Auto Dealer Coming Downtown?

I’m all about development and growth of the downtown area but is anyone else concerned about an over-influx of high end retail / developments? Yes, it adds to the downtown. Yes, it may increase property value. AND Yes it may change the face of the current residents in downtown. I don’t mean those you may consider “unwanted”. I mean YOU and ME. The everyday modest income DC’er who doesn’t want to nor can afford to own a 100+ electric car or live in Ashford’s 3,100 minimum per month lease apartments. I’m just saying………think about our neighborhood 15 years from now. Is this direction you want it to go?

An exact example of what I’m talking about. This kind of influence on the neighborhood can have unintended consequences. Reference D’Acqua Closing in next thread….

“Update: I just spoke to Febbraro about the closing. He declined to reveal specific numbers, but said that “the landlord got a little too greedy” and asked for a dramatic rent increase on the space. Febbraro wasn’t willing to pay it, and decided “to play hardball.”

Saw several TESLA baseball hats on tourists at the FDR memorial today. Hmmmmm………..

@555 – I think what your describing is a higher class of gentrification. I make a somewhat modest income for the neighborhood and rarely ever eat at our small plate big price dining establishments. However I recognized PQ was on this trajectory before I moved to the area and I embrace it. The city has invested a great deal in PQ to stimulate growth and this is what growth brings.

I’m encouraged that the growth is bringing highly acclaimed NYC and international restaurants*rather than the same chains you’ll find in hundreds of suburbs. Not all the big name newcomers are expensive either. Hill Country and Carmine’s will be more affordable to me than Indebleu or Cafe Atlantico. Some PQ businesses like D’Acqua will be priced out along the way. You hope they rebound and relocate to other parts of the city like 9th Street in Shaw, 14th Street or H Street NE and help lift those areas up.

In parting, I’m sure many of us work in corporations/firms where growth is expected every year. We live in a dynamic high investment area where the principle also applies.

Anyone have an idea about where exactly this would go? Doesn’t seem like there’s any open space on F east of 9th Street. The Atlantic building, like most Jemal developments in their early years, has tons of empty retail, but would any of that suit a car showroom? Given the options available on F Street, this would appear to be more of a showpiece than an actual car dealership.

@555

I think this definitely falls into the “be careful what you wish for category”. We wanted economic development and now we have it…with the higher prices that it brings.

I am starting to feel it to. I make a moderate salary for the area, and definitely cannot afford to be eating at these new fancy spots every day. The new sticker shock really hit home yesterday, when I took my girlfriend to Churchkeys for dinner, after (hearing they have a poutine appetizer).

The poutine was tiny…about half of what I expected for $10. The real shocker though were the drinks. I got 10 oz of belgian ale for $9…pricey, but not nearly as pricey as my girlfriend’s drink as it turns out. Not the world’s biggest beer fan, she ordered a glass of sparkling wine for $12. The flute that arrive was maybe 1/5 or 1/4 full…about the size you’d expect from a sample. In fact, we dined at cafe Nema on U street the night before and they gave us a sample of Savignon Blanc to try that was larger than this pour! We seriously paid $12 for maybe 1.5 oz of sparkling wine.

Clearly this is dishonest. Pouring full glasses and charging more per glass dissuades customers that don’t want to pay so much for a glass of wine, so instead they charge less but pour quarter-full glasses. They should at least list the oz. sizes on the wine list.

Lesson 1: Economic development is a double-edged sword.
Lesson 2: Don’t go to Churchkeys.

I find it humorous when people complain about how bad this neighborhood used to be then complain when people and businesses want to invest in this neighborhood. You can’t have it both ways. Welcome to Capitalism, for all its flaws, it’s the society we live in and businesses that want to grow seek out neighborhoods that they feel will enable them to grow. We as stakeholders should be excited that national and international businesses want to be in our neighborhood. No one is putting a gun to your head to eat at Indebleu, Rasika (which I love by the way), TenPenh… instead you can go to more modest locations in the neighborhood or nicer restaurants in more developing neighborhoods in the city. Go to Moby Dick, Naan and Beyond, Vapiano… all delicious and affordable options.

I would rather have a car show room (think Mercedes or Peugeot stores on the Champs Elysees in Paris) than a parking-lot style car dealership any day. And yes, like those, it is very high-end (and Penn Quarter is not the Champs Elysees), but heck, at least it’s an electric car and a very sporty, interesting one at that.

Look at it as Penn Quarter being a part of a potential move towards electric cars. It’s some of these high-end cars that might ‘drive’ the R&D for battery capacity and electric car performance leading the development of more reasonably priced electric cars in the long run.

Maybe it will go in the old DC SAMS location… I see the interior was demo’d recently.