L’Occitane Coming To F Street! (931 F St NW)

Oh boy. I have a feeling Mrs Columbo will be picking up some of their products often.

Awesome! I think this is wonderful news. I just love their products. I can’t wait.

I love that F St is turning into a stretch of high end stores and restaurants and not another row of fast food joints and tacky tourist traps.

Yay! I absolutely love this store, and it will fit in well with the other F St. shops.

Now, if we can just turn Platinum into a cool restaurant (or even a Cheesecake Factory) we would be making some real progess there on F Street….

NO CHEESECAKE FACTORY. I think we need a really good, traditional Italian restaurant in the neighborhood. OK, well even CHEESECAKE would be better than Platinum.

But I’m super excited about L’Occitane. I wonder how long their build-out will take.

Nice!

#5: It will happen — probably after the economy takes a turn for the better. I know that was the owner’s long-range plan.

L’Occitane is a great fit for the ‘hood and that stretch of F Street. I know many of you doubt it, but Jemal and others DO have a plan — and what appears to be empty retail is either spoken for, planned, or has a deal in development. Be patient — Rome was not built in a day.

Would it KILL the developers to get a CVS in one of those fronts? I work a block away and while I love jewelry and cheese shops, its a good 15 minute walk to the nearest CVS.
It might dampen the vibe they’re going for, but it would be incredibly useful.

CherriSpryte: that’s gotta be flamebait, but we’ll entertain the comment. There’s a CVS at 8th & E St.. If you are truly one block away from the 900 block of F St, then it should not take you 15 minutes to walk to 8th & E St.

You HAD a traditional Italian restaurant called Ristorante A.V. They couldn’t afford to stay downtown and Jemal bought them out.

I am glad PQ is attracting so many high end national chains so now I don’t have to even bother leaving the district to find lovely cookie-cutter boring a$$ home furnishings……..Im so excited that I can buy my dull boring couch at West Elm and relax on it while I burn my pumpkin seed vanilla key lime lavender sandlewood candles

#11, didn’t Jemal buy out A.V. (for a reportedly high price)? I’m not sure you can blame the public, A.V., or Jemal for that one. They owned a popular restaurant in a location poised for change. Everyone (but us A.V. fans) won out in that deal. A.V.’s owners got rich, Jemal got his land, but the neighborhood lost a fun restaurant.

A.V. was inedible red checkered tablecloth slop. A can of Chef Boyardee is more authentic. Good riddance to old rubbish.

Suburbanites move to the city & bring the mall with them. Great news…

Columbo – If someone wanted to re-open a place like A.V., they probably wouldn’t pick PQ to do it. Now, if Dino wanted to open a satellite restaurant, THAT would work in PQ. It’s at the right price point and level of sophistication.

I agree monkeyrotica. My point was that it wasn’t lack of patrons that closed down AV, they had plenty of patrons. The land they owned was worth a lot more to Jemal than it was to AV’s owners.

AV was a pit and the owner/manager whatever was a homophobic tool. Good riddance.
Joe- [comment fragment redacted in accordance with PQ Living comment policy] I think you’re being naive if you thought the streets would be dominated by homegrown Mom and Pops in area as expensive and hot at PQ.

Guess I’m in the minority, I loved A/V and never had a bad experience with the management. The food was definitely hit or miss, but categorizing it as “Chef Boyardee” seems pretty harsh.

Nope. You’re not in the minority, Columbo. I’ve been eating at A.V. since the early ’70s. It was what it was. Now you get an office block for your troubles.

Conversely, there are plenty of gay-friendly establishments where the food is garbage. Hamburger Mary’s anyone?

Excellent Point Anon 15

I never tried A.V., but as an interesting sidenote, it was Justice Scalia’s favorite restaurant in DC.

I only tried AV in its last days, and I thought the food was awful. Plus, they had some odd items on the menu – who ever heard of roast beef parmagiana?

R20-Um, I get that one doesn’t need to be homophobic or gay friendly to service garbage. It was just an experiece I had at AV.

On a side note if you want some great Pizza, a new place in CH just opened up called Pete’s Apizza. Friendly service too.

JNo – [comment fragment redacted in accordance with PQ Living comment policy] maybe I am naive – are you sure commercial rents are high in PQ? omg I had no idea…
Rents are high in Georgetown, I know that from living there several years, but somehow they still get the best stores [Kate Spade et al.] & still have Cady’s Alley & antique stores & a fair number of independent stores, including an excellent independent book store [Bridge Street Books next to the Four Seasons]. Rents are high on Rodeo Drive, but I haven’t seen many chains there.
[comment fragment redacted in accordance with PQ Living comment policy]

#18 JNo and #25 joe,
just a reminder about our comment policy…no “you should move tos” and/or corresponding responses. if you wish to point out after the fact comment policy violations please e-mail us at pqliving [at] gmail.com.

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thanks…the Management