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| Retail/office space for lease at View 14, 14/Fla. |
Over the past couple of years, a number of new condo and apartment buildings have been built on 14th Street in southern Columbia Heights and the U Street area, from about W Street to Clifton. Most of them have included spaces for street level retail, and as you go farther north those spaces are empty. And more new buildings with more retail are to come.
Around W and V Streets there’s the Yes Organic Market and Eatonville, but that’s pretty much it; the other spots in those buildings and in others like View 14 are empty. Solea at 14th and Florida has street level retail, all of which is now offices for the Greater Washington Sports Alliance, a non-profit which tries to bring the area together via sports.
This sounds like a worthy cause, but it’s maybe not the most vibrant tenant. Or is it?
I think part of this is a chicken-and-egg problem. There isn’t much foot traffic because there isn’t much to do, but in order to get more businesses (and thus more things to do), you’d need more foot traffic. Restaurants are good for foot traffic, of course, but you don’t see much from one or two isolated ones. I don’t see people walking around from Eatonville, they basically go there to eat then leave.
So how do you get more people? Offices will provide some daytime traffic, as those folks need to eat and conceivably could shop or get drinks after work, but there’d need to be more offices to generate enough traffic for lots of businesses, and of course those would be empty on the weekends. Banks, dry cleaners, cell phone stores and such, which seem to be easy tenants to get, wouldn’t provide much foot traffic.
It’s almost like there needs to be a critical mass of interesting stores and restaurants to generate that traffic. I’m not sure I see that happening for some time. Thoughts from anyone else? It’s a confusing and complicated issue.
