What are the commercial lease rates are at Friendship Heights?
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Anonymous
Pp here. Yes, linens and things - was trying to remember its name. Michael’s had been a nice addition - hope it survives in this location. |
Anonymous
Jiffy Lube and drive throughs and dollar stores in Friendship Heights? No thanks - I live in DC because I hate the suburbs but if I need to slum it can still go there. Luckily DC has made new drive thrus illegal. And otherwise your comment is weird - FH has 2 Starbucks and TT another and there are numerous Karate and Yoga studios. Also the only type of housing that is available now on the DC side is "family housing" whatever that even means. |
Anonymous
The new owners screwed the place up. They changed the menu but didn't improve it and raised the prices and chased off some well liked long time staff which reduced the revenue from the bar. Sometimes if something isn't broke you don't need to fix it. |
Anonymous
What are you talking about - you are going to put single family homes on Wisconsin Avenue or even Western? Good luck selling those! Friendship Heights problem is it is a regional destination retail center that can't compete against other regional destination retail centers that are bigger in a retail environment where lots of stores are going out of business. Friendship Heights has too much retail and not enough residential. Redeveloping the Lord and Taylor site and Mazza into mixed use buildings with residential above a lesser amount of retail would bring things more into balance and as is the case in most mixed use buildings the residential would subsidize the retail giving the landlord more flexibility to lease to start-ups and small businesses. And there are some pretty good reasons why a bunch of the businesses failed, primary among them being that even in a wealthy neighborhood there are still a finite number of people willing to pay $900 for a blender at Sur La Table or $200 for a meal for two at Range (which had 400 seats!) or spend $800 for a handbag or $1400 for a suit at Neimans and that is not even getting into the bonkers luxury stuff across the line in MD. It is important to remember that neither Chevy Chase Pavilion nor the Chevy Chase Center (where Tiffany and Giant are) used to be all upscale and when the two properties re-developed they jacked up the rents and brought in a bunch of luxury retailers and expensive restaurants almost all of which have failed - it is true that Steinmart is also in bankruptcy but they outlasted Range by several years. The Cheesecake Factory and World Market have both been among the most successful stores in each respective chain and the Embassy Suites has long been a cash cow for the chain and despite ridiculously high rents the office buildings on both sides of the line were doing quite well pre-covid as were the 2 Starbucks within a block of each other. Chevy Chase Pavilion in particular is really poorly managed - I've known for years the guy who runs the little newsstand in the basement and in the midst of a pandemic they are jacking his rents despite having retail that has been empty for years! They should be grateful to have anyone in that space and instead are squeezing him out. They also ran out the Washington Sport and Health that used to be in the basement and used to bring lots of people in the neighborhood in every day who would then shop at Starbucks and CVS and that space also remains empty. |
Anonymous
| Because the median age in friendship heights is 1,000 years old. Everything dies there. |
Anonymous
Interesting comment that is probably true of the high rise condo buildings on the MD side of the line in actual Friendship Heights, MD which were built in the 70's but that will start to change over the next few years. But on the DC side the neighborhood has really turned over in the last 10 years and there are now a lot of families with children. |
Anonymous
I guess it depends on what you mean by “luster”. FH supported stores like Saks, Lord & Taylor, Woodies and Tiffany’s and Brooks Brothers for several over 50 years — and comfortably supported the addition of Neimans and the Mazda Gallerie along with other high end stores for many decades. Fashionable stores like Louis Vuitton, Jimmy Choo and even the Barney’s Coop were a bad fit for the neighborhood. It was a big deal that they decamped to City Center, but it was an even bigger deal that the CCLC horribly misjudged the shopping habits, needs and culture of the neighborhood. There’s plenty of people who are eager to shop — when the mix of shopping opportunities is right. |
Anonymous
“Revert”? When was it ever “ single family or townhouse type” (sic)? The Friendship Heights shopping area included a streetcar terminal, then, a bus terminal, private estates, a small number of single family homes, and starting in the ‘50s, upscale department stores and shopping. While there were single family homes on the side streets, and in communities such as Drummond and Somerset, the areas off of Wisconsin Avenue near Western and Military road haven’t been townhouses — however “delightful “ in the past century or so — if ever, have they? |
Anonymous
I actually like the look of the Lord and Taylor and Mazza Gallarie structures there. If they could figure out how to drop two stories of three or four bedroom apartments on top of them, that would be amazing (no more one bedroom or studio apartments please). There is more super inefficient parking back there than you can imagine. There has to be a way to better use that bit of land. Again, I am NOT talking a bunch of single bedroom apartments. I don't understand the PP saying that nobody lives on Western Ave. There are single family homes all down both the DC and MD sides of Western Ave. Drive from Mazza to Mass Ave and you will only pass SFH's. I don't think that you replace Mazza with single family homes but that comment from PP just shows that they probably don't live there or have any familiarity with the area outside of GGW or some other blog. Redeveloping into mixed use buildings is simply a throw away comment. What is the retail? There is retail now, what are you going to replace the retail with? Why is a Karate studio under a mixed use development any more successful than the one there right now. Mixed use is simply sales talk. I thought that the article made an interesting point when it said that there is no Business Development Group for the area. That is amazing and seems like an oversite. So with these businesses relocating for years to City Center and Bethesda, the remaining businesses never thought, 'how do we keep this thing going before we all are out of business?' Cheesecake Factory and Maggianos have figured something out. It is funny, but living in the area, those are the only two restaurants that I have not eaten in. Sushi Ko, just down the street actually moved to the area from Glover Park (Larger location, though I might have liked the GP location better) I agree with someone who said it earlier, it is a shame that there is not a 'regular' grocery store there. The Whole Foods is amazing and the Amazon Go will probably be nice, but sometimes my kids just want name brand stuff. Actually sometimes I just want name brand stuff. The Pavilion was actually a hidden gem. The Embassy Suites gave the interior a hotel lobby like feel that was kind of nice. It seemed like it was thriving back in the pottery barn world market days. I think somebody was correct that Pottery Barn moved to collocate all of its names along one street in Bethesda. Look, the area has ALL of the ingredients all of the densifiers are always screaming about. Lots of space, zoned correctly and metro access. It is on a regional seam. Everything spells success. It will be amazing to see if the city and the neighborhood come together with a robust plan to reimagine the area an not simply 'density boxes' of one bedroom apartments. |
Anonymous
| I think it would be great if they tore down Mazza and turned the whole footprint - mall + parking lot and maybe the L&T site too into a smaller scale (height wise) development that’s a mix of housing and retail. Maybe have a pedestrian mall (not on Wisc ave but between Wisc and the road where L&T is) so it’s a more of a village type area and attract stores that nearby residents need. |
Anonymous
I am not sure why we have to tear either down. We are supposed to be recycling more of our construction materials, not simply starting over. The buildings are unique. Your idea is workable though, build the Friendship heights row by somehow using the massive parking lots adjacent to Mazza and Lord and Taylor. Give a nice walking row with restaurants and shops and a courtyard for Christmas markets and such. Oh and during the renovation, let AMC finally build their stadium seating and food and beverage idea out. All in all we end up with a few hundred more housing units (three and four bedroom, not the awful studio and one bedroom that developers have the density bros fooled with.) I want to walk or drive or metro to the new destination and then be able to spend the afternoon or evening shopping and walking/eating etc. |
Anonymous
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I remember the big robbery at one of the "Collection" stores. 10K worth of handbags stolen!
Turned out it was 3. |
Anonymous
Dunno if they "screwed the place up" but they freely admitted not doing their homework before buying the building, which needed significant structural upgrades to make any restaurant there viable. It was that more than anything that doomed it. The building was falling apart before they bought it and now they're stuck with the bill. |
Anonymous
Anthropologie - one I miss the most - opened a bigger store up in Bethesda. H&M - the workers there were bummed they were closing as well - they said the store did well with numbers - H&M was just having larger issues and closing some stores. Sur La Table is a victim of COVID. At least we have Michael's still. I miss Loehman's still. Does anyone know if World Market is leaving? Went up this weekend - that mall is so dead and World Market while busy had half the inventory it usually does. |
Anonymous
It wouldn't surprise me if World Market and Old Navy bolt that place, tho maybe World Market was preparing the store for Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas? I feel like this time of year is when you start seeing these types of places completely get made over for the holidays. |