (because we love you to death!!), but we think a mix is better than too much of a good thing like residential development.

Thanks GP for the photo and the effort you put in to get it.

The "Masterplan" Is Working

In 2000, blacks made up 60 percent of the District's population. By 2006, that figure was 55 percent, according to the US Census Bureau.

"What you see are whites moving into the city because they are able to afford the pricey housing in all these areas that are gentrifying and becoming much more middle and upper-middle class," said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, told the WaPo.

“A lot of neighborhoods are going through a process of change and growth,” Brookings Institution demographer Audrey Singer told the WashExam, which noted changes in neighborhoods such as Chinatown and Capitol Hill.

DC Bubble hates the defensiveness and guilt surrounding these numbers. While some African American fear there is a "masterplan" to turn Chocolate City into a place only for the blonde-and-blue eyed, many whites engage in hand-wringing because they are forcing out black families. How many blacks have been forced out of Noma or downtown where the condos were built on brownfields? Or sorry can you feel for the black family that moved from DC to PG county where the schools are better?

Zara Zeros in on Za Zity

The sign says it all. Zara is opening on F St. next to H & M and around the corner from Macy's and West Elm. As first reported forever ago by GPLiving, this store will be the largest Zara outside NYC (over 20k ft).

Slowly, surely, slowly. Downtown is beginning to craft itself as a retail destination. The node on 7th St. with the movie theater and shops now has a counterpart on F St. and its all being stiched together. All so slowly. But it is happening. Wouldn't the ladies lunching at the Garfinkle's lunch counter be pleased?

Next They'll Want to Mothball the Internet

It's hard to over-estimate how great the circulator bus is. Wanna go shopping in Georgetown but you are standing in front of your condo downtown or just finished a meeting on Capitol Hill? Take the Metro? But it don't go. Take a cab? Only if the boss is paying. The Circulator is the answer.

So why do some malign it. "I think it is time to put the Circulator in mothballs. In my daily travels, I find most of the buses barely occupied," someone told the WaPo.

Hello. . . The circulator is the only way to get across town. The bus got even better a month or so back when it was extended up Wisconsin Ave.


Ok naysayers. DDOT statistics for the Circulator system show ridership is growing. Total ridership for April 07 was 202,000, compared with about 182,000 in April 06. Slow, but steady growth.

Two Parks Seed Hope for the Future

The National Capitol Planning Commission gave a preliminary thumbs up for the estimated $5 million park in the old convention center site, reports the WashExam.

A triangular “bow-tie” section bounded by NY Ave., I, 10th and 11th streets, called for two fountains, fixed and moveable benches, a reading grove, and a variety of trees. It will be set up for lunchtime concerts and other events, and fit up to 1,000 people.

“We think it’ll be a very good gathering place, something that’s very needed downtown,” said Konrad Schlater, project manager in the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development. “This basically gives us the green light to move forward with the basic concept.”

Also JBG is donating $2.5 million for Washington Canal Park, reports the WashBiz. The contribution is required by a D.C. Office of Zoning order establishing the planned unit development for the new Transportation Department headquarters.

Washington Canal Park, at the corner of Second and M streets, directly across from the new DOT headquarters, will be the first public park built as part of the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative through a funding arrangement that includes the federal government and private developers.

AGENCIES FLEEING FOR THIER LIVES

First, the police are on the run. Now Meto is contemplating a move to Anacostia with a financial push from D.C.

Under a plan drafted by the D.C. government, Metro would receive $68 mil from the sale of its HQ building at 600 Fifth St. NW for construction of a 275,000-square-foot headquarters at the Anacostia Metro Station, said the Examiner. It would also receive any net proceeds from the sale, and another $40 mil to build a badly needed pedestrian tunnel between Gallery Place and Metro Center.

The proposal assumes the building will sell for roughly $108 mil, covering the payments to Metro. But just in case, it also pledges DC will finance any shortfall. The transit agency’s headquarters is valued at $58.4 mil.

Even if DC had to cough up a few bucks to cover this deal, it would be a win-win. Anacostia gets a boost. Downtown returns a piece to the tax rolls and paves the way for another condo-retail-office megaplex. Ain't life grand?

SENATORS PUT UP SOME CASH FOR NEW DC LIBRARY

In approving the DC Appropriations bill, the Senate Approriations Committee $15M of the requested $30M for a new library downtown. "The Committee believes that a better library system will help the District lower its adult illiteracy rate of 37 percent and help improve lives and opportunities of DC residents," the panel said.

Whether you are for or against replacing the library, you have to hand it to Mayor Tony for his ability to move his pet projects forward.

Better Living Thru Better Circulation

A new circulator bus route will be added to the Mall beginning this week, the WaPo reports. Like the north-south line on 7th St. NW and the K St. east-west line, the new line will cost a buck to ride and run every ten minutes or so. Buses will travel along the perimeter of the Mall and will shuttle tourist and others from museum to museum. Watch-out Tourmobile.

As for the other lines, the east-west route served 1,345 riders per day in February up from September 2005 when that figure was 985. Rather than terminating at the convention center on L St., the line will go up to O St., near the Giant supermarket. Given how crowded the 70 bus is, why not extend the line up to U Street where the Metro station is? Until the bus brings people to U St., it always will be a bus to nowhere. Some mornings DC Bubble is the only rider on that bus.

The average number of weekday trips for the north-south route last month was 3,892, compared with 2891 in September. This is the best bus in Washington. Why it took all these years to figure out that a connection between Georgetown and Union Station is needed is beyond us.

A Rose Is A Rose

Whether the sole department store downtown is called Hecht's, Macy's or Bloomindale's could make a big difference in how and when retail reemerges at Metro Center.

You see Federated Department Stores Inc., which owns Hecht's wants to do away with the Balt0-D.C. brand. Considering hoopla surrounding Bloomies and Macy's on Federated's webside and how little attention Hecht's gets (none!) , it is should come as no surprise that Federated wants to do away with the brand. Ending the speculation, Federated
announced in July that the F Street store would in fact become Macy's.

O.K. so what does Bloomies have to do with all of this? They have been shopping around, possibly downtown or Georgetown, for a new site to house a trimmed-down, boutique store. Obviously, if Hecht's became Bloomie's they would not put their boutique concept downtown. But now with Macy's about to take over, the long-dreamed return of a second department store could happen.

A downtown with two department stores would certainly speed up the reignition of the historic shopping district. If that happened the big, big loser would not be Georgetown, but Pentagon City, which depends so heavily on D.C. shoppers.