When SWDCBlog was recently interviewed by Metrocentric, we had our own query for readers of the site: what businesses and services would you like to see come to Southwest? Now we want to ask you the same question.Lots of space will become available over the next few years. The Waterfront Station development has five retail spots in addition to those reserved for a new Safeway and CVS. The building planned for Sixth St. and Maine Ave. SW, on the Marina View Towers parking lot between Arena Stage and Waterfront Station, will contain 8900 square feet of retail, including a restaurant to attract the theater crowd from across the street. Other tenants, its developer states, might include "a dry cleaners, bakery, or coffee shop." The Maine Avenue Waterfront hopes to attract "[n]eighborhood-serving retail such as a gourmet grocery, casual and upscale dining, cafes, shops and opportunities for local, small retailers." So, which stores should move in?
Here's my list:
1. Baja Fresh. (Not Chipotle.)
2. Organic or natural foods grocery with good produce and bulk foods. (To keep the new Safeway on its toes.)
3. Gas station. It won't be by the Metro or the new Southwest Waterfront, but it has to go somewhere. Gas stations are like lawyers. People always complain about how bad they are, until they need one.
4. Coffee shop that isn't Starbucks. Or just a Starbucks.
5. Sit down location for the takeout place at the fish market, Jimmy's Grill, so your food stays warm in the winter.
6. Wine & beer store with a decent selection and singles sales so I can buy those cans of Kirin you get at Harris Teeter's in Virginia.
Any more ideas? Leave a comment.
Since this is just about retail, I'll talk about the new library another day. And I left off a bookstore, because there's no way it could survive. Busboys and Poets has recently moved out the books to sell Andean handicrafts and world music--the margins can't be good.
A hardware store would be nice too. I'm not sure who would shop there, since almost everyone in SW has maintenance included in rent or a condo fee. Maybe something like the new hole-in-the wall ACE Hardware on 5th St. NW. It's a jewel-box of a store, everything individually packaged, beautifully lit, and marked way up. But how many nails do you really need to hang a few pictures?
Image: Rendering of New 4th St. SW Retail Space, from waterfrontdc.com.
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20 comments:
1) A Trader Joe's that sells wine and beer.
2) A coffee shop
3) Some sort of cafe or place to get a quick, cheap, and somewhat healthy prepared meal from.
4) A real gym
5) A pet store, not necessarily petsmart, but somewhere with more pet supplies than Safeway or any of the above.
Yes to all of those. I really like the idea of a TJ's that sells wine and beer. Coffee shop by Metro would be excellent. Meanwhile, I hop over to the Pentagon Navy Annex for my biodiesel, so unless the gas station has that, I don't really care...
I'd settle for a single restaurant/bar that I could go to during the winter (sorry, Cantina). Anything beyond that (24 hr Dunkin Donuts, sports bar, Trader Joes', Chop't/Juice Joint type fast healthy) just seems like a pipe dream. I'd even take a Safeway that sells beer/wine at this point.
Lots of good suggestions already posted here ... but I'll try:
1) Another bank
2) Bakery
3) Dry cleaners
4) A real deli
5) Convenience store (quasi 7-11)
6) Cards, gifts, floral store
7) Nice neighborhood pub/restaurant
All great ideas, but the reality is that the market simply isn't there. SW is too isolated to draw people from outside the area, has no office workers during the workday to fill lunch spots, and most residents have cars and can drive to get what they need (you can be in Crystal City/Pentagon City from SW in under 10 minutes most times of the day). The retail market is SW is built on residents of public housing and low income apartments and sadly, that isn't a market that is ever going to support a Trader Joes, a pub, or a coffee shop.
I suspect we will see the usual DC low-end retail subjects. Cell phone stores, nail salons, a Subway and the like.
The DC Dept. of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs will move to the new building by the Metro as soon as it's finished in March, 2010. That should help with the lunch crowd.
And, between Waterfront Station (over 1000 units), the old Marina View Towers (which is almost empty right now and will expand to 540 units), the empty Town Center Apartments building at 3rd and M and the SW Waterfront (another 600+ units), Southwest will have enough residents.
If SW had better retail, people wouldn't go to Pentagon City in the first place. (I do, and I wouldn't.) I think it's a supply problem, not a demand problem.
-GD
P.S., if too many banks move in, I volunteer to organize the torchlight parade. I guess we're lucky that the financial market is weeding them out for us. Did anyone else notice how they invaded Columbia Heights as soon as the new buildings opened? Nothing against one or two per project, but more than that sucks the life out of your street. I'm more likely to go to that nail salon than to Wachovia.
You know what I'd love? A neighborhood pizza joint. Not, a chi-chi CPK kind of place, but plastic checkered tablecloths, great take away pies, ok beer and generally prices such that I might grab a pizza to go on my way back from metro, or have a beer whilst waiting for it, but the peewee football team or whatever from Greenleaf Rec could be taken there, too, for end of season parties and the like.
I wonder if it were a little bookshop with a big coffee shop, if it would be viable? Sigh. Then again that, plus cool dvd rentals is exactly what Olsson's did in Penn Quarter (and exactly my fantasy of neighborhood-shop-most-likely-to-improve-my-quality-of-life) and they did get priced out of the business.
A movie theater.
How about a pub? Not another Cantina Marina with its lackadaisical service and eensy-beensy overpriced snacks, but a dark, comfy neighborhood eatery where you can grab a burger or shrimp basket and a beer at reasonable prices on those nights when you're too tired to cook.
And please let's have some competition with the Safeway! I've lived in D.C. since 2002, and every year the Safeway has gotten worse: less selection on the shelves (where have you gone, tahini, decent sardines, bulk olives, Cornish hens, veal, lamb, decent fish selection, whole-milk mozarella cheese?); ever surlier and more sullen cashiers (I love it when the gal at the checkout stand tells me I can't have my groceries double-bagged because I neglected to ask before she started ringing them up); and the ever more frequent searching of my shopping bags by security guards when I somehow trigger an alarm leaving the store--AFTER I've stood in line for 20 minutes waiting for some customer ahead of me to figure out which groceries she wants to "give back" because she ran out of money on her EBT card or gets into an argument with the same cashier because deli sandwiches aren't covered by food stamps (duh!). Just one Whole Foods or Yes--style market with friendly cashiers and decent stock might finally wake up the Safeway.
Any sort of hardware store or even pseudo-hardware store would be so appreciated. A place to buy a decent broom, for example.(That's another item the Safeway used to stock, but no more.)
Ditto for any sort of latte shop: Starbucks, whatever. Any latte, any chai, please.
And don't we all miss Lucky's? We so need neighborhood coffee shops, indeed any neighborhood restaurants. Soon the Market Inn will be gone, a tiny piece of local Southwest and Southwest lore.
Finally, we so need a liquor store. The demise of Harry's, which had a pretty good wine selection, was one of the saddest events of my years in Southwest. Hey, puritans in the D.C. government, liquor is good! A day without wine is like a day without sunshine. What's immoral about a sixpack of beer? Please bring civilization back to Southwest.
With all the incoming new housing and office units, SW will definitely be able to support a decent coffee shop, a beer/wine/liquor store, a cool bar - even if no outside traffice come here.
I just want to be able to WALK to anything. That's why I moved into the city from VA 8 years ago, but since I purchased in SW and moved over from Capitol Hill, I can't actually get to anywhere by walking. I prefer not to have to drive to grab a bottle of wine or a pint of ice cream!
And a gas station would be convenient too!
1) A Whole Foods or a Trader Joe's 2) A farmers market
3) A small cafe or deli
Please oh please!
ice cream; coffee bar; smallish Container Store; drive to Virginia, too, but would prefer to spend my money in DC. Plus, 60 employees at the Ganplank in MSI. Plenty of noontime shoppers, browsers, takeout snackers. Liquor, wine, cheese.
Some more family friendly amenities. Namely, a good playground and a quality daycare/after school care center.
You know what would be way cool: hardware store like Fragers, on the Hill, which is co-located with a garden center and equipment rental store but that also had a renovation contractor business in it. So, you could get geraniums for your window boxes or rent a wet saw to install a new tile backsplash or just hire someone to do it. There's a pretty big population of senior citizens around here and I think they would be very interested in a local handyman service.
1. Harris Teeter
2. Liquor/deli store
3. Pizza/sub joint
4. Burger joint
5. Bakery
6. Convenience store
7. Too many more to list!
I also totally agree with Charlotte Allen's comments about Safeway. I have lived in SW for 20 years and have witnessed the steady decline of the Safeway. It has left a very bitter taste in my mouth. If they don't get new blood in the new store it will just be a bigger store with the same problems. I would like to see a Harris Teeter instead of Safeway or at least in addition to Safeway.
I second (or third) the comment about a movie theater and an alternative to Safeway!
1) restaurants (sit-down and fast-casual)
2) a farmer's market (could be near the fish market)
3) bike repair shop
4) Trader Joe's or equivalent
5) Chelsea Piers-like place for the kids (or maybe that could go to the Capitol Riverfront)
6) cafe
7) hardware store
For the poster who wants a good playground, River Park just decided to build a brand new one in 2009, so if you don't live there already, perhaps a move down the street is in order?
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