Posts about Retail

For most of the past decade, residents' experience with retail along this corridor has been negative. In the early 2000s, residents complained about crime and loitering around the now defunct New Dragon restaurant. And some residents also voiced concern that developers were taking advantage of the commercial zoning to build tall residential-only buildings along the corridor (C-2-A allows buildings up to 50 feet high compared to 40 feet for R-4).

In 2003, ANC 6B supported a request made by several frustrated 15th Street residents to rezone 15th Street SE from the commercial C-2-A to the residential R-4.

The Zoning Commission did not change the zoning, but DC's Comprehensive Plan started showing the area as residential, rather than commercial or mixed-use.

When the Office of Planning finishes the zoning update, it could be an opportunity to change the zoning. But do residents still want that? Flahaven thinks perhaps not:

This past year saw the opening of two popular food establishments along the corridor—The Pretzel Bakery and Crepes on the Corner. The Pretzel Bakery (340 15th Street SE) has been a huge hit. And while Crepes on the Corner (257 15th Street SE) unfortunately closed, most Hill East residents I've talked to enjoyed having a place to grab coffee and lunch in the neighborhood. Southeast Market (1500 Independence Ave SE) was also recently sold and renovated. All three of these establishments are or were positive additions to the neighborhood.

While 15th Street will never be a Barracks Row, I can certainly envision a future time when the corridor acts as a small neighborhood serving commercial zone located halfway between the heavier retail activity around Eastern Market and the future retail activity on Reservation 13. Rezoning 15th Street to R-4 would eliminate future opportunities for restaurants, cafes and shops along the corridor.

With a change in the retail mix, people can now see the commercial corridor as a positive contribution to the neighborhood rather than a blight. Attitudes about living near stores also are continuing to evolve, as more people who want to be within a short walk of shops and restaurants move into urban neighborhoods.

Hill East had a commercially-zoned area already, and since the effort to zone it out didn't succeed, that neighborhood still has the chance to welcome more beloved local markets and eateries. But in many neighborhoods, there aren't commercial corridors for new businesses to start in. Some, like Big Bear Coffee in Bloomingdale, end up occupying buildings that were once commercial but whose zoning is now residential, which sets them up for a big zoning fight when someone objects. More often, neighborhoods just don't get any stores.

The zoning update's corner store proposal will allow just a few of these—maybe too few. To some residents in the neighborhoods that could get them, the idea of commercial zoning conjures up images of problem shops, especially the ones that are mainly liquor stores and draw intoxicated customers. To others, it's the beloved local shop that adds to convenience and makes the neighborhood more appealing.

The corner store rules try to limit the actual impacts of commercial uses, such as trash (it can't be stored outdoors) or early morning or late night noise (stores can't be open outside 10 am-7 pm 7 am-10 pm). Any such set of rules, though, can't be perfect. If they keep out all of the businesses residents don't want, they'll also keep out many that they do.

Beyond the corner store rules, we also simply need to ensure there are enough neighborhood commercial corridors with real commercial zoning. There, businesses can open next to one another and benefit from each other attracting foot traffic. In Hill East, a commercial strip on 15th Street may become an asset to the neighborhood, and other neighborhoods need equivalents of their own.

But unlike Bethesda Row, which was built in an established community with some urban features, Pike + Rose will attempt to create an urban environment from scratch. The challenge is to create a place that feels "authentic" without the benefit of time and to encourage tenants and visitors to get out of their cars in an area where driving is often the only way to get around.

As the first big project to be built under the White Flint Sector Plan approved in 2010, county planners, elected officials, other developers and residents will be watching to see how successful it is. If done well, Pike + Rose could become a standard-bearer for White Flint, a glimpse of the community's future and a signal to other property owners to step up their game.

Will it be "authentic"?

New suburban town centers are often derided as fake and contrived, though they have the ability to create meaningful urban places. Like other Federal Realty projects, Pike + Rose tries to avoid this by looking like it's been built over time.

One way is through having a variety of building forms. Along Rockville Pike are tall office towers with large retail spaces, which will give big companies and big-box stores alike the visibility and prominence they want. In the center of the site is Grand Park Avenue, a street with smaller shops, restaurants and a plaza that could become Pike + Rose's social heart.

And along Hoya Street are a line of "point towers," apartment buildings whose ground-floor units have private entrances and yards, providing a transition to the residential neighborhoods to the west.

Another is by having different architects design each building. Three firms worked on Pike + Rose, including WDG Architecture of the District and Street-Works of New York, which also worked on Bethesda Row and Rockville Town Square, and Baltimore-based Design Collective.

As a result, the architecture varies widely from building to building. In the first phase is 11800 Grand Park Avenue, a modernist office building with huge panels of glass and metal accents, and PerSei, an apartment building made to resemble a brick warehouse. In the second phase is a building with terra cotta panels and a heavy cornice that mimics architect Louis Sullivan's Wainwright Building in St. Louis.

Some of these buildings are more successful than others. This approach is hard to do, and when executed poorly, it really can feel artificial. But it can be avoided if each building, regardless of architectural style, is done to a high standard.

A building with poor details or cheap materials in any style will look bad, but if those things are done well, the building should mature with time. Federal Realty did a good job with this in Bethesda Row and Rockville Town Square, though it may be too early to tell how they'll look in the future.

Will it be "connected"?

To its potential tenants and visitors, Pike + Rose claims to offer a complete live-work-play environment. But Ben Harris, who writes a local blog called North FlintVille, notes that a truly "organic" development is one that "is itself a small part of a greater whole."

The White Flint Sector Plan calls for a grid of new streets, which will divert traffic from Rockville Pike, provide multiple connections between each development, and make it easier to get around by foot or bike. Pike + Rose does their part with their network of streets and pedestrian passages, which divide the site into 9 city blocks. Those streets will eventually link up with new streets built by Montgomery County and the state of Maryland, such as an extension of Hoya Street to Old Georgetown Road.

Though the streets are pretty narrow compared to the arterial roads surrounding the development, they appear to have generous sidewalks with lots of landscaping and street trees. The blocks themselves are fairly small; most average about 300 feet long, comparable to blocks in older, inner-city neighborhoods.

Federal Realty's renderings show lively streets lined with restaurants and shops, but it's important that they don't simply stop at the edge of the development. That's what happened at Rockville Town Square, which has two great internal streets but presents blank walls, loading docks and parking garages to the rest of the world.

If Rockville Pike is going to become an urban boulevard, it needs to have buildings open onto it, whether with shops, restaurants, or even large windows that people can see into. The same goes for Old Georgetown Road, where the Sector Plan calls for a two-acre Civic Green across from Pike + Rose that could become White Flint's answer to Dupont Circle.

The stakes are high

Ten years ago, Federal Realty decided to stick with building and running strip malls. They'd literally been burned by Santana Row, an ambitious town center in San Jose that suffered a catastrophic fire and opened half-empty in a recession, and decided that the risk and complexity of urban redevelopment wasn't worth it.

Today, it's a nationally recognized development success; buoyed by demographic patterns that favor mixed-use development, Federal Realty has moved on to even bigger projects.

Like Santana Row, the stakes at Pike + Rose are high. Judging from the details we have so far, it could not only transform White Flint, but light the way for suburban redevelopments across the country.

Crossposted on the Friends of White Flint.

There are many factors that determine the success of a retail enterprise, including marketing, accessibility, visibility, competition, demographics, and location. Yes! Organic may have been difficult to access for westbound drivers, and it could certainly have benefited from an improved outreach campaign, but the fundamental challenge for the store is that it is located in an area with low aggregate income, a result of relatively low household incomes and the presence of relatively few households.

Much of the area around Fairlawn's Yes! is undeveloped (Anacostia Park and River, Fort Dupont Park, etc.), and the developed blocks are low- to medium-density. The graphic above helps illustrate how the purchasing power the store's service area compares with those of other grocery outlets in the city.

The Anacostia Warehouse Supermarket closed its doors because the former owner sold the property. The buyer is optimistic about the site's potential, but in a presentation to the Historic Anacostia Block Association in February of this year, he all but ruled out the possibility of bringing in another grocery store. He said that the potential grocery tenants he spoke with were deterred by the presumed arrival of Walmart at Skyland, just up the street.

Does the eventual presence of two full-service grocery stores at the top of the hill mean that Ward 8's flatland neighborhoods will be forever without their own market? If there is a location best suited for a store to fill the gap, it is at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Ave SE and Howard Rd SE, immediately adjacent to the Anacostia Metrorail station and Metrobus hub, and the meeting point for the Anacostia, Hillsdale, and Barry Farm neighborhoods.

The ideal, and most feasible, site for new development at this intersection is the vast lot owned by Bethlehem Baptist Church, currently used as parking. It is not uncommon for churches, often major landowners, to develop the land they own for a purpose consistent with their mission.

Matthews Memorial Baptist Church, two blocks from Bethlehem, recently oversaw the development of a new affordable housing complex on one of their parcels. Across town, at 10th and G Streets NW, the First Congregational United Church of Christ was part of a redevelopment team that delivered a new facility for the church on the ground floors of an office building.

By developing their vacant land as housing, office space, or a community or spiritual facility, with ground floor retail including a grocery store to replace the shuttered Anacostia Warehouse Supermarket, Bethlehem Baptist Church, and its pastor Reverend James E. Coates, DC's inaugural Ward 8 councilmember, could cement a legacy in the District while doing a huge service to their neighbors in the heart of Ward 8.

Cross-posted at R. U. Seriousing Me?

Named for Smith's father, Henry Smith, the restaurant is famous for its stick-to-your-bones comfort food and sweet potato pie, which was profiled by The Washington Post in 2007. "Mr. Henry can't cook, so he had to have other people cook," Smith said. Her brothers own the store's 2 other locations, at the intersection of 4th and K Streets NW and in Oxon Hill, MD.

While she said that the new restaurants are competition for her business, Smith sees the changes on U Street as a good thing. "The neighborhood is more diverse now," Smith said. "You're dealing with all walks of life." She has been able to rely on a steady flow of regulars, who come to 17th and U from all over the DC area for her smothered pork chops, fried chicken and ribs. "You don't forget where home is," she said.

One of those customers is Darren Snell, 47. Snell has been coming to Henry's for 21 years, and said that not much has changed. "The meatloaf still tastes the same today as it did back then," he said.

Smith said that gentrification has made the area more diverse, which bodes well for Henry's prospects going forward. "The regulars are still coming and the newcomers are coming too," he said. "[Henry's] isn't going anywhere."

In Logan Circle, Chong Hu, 58, has no plans to close her business, The Carry Out Deli. Like Smith, Hu said that loyal customers have helped her stay afloat for the last 27 years.

Lily Pilgrim, 84, lives two blocks away from the Deli and stops by 2-3 times per week. "[It's] much better and cheaper than any other restaurant on P Street," she said.

Pilgrim is bullish on the Deli's chances of staying open. "[Hu] has the same customers over the years. They go out of their way to come here. It should be here for a long, long time," she said.

Hu sees both the pros and cons of development. As office buildings on 14th were replaced by condos in the last few years, the lunch crowd has died down dramatically, cutting into her profits. "My business is real slow," Hu said. "Now everyone goes to coffee shop."

But, on the positive side, there are "no more drunk people," Hu said. In the 1980s, "every day I called the police," she said. For her part, Pilgrim, who has lived in the area for 30 years, said that she used to avoid walking down 14th Street because it was too dangerous.

Brendon Miller, public affairs director for the city's department of small and local business development, said that new development does not automatically result in an outward flow of small businesses. "You've got small businesses that come in and you've got small businesses that depart. It's cyclical," he said.

And some small businesses, like Henry's and the Carry Out Deli, have reached "institution status," which helps them stay open in a changing landscape. "The business owners take the time to identify with the folks coming through the door, and to sort of cultivate repeat customers," he said. "It's got to attract people from the neighborhood."

A few carry outs have left the area for various reasons. Yum's, which used to sit at the intersection of 14th and Wallach streets NW, was recently demolished to make way for an upscale apartment building. It will reopen soon in Pleasant Plains, a neighborhood east of Columbia Heights. And the Mid City Deli, which neighbors The Carry Out Deli, closed its doors in June 2012.

City health inspectors have played a role in shutting down some carry outs, at least temporarily. Before becoming a hole in the ground, Yum's was cited for two health hazards and closed for a day. And in April, the Mid City Deli was closed twice for a variety of health hazards.

China Dragon Carry Out, which sits at the intersection of 11th and P Streets NW, was recently closed "for gross unsanitary conditions, operating without a license, [having] an improperly trained manager and failure to minimize insects."

Alicia Davis-Coates, 39, said that she looks for information about health inspection-related closings in the newspaper when deciding where to eat. Her carry out-of-choice is Yum's II on 14th Street. A resident of Fort Totten, Davis-Coates said that Yum's II is worth the drive.

"The food is fresher. You can actually see them make it," she said on a recent Friday night, take out bag in hand. "And they've never been shut down."

Proposal allows corner stores in row house areas

The corner store proposal only applies to the moderate density row house zones, currently designated R-3 (example: Georgetown), R-4 (example: Capitol Hill) and R-5-A (example: Marshall Heights).

It does not change anything in detached house house zones (like Chevy Chase), attached house zones (like Queens Chapel), or the denser row house zones like Dupont Circle.

In the below map, the zones that could get corner stores appear in red, purple, and light blue.

List of restrictions aim to protect against impacts

Beyond limiting the proposal to a subset of zones, there is a further set of rules limiting corner stores to certain buildings, certain parts of neighborhoods, and certain types of stores. Here is the draft text, from the latest draft OP has released:

402.2 Arts Design and Creation, Food and Alcohol Service, Retail, and Service uses are permitted by-right [in the relevant zones] subject to the following conditions:

(a) There shall be no Mixed Use or Mixed Use Transit zones within five hundred feet (500 ft.) of the lot.

(b) There shall be no more than three other Arts Design and Creation, Retail, or Service uses and no more than one other Food and Alcohol Service use within five hundred feet (500 ft.) of the lot.

(c) If the lot is an interior or through lot, the building must have been built:

1. Prior to [INSERT DATE HERE]; and
2. For the purpose of a non-residential use, as established by permit records or other historical documents accepted by the Zoning Administrator.

(d) Except for the Arts Design and Creation uses listed below, the use shall not occupy or use any space above the ground story:

1. Apartment accessory to an artist studio; and
2. Artist live-work space.

(e) The use shall not exceed one thousand, two hundred square feet (1,200 sq.ft.) in total floor area.

(f) The use shall not operate between 10:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m.

(g) The maximum number of employees, including the owner, on site at any time shall be three.

(h) Only one external sign may be displayed on the building's facade, provided that the sign is not illuminated and is flush-mounted.

(i) All storage of materials and garbage shall occur indoors.

(j) Any parking shall be fully screened from all adjacent properties, streets and alleys in a manner consistent with § 802.1.

(k) For any Food and Alcohol Service use, there shall be no sale of liquor for on-site consumption.

Arts Design and Creation uses may also be allowed as accessory uses subject to the conditions of E § 404.1.

In the zones now called R-5-A, the densest of the zones allowing corner stores, there are a few differences. Condition (c), which limits stores to actual corner buildings or buildings that were historically commercial, doesn't apply. The total size can be up to 2,000 square feet instead of 1,200.

Finally, it adds that:

The Board of Zoning Adjustment may waive up to three (3) of the conditions of this subsection by special exception, subject to Subtitle Y Chapter 8, provided that E 402.3(a) [no mixed-use zones within 500 feet] and (c) [nothing above the ground story except for arts] may not be waived.

OP listened to your previous feedback on restriction (f), the limit on hours, and pushed the allowable hours to 7 am to 10 pm. The initial proposal was for 8 am to 7 pm, and many of you said that this would make it impossible for many people who work to patronize any stores that might open.

This is a start, but possibly still too restrictive

OP is treading very lightly, because there is a lot of nervousness in some quarters about the proposal. Ironically, though, most of the pushback has come from people in single-family zones, like upper Northwest, where this won't change a thing.

A lot of people don't actually know what kind of zone they live in. I was speaking to one councilmember who thought this wasn't a good idea because the block where the member lives wouldn't be right for a corner store. However, upon further discussion, it turned out that the block was part of an R-2 zone, where this wouldn't apply.

In the actual row house zones, this could give people many new options for local retail. I worry, however, that it's so strict that we'll get almost no stores.

The limit to corner buildings and historically commercial buildings leaves few options. Corners are better, but they're almost all occupied now. It might take a long time for more than vanishingly few corner buildings to come on the market, and for someone to want to open a store there.

The restriction that the store can't be near a mixed-use zone (now called a commercial zone) is intended to keep the stores from competing with existing local commercial condos corridors. That makes sense in most places, but often there are mixed-use zoned areas with no or little actual retail space.

Florida Avenue around LeDroit Park and Bloomingdale, for example, is "mixed-use zoned" along its length, but has very few commercial buildings. There's no way to even get an exception for these. Also, the zones now called "Special Purpose" (SP-1 and SP-2) will right be "mixed use" zones under the new rules, but there's a great variety of buildings in those zones (such as New Hampshire Avenue in Dupont), not necessarily commercial.

A better rule would simply count actual stores nearby, instead of counting land zoned that could possibly hold stores if it doesn't.

I would also suggest having the rules let the BZA waive up to 3 of the restrictions even in the R-3 and R-4 zones, and making all restrictions eligible. The special exception process lets neighbors object to changes, and so if a store wants to open near a mixed-use zone with no actual retail space, or in a non-corner building, the hearing provides an opportunity to oppose it.

Finally, this should apply to R-5-B zones as well. There isn't a lot of R-5-B that's not near commercial corridors, but no reason to exclude the areas that do exist.

What do you think?

Please post your thoughts in the comments and try to attend one of the upcoming meetings. These meetings are the best chance to get more positive changes into the document before it moves on to the Zoning Commission.

After OP hears from residents, they will revise the proposal in a more or less progressive direction. Then, they will submit text to the Zoning Commission, the hybrid federal-local body that has the final say on all zoning issues. The ZC is unlikely to make the proposal any more progressive than it is, but they might dial it back if they get too much opposition.

On retail, for example, the report says that "Most interviewees stated that the District has great potential to become a model for the future: a vibrant and walkable city. The majority said traffic congestion will become less relevant to the retail sector in the future." (page 78)

This is a refreshing change from the tired trope from the economic development transition team, which we still hear today from some business groups, who say that one of the most important steps they want DC to take is to time all of the traffic lights to make streets high-speed for cars into the District in the morning and out at night.

Plan is sector-specific

Some jurisdictions try to build jobs by indiscriminately throwing money at any company in any sector that is willing to come into town for a tax break. It's far more effective to develop clusters of related companies. That makes the city a generally attractive place for someone in that field, and the strong supply of labor in the field then attracts employers in a mutually-reinforcing cycle.

This plan seriously analyses key clusters that DC can reasonably hope to developed: technology, hospitality and retail, professional services and government contracting, real estate and construction, higher education, and health care. It lays out strategies for each that consider the particular needs of that sector. We commended Gray's emphasis on sector-specific economic development in an article earlier this year.

For example, this plan envisions a world-class medical center at the McMillan Sand Filtration Site, which is right next to a cluster of hospitals. The job growth in health care and higher education has exceeded all other sectors in DC in the past decade.

Here are some of the many recommendations which jumped out:

Build a tech hub at Saint Elizabeths. The plan calls for creating a technology center at the Saint Elizabet's campus. It also recommends finding ways to offer tech startups lower-cost office space and connecting tech entrepreneurs with established leaders in their sector. These are all recommendations from the letter from tech executives, which we organized with InTheCapital.

Strategically relax height restrictions. While Mayor Gray emphasized at today's press conference that he's not counting on any changes to federal law, the plan contemplates raising height limits near the Anacostia River. This is similar to Paris's approach to their height limit, and is a good compromise between the economic value of more growth and federal aesthetic concerns.

Change zoning to allow retail in more areas. Commercial space in most parts of the District is very limited. This makes retail space more expensive and contributes to "retail leakage" to the suburbs, which is where many residents leave the District to spend their shopping dollars.

The plan calls for expanding the supply of low-cost retail space while respecting residential impacts and allowing residents to walk for as many of their shopping needs as possible. In particular, it suggests making retail more continuous along commercial corridors. When there are gaps of residential zoning, especially at prominent corners, it stops many shoppers from continuing along the street.

Promote hospitality and tourism. The proposal for the hospitality sector is particularly thoughtful and detailed. The plan envisions "delivering the highest standards in hospitality and service," creating a Hospitality Program at DC Community College, setting up a culinary incubator, and expanding tourism. These will all grow service sector jobs, and good service sector jobs are one of the best paths to the middle class in today's economy.

On the other hand, a few elements of the plan miss the mark or could go farther.

No new workforce development initiatives. Who will fill these 100,000 new jobs? Only 27% of DC jobs go to by DC residents, so adding more jobs won't address the unemployment rate east of the Anacostia river, which is one of the plan's stated goals. There isn't much in the way of new workforce programs beyond the administration's existing initiatives, One City One Hire and the Workforce Intermediary.

The only new initiative in the plan is to post new university and health care jobs on the DOES web site. What the District needs to do is use data-driven methods to steer the $100 million that DC spends on job training where it will do the most good, at training providers that produce validated results.

Tech tax incentives still lack focus. The report continues to promote Gray's plan for broad tax breaks for tech investment. An incentive for new angel investors in technology is a good idea, but any tax break needs to specifically target the District's goals of building a strong base of tech firms that actually create new technology and workers with software development and other skills.

DMPED could work with all stakeholders to properly design this tax break, but instead is choosing to shut out discussions of how to best tailor it. On LivingSocial's $32 million tax break, DMPED and LivingSocial mutually agreed not to negotiate on any terms ahead of time, the Washington City Paper learned.

The mayor wants to pass a tax break for tech investors, which the Council removed from a recent bill. DMPED refused to negotiate with opponents on that bill as well. That left the tax break's primary Council advocate, David Catania, bewildered that there was no discussion of a smaller reduction, which he would have gladly agreed to.

If DMPED can seriously think about what it needs to achieve and tailor the break to those goals with a spirit of collaboration, instead of letting tech executives and investors design their own tax cuts, it should be able to devise something that can win broad support.

Hospitality job growth significantly underestimated. Hospitality jobs are the 2nd fastest growing job segment in the District, having grown at a 28% clip and added 14,200 new jobs in the past 10 years. But they are only a small fragment of the 100,000 new jobs projected in the plan, which forecasts only an 8% growth in hospitality jobs from 2008 to 2018.

That disconnect resulted from the misuse of DOES labor market data by the report's authors, according to DOES Chief Economist Dr James Moore. The labor market data and projections used by the report's authors are not meant for economic development analysis, as they fail to factor many drivers of job growth and thus understate job growth.

This plan includes some of the best initiatives for improving hospitality jobs and workforce readiness in the nation, but it must be grounded in accurate data on job growth in the sector and its sub-sectors.

There's much more in the 116-page document. It shows that, as with the sustainability strategy, one legacy of the Gray administration will be a set of excellent plans that can guide the District through the rest of his mayoralty and beyond.

I already had a long-standing addiction to their wasabi-roast beef sandwich on freshly baked flatbread. So, good news! I'd get another lunchtime option, plus a place to meet someone over good coffee, or to work when I need to get out of the house.

That's when I learned about Cleveland Park's anti-restaurant zoning overlay. A couple of decades ago, the neighborhood lobbied for a cap on the number of restaurants. Specifically, no more than 25% of the linear footage fronting the Connecticut Avenue commercial strip could hold any kind of food establishment—including restaurants, bars, takeout, delis, coffee shops, or sandwich shops.

Così, after briefly floating some creative legal arguments that would have exempted them from the cap, decided a zoning fight wasn't worth the trouble and pulled out.

To summarize, we had:

• a sandwich shop that wanted to sell me sandwiches;
  
• a landlord ready to rent space to the sandwich shop;
  
• citizens ready to take jobs as making sandwiches; and
  
• me, a customer, willing to buy sandwiches on a regular basis.

The neighborhood would have gotten another "third space", a comfortable and informal local gathering place. The city would have gotten tax and licensing revenue. Così's vendors, suppliers, and contractors would have made money, and so on—a cascade of voluntary, mutually beneficial economic transactions that would have left everyone involved better off.

But no. Instead we got a shuttered storefront for two full years. No jobs for anyone, no sandwiches for me, a landlord losing money on a vacant space, and an increasingly depressing-looking commercial strip.

Why?

At this point it would be very easy to turn dismissive and snarky about Cleveland Park's comfortable, out-of-touch, selfish residents who oppose everything. But here's the thing: Since that time I've gotten to know these people. They are among my neighbors and my friends. They're good and generous people, and they're not fools or cranks. They're proud of their history of local activism and they're trying to do what they think is best for the neighborhood.

They deserve a fair hearing for the strongest arguments they've made for the restaurant cap. I still think this is still a bad law. More broadly, this provides a good case study in how neighborhood politics can go wrong, and what we can do about it.

The original rationale for the restaurant overlay involves two main arguments.

1. Cleveland Park's commercial strip should provide first for the needs of the neighborhood. Restaurants can pay higher rents, so they crowd out small and diverse neighborhood-serving retail and services. Typical quote: "We have enough restaurants, what we need is a bookstore and a hardware store."
2. Restaurants are more likely to bring in people from outside the neighborhood; a critical mass of restaurants would turn Cleveland Park into a drinking and dining destination, creating traffic and parking problems. Typical quote: "Removing the cap could turn Cleveland Park into another Adams Morgan that lacks a neighborhood feel."

To the first point, the overlay hasn't worked. It hasn't given us the retail landscape we imagined, but has instead given us empty storefronts and tanning salons. To the second point, I'd suggest that these fears are exaggerated and not realistic. There are better ways to address parking problems than keeping amenities out of the neighborhood.

Most importantly, though, it's fundamentally unfair to allow a minority of neighbors to use the government to impose their consumer preferences on all of us. The District of Columbia doesn't want the restaurant cap, and neither does Cleveland Park. It's time to get rid of it.

It isn't working

We all want a lively, diverse retail landscape. The problem is that zoning laws are a blunt instrument: They can only say "no." Zoning can prevent business, but it can't create business. The overlay has been around for 23 years now, Cleveland Park is still waiting for that hardware store and that bookstore, and neither one is ever going to come.

It's not hard to see why, now more than ever: We're halfway between two legendary local bookstores, Politics & Prose and Kramerbooks. Established independent bookstores and big corporate chains alike are going out of business in droves. As much as we might wish the world was otherwise, the economic rationale for retail bookstores has been nearly destroyed by the one-two punch of Amazon Prime and the Amazon Kindle.

A hardware store isn't much more likely: there's also competition nearby and the retail hardware sector is still subject to the economic forces that are leading us to the End of Retail As We Know It.

The long-term future of neighborhood retail, in Cleveland Park as everywhere else, is in products, services, or experiences that people can't obtain over the Internet or receive by UPS. If we don't allow more restaurants, cafés, bars, or delis, what does that leave? We have a couple of grocery stores and a CVS and a Walgreen's. And there are shops that are doing well by offering unique and carefully curated selections (like Wake Up Little Suzy) or advice from helpful specialists (like Potomac River Running).

But that still leaves a lot of space to fill. After years of empty storefronts, that void has now been filled by an abundance of nail salons, tanning salons, cellphone shops, and the like. That's not exactly the sort of "diverse retail" anyone had in mind.

I do wish we had a bookstore and a hardware store, and there's nothing wrong with you and I indulging in wishful thinking. But there is something wrong with building public policy on a foundation of wishful thinking.

We've made it illegal to add any more food establishments, in the hope that that would magically produce lots of charming independent retail. But no sane entrepreneur is going to give us the stores we say we want. The unintended consequence is that we're filling our storefronts with the dregs of the service sector.

It's a solution to a nonexistent problem

The second argument stems from fear: Fear of more traffic, fear of changing the neighborhood's character, fear of becoming "the next Adams Morgan."

Let's not flatter ourselves. That's not going to happen. Adams Morgan isn't even the new Adams Morgan any more; the district's hipsters have long since moved on to U Street and H Street and 9th Street. What those neighborhoods have in common is the energy that comes from cultural and economic diversity. How do I say this nicely: Cleveland Park's respectable citizens are ... boring. No one goes out of their way to party in a neighborhood full of middle-aged white lawyers and minivan-driving families.

Anyway, Adams Morgan's weekend crowds never went there for the fine dining, for the cafés, or the sandwich shops: They were going for the bars and nightclubs; and the liquor licensing process gives neighbors all the tools they need to keep those kinds of establishments in check.

One last thing about the "not-another-Adams-Morgan" trope: I lived in Adams Morgan for years, and while the twice-weekly onslaught of drunken kids was a big nuisance, the entertainment venues didn't crowd out neighborhood retail.

To the contrary, the neighborhood has a diverse and vibrant retail scene that puts Cleveland Park to shame: A slew of trendy women's clothing stores, shoe stores, home decor shops, music stores, ethnic groceries, and gift shops. And the best running store, the best frame shop, the best bike shop, and the best florist in DC. And standard neighborhood amenities like grocery stores, pharmacies, dry cleaners, and convenience stores. And, yes, a hardware store and a bookstore.

None of us wants more congestion or more cars parked on our side streets. And none of us wants teenagers from the suburbs puking on our lawns. But allowing more food establishments in the neighborhood will do none of those things. Restaurant, cafés, or delis are not more likely than other businesses to cause traffic or parking problems. People can always take the metro or walk to eat out; but they're more likely to use their cars to get to a hardware store, a grocery store, a wine store, or a vacuum cleaner repair shop.

It's not fair

The most important argument for getting rid of the restaurant cap is that it's not fair. It's not fair for consumers, and it's not fair to our local landlords and merchants.

The restaurant cap imposes the economic preferences of one group of consumers on everyone else, and that's not right.

Some people eat out more than others. And there's been a generational shift in dining preferences: For our parents' generation, restaurants were for rich people or for special occasions. In contrast, my wife and I eat out all the time, sometimes with our boys and sometimes without, and we rely on neighborhood take-out for the occasional weeknight meal. The market is perfectly able to sort out those preferences and figure out the "right" number of restaurants for the demographics of any given location.

The 25% cap is also unfair to landlords and merchants. If you happen to already own space occupied by a restaurant, you're "grandfathered in" and you can replace that restaurant with another as a matter of right. All else being equal, the retail space right next door is worth less, for the arbitrary reason that it doesn't happen to already house a food establishment.

When a food establishment leaves the neighborhood for whatever reason, their landlord has every incentive to turn away retail or service tenants, even if that means keeping the space vacant for years. When McDonald's left Cleveland Park in 2004, the 2-story space—one of the most beautiful and valuable spots on the strip—remained empty for 7 years.

People wouldn't start restaurants if people didn't want to go to restaurants. The fact that so many people want to open food establishments in Cleveland Park is a reflection of the desire of the people of Cleveland Park and the people of the District of Columbia for more food establishments. And yet here we are using the coercive power of the government to keep those food establishments from happening. That's not right.

The neighborhood doesn't want it

The Office of Planning would lift the restaurant cap if were persuaded that Cleveland Park doesn't want it. And it's not what the neighborhood wants, at least not any more. The Cleveland Park listserv held a survey on the question in 2008 and again just recently. In both cases voters expressed about a 2:1 preference for allowing more restaurants.

This is a classic example of one of the most frustrating aspects of local politics: A highly motivated minority can easily end up overruling a passive majority. A handful of angry people shouting "No" can often carry the day, even if the predominant sentiment is "Yes" or "Sure, why not?"

We've all seen this happen in Cleveland Park and elsewhere in DC. We saw it with the Wisconsin Avenue Giant controversy, and I worry that the same phenomenon will hamper the current effort to bring DC's zoning code into the 21st century.

So if you're OK with allowing more restaurants, cafés, diners, delis, ice cream parlors, sandwich shops, and other food establishments, you need to speak up. If you want lively and walkable neighborhoods, they're not going to just happen as long as leaders only hear from an outspoken minority.

If you agree, and you're a DC resident, please sign this petition to send a message to key local officials.

Though I've lived in Montgomery County most of my life, I'd never actually been to the Glenmont Arcade before last weekend, when I talked to Scott Whipple, a historic preservation planner at the county's Planning Department, at their open house. He's particularly interested in commercial areas from the mid-20th century, like the Flower Shopping Center in Long Branch, which is currently being studied for preservation.

"It's not often that we get to do something like that," he said. There aren't many remaining examples of architecture from the 1950's and 60's; many buildings have either been torn down, remodeled beyond recognition, or under constant threat from the wrecking ball. One of them is the Glenmont Arcade, which could be demolished under a new plan the county's working on.

Unassuming as it may seem, the Glenmont Arcade comes from a long line of shopping arcades, which first originated in Paris over two hundred years ago before coming to the United States at the turn of the 20th century. They first appeared here in 1925, when the Chevy Chase Arcade was built on Connecticut Avenue in the District. Arcades also served as the inspiration for modern shopping malls like Wheaton Plaza, which was built 7 years after the Glenmont Arcade, and other strip malls around the country.

Stepping inside the arcade feels kind of like a time capsule. There are linoleum floors, bright-white and shiny, though they replaced the original terrazzo floors. Fluorescent lights reminiscent of a high-school cafeteria hum quietly. There's an old address sign (for "12345 Georgia Avenue"), which appears to have been hand-painted and a barber pole rotating slowly outside the barbershop that's been there since the arcade opened.

Nonetheless, the space has seen better days. The bowling alley was eventually replaced by a church, which papered over their entrance; all of the shops on the left-hand side were combined into one restaurant, which also papered over their windows. And the two storefronts at the very back, which were probably the most sought-after spaces when next to a busy movie theatre, are now both empty. There are no people in the arcade, save for four teenagers hanging out and smoking, and the occasional customer walking from a check-cashing place out to the parking lot.

Outside, I try to take a photo lining up the Glenmont Arcade sign with the water tower a few blocks away, when I'm approached by a guy wearing oval-rimmed glasses and three coats. He asked what I was doing. "I like the sign," I replied.

"Yeah, it's a nice sign," he said. "It's a shame what happened to the Arcade," he adds, voice trailing off as he shuffles away.

The Planning Department is currently working on the Glenmont Sector Plan, which will chart a course for turning Glenmont's business district around. However, the Planning Board chose not to study the Glenmont Arcade for its historical merit. Since the Glenmont Shopping Center was built in several pieces, it's broken up into 15 different lots and has 13 different owners. That will make both redeveloping the shopping center hard, but preserving any part of it even harder.

The arcade itself has just one owner, Greenhill Capital, a Bethesda-based company that owns a third of downtown Wheaton. There are no current plans for redeveloping the Glenmont Shopping Center, though Greenhill may be sympathetic to calls for preserving all or part of the arcade. Company head Lenny Greenberg, who I interviewed earlier this year, has stressed the importance of preserving Wheaton's local culture. When he redeveloped the Anchor Inn, a once-popular restaurant there, he chose to save the 1950's-era sign.

Whipple told me that there's "nothing like" the Glenmont Arcade in Montgomery County, and he's right. As he wrote in a recent blog post, it's better to "reuse buildings than to throw them in the trash." Do we have to throw the Glenmont Arcade in the trash to improve this community? We won't know unless we give this building a fair shake and consider it for historic preservation.

Check out this slideshow of the Glenmont Arcade then and now.

Popularise lets local developers and small businesses post project proposals and receive public input. Users can submit ideas for what they would like to see in these developments, and read ideas submitted by others. If you like someone else's idea, you can click "Build it!" to vote for it, and the developer may incorporate the ideas that get the most votes.

In addition to developers, property owners may solicit advice from Popularise users. The site lets owners post a chalkboard in front of their properties that asks "What would YOU build here?" or "How would you build your city?" This is another variation on the meme developed in post-Katrina New Orleans, where people were given "I wish this were [blank]" stickers and invited to stick them on boarded-up buildings to send a message to their owners.

The Miller brothers began looking at commercial real estate 2 years ago, relying on traditional funding sources such as private equity firms and accredited investors. But they realized that these investors didn't really know the neighborhoods they bought into. So they came up with a new business model that relies on small investments from people who live and work around the property in which they choose to take a stake.

Ben Miller cautions developers against taking the word of the majority of Popularise users as final, calling it "a conversation, not an election." "The most popular girl in school is not necessarily the girl you want to be married to," he explained. "People may not see that the fifth most popular idea could actually be best for the area."

The newer site launched by the Miller brothers offers users the chance to actually put their money behind their votes. Fundrise is a "place-based investment platform." For even small dollar amounts, people can buy shares of ownership in real estate or businesses. Investors help the kinds of venues they want to get off the ground, as well as hopefully to earn a return.

Fundrise finds business opportunities that they think people in the community will be excited about and manages people's investments in them, including distribution of dividends and regular financial reporting, plus investor perks. Like stocks and mutual funds, the Securities and Exchange Commission regulates investments in Fundrise projects.

Fundrise's first project is the creation of a "curated culinary and fashion boutique," called Marketto, at 1351 H Street NE. Marketto will give many local vendors a place to market their food and clothing. Fundrise has raised $216,300 for the project so far, about 65% of their goal of $325,000. Fundrise will pay dividends to investors from the rent that Marketto pays to building owner Fundrise 1351.

If the Popularise and Fundrise concept expands, it will give citizens the power to be proactive when it comes to what is built in their city, rather than just reactive to whatever big developers propose. With tools like this, people can actually shape the kind of development they want in their cities. For example, if you want to see a small healthy food market near you instead of a mini-mart, you can get like-minded fellow citizens together to invest in one.

People in our region increasingly choose vibrant, walkable places that are connected by public transportation and bicycle networks. If more developers and businesses follow the Miller brothers' lead, neighborhood people-power can further drive the decision making progress, and more residents will get what they want.