SoulCycle on Wisconsin Avenue

April 23, 2015

The trendy spin studio SoulCycle will take over a former Georgetown restaurant and hookah bar later this year. The company has been growing in and around D.C. over the past few months, most recently opening locations in the West End in 2014 and Bethesda earlier this year.

Two new locations are in the works for the Washington area this year, according to SoulCycle, and the company has signed a lease for 1024 Wisconsin Ave. NW, where the poorly regarded Prince Cafe closed last fall. The Georgetown SoulCycle will have a 56-bike studio to host its signature classes. SoulCycle’s classes combine spinning on stationary bikes with upper-body workouts. The new location will include a SoulCycle lifestyle boutique.

New Management at Georgetown Gas Station


The Georgetown gas station at 2715 Pennsylvania Ave N.W. is under new management.

The former Lukoil/Georgetown Getty has become a Valero gas station.

Abe Sayyad, station manager, said the change took place at the beginning of April.

“We provide the lowest gas prices of any station in the area,” Sayyad said.

In addition to offering low price fuel and affordable automobile repair services, the gas station is working to bring more convenience store elements to the location, including snacks and drinks.

Valero is currently in the process of incorporating the store. The transition should be completed within the next few weeks, according to Sayyad.

“We’re happy to be in the area,” Sayyad said.

The D.C. council prohibited the sale of property containing a gas station for a use of any other kind without prior approval from the Gas Station Advisory Board.

George Town Club Welcomes New GM


Carolyn Papetti is set to become the new general manager of the George Town Club by June 1. She will replace Christian Broder, who will depart by the end of this month. Both Broder and Papetti are working at the club during the transition. Papetti arrives from Nick & Toni’s in East Hampton, New York.

Council Rejects Corizon’s Bid for Jail Health Care Contract


After an intense lobbying battle, the D.C. Council rejected a $66-million proposal by Corizon Health to provide care at the Central Detention Facility, which has an inmate capacity of 2,164. The April 14 vote was 6-to-5 against Corizon. Mayor Muriel Bowser had supported the awarding of the contract to the Maryland-based, for-profit company, which Council member David Grosso called “scandal-prone.” According to the Washington Post, a Bowser spokesperson said that the Council’s decision would compel the District “to spend more on inmate medical services in the short term while a new bidding process is conducted.” Inmate advocates celebrated the vote, which they said would lead to better care for D.C. inmates.

Employee Buys Georgetown Hairstyling


“There will be no changes,” said Vanussa Mendes, who with her husband purchased Georgetown Hairstyling, the century-old barber shop business on 35th Street. Most of the staffers are women, who cut men’s hair only.

“It will be operated in the same way as before for our clients,” Mendes said. The men’s haircut spot has been a favorite of Georgetown residents and students for decades. Mendes bought the business from retired barber Rigo Landa, who sold it to his stepson Ed Lara a few years ago. The 55-year-old Lara died suddenly last June of a heart attack, leaving the future of the shop uncertain.

New owner Mendes takes over the barber shop with employees Veronica Corado, who has worked there for more than 20 years, Orathai Jaran and Nguyen Kha. Previously, Mendes worked at Aveda in Bethesda. She hails from Brazil and lives in Falls Church with her husband and 13-year-old daughter. [gallery ids="102054,134559" nav="thumbs"]

Purrr: Cat Cafe Gets Zoning Approval

April 14, 2015

First came news that Kickstarter-darling Crumbs & Whiskers leased space on O Street. The planned cat café, the city’s first, has now obtained the necessary zoning approvals to open. Owner Kanchan Singh told DCist that the café is “solidly tracking towards a summer opening.”

EagleBank: Banking on Politics

April 13, 2015

EagleBank is best known in Georgetown as a local community bank, specializing in providing its customers with personal care. The bank is also well known for its involvement with D.C.’s booming restaurant scene, serving over 100 area restaurants including the Black Restaurant Group (behind BlackSalt), José Andrés’s growing ThinkFoodGroup empire and local Georgetown spots like the Peacock Café, J.Paul’s and Paulo’s.

After successfully tackling commercial and personal banking on a community level, to the tune of over $3 billion in loans in and around the District, EagleBank is looking to provide banking services to Washington’s most celebrated multi-billion-dollar industry: politics.

With the hiring of John Vogt as senior vice president and Joanne Parker as assistant vice president, EagleBank is pivoting to where the big money is in Washington, the political arena. As the 2016 election season heats up, EagleBank is looking to steal the business of super-regional banks like SunTrust and PNC and – even bigger – national fish like Bank of America and Wells Fargo, by taking a community-oriented approach to the commercial banking needs of D.C.’s trade associations, political committees, unions, lobbying firms and advocacy groups.

It all starts with Vogt, a 30-plus-year political and policy veteran who worked as an operative on the Hill, at the Treasury Department under President George H. W. Bush and as the head of the Washington office of the now-defunct Bond Market Association. (The Bond Market Association was a part of the trade association merger that resulted in the formation of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association or SIFMA.)

After bouncing between Tennessee, West Virginia and New Jersey growing up, Vogt visited Washington on a trip with other promising youths on a Hearst Foundation fellowship. The group met President Carter, Vice President Mondale and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Vogt was most impressed by a day spent shadowing Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee on the trip. He told the senator that he was applying to Georgetown University, to which Baker replied, “If you go there, why don’t you come and work for me?” Vogt ended up at Georgetown and that’s exactly what he did.

Years later, with a young family at home and Jack Abramoff in the news, Vogt made a career change, starting Chain Bridge Bank near home in Mclean. “A community bank is what I’m built for,” he says. He cherished life as a part of the McLean community, volunteering to coach his kids’ Little League teams, becoming treasurer of the McLean Community Foundation and teaching financial literacy and setting up a student-run bank at their school.

Vogt was having fun, but started itching for a new challenge. Upgrading his credentials at Barclays, where he got licensed and registered as a broker-dealer and investment advisor, he found himself missing the “people-ness” of community banking. His office at Barclays was housed in the same building as EagleBank Vice Chairman Bob Pincus’s office, and Pincus kept after him to meet. The subject: banking for the political sector, something Pincus had been intimately involved in during the 1980s and ’90s.

One conversation led to another. Vogt ended up joining EagleBank’s enterprise banking team in early 2015, along with Parker, who had previously worked as chief financial officer of the Republican Governors Association.

The freshly hired duo is in charge of bringing in business from the big money players in Washington, regardless of political affiliation. With inside knowledge of how political operations work, Vogt and Parker are hoping to bring EagleBank’s customized and personalized brand of commercial banking to D.C.’s countless political organizations.

Parker says, “We can go in anticipating what they [clients] might need off the bat and understanding where they’re coming from with a lot of the things they’re asking for, and their wants and desires.” As for their political affiliations, Vogt says, “Bankers keep their mouths shut. We are a bank for organizations of all sizes and all entities.”

The work itself isn’t very sexy, but Vogt and Parker hope that their know-how, networks and experience make EagleBank a more attractive place for political organizations to bank. As campaigns ramp up for the coming elections, EagleBank is launching a campaign of its own: a bid to take business from the bigger banks, using its trademark tailored approach.

Warby Parker on M Street

April 9, 2015

Online hipster eyeglass outlet Warby Parker, announced Thursday that the company had signed a lease in Georgetown at 3225 M St. NW. The announcement follows news that Warby Parker will open its first Washington, D.C., location in Shaw, at the Shay development at 8th Street and Florida Avenue. The Georgetown space used to house True Religion.

Maxime Restaurant in Former Guards Space


Lastly, casual French steak house and mussel bar Maxime opens today at 2915 M St. NW. The concept comes from Moe and Joe Idrissi along with Ben Kirane of Thunder Burger and Bodega fame. The location formerly housed Rialto. Before that, from 1966 to 2012, it was home to the legendary Guards Restaurant. In addition to steak frites, mussels and French hors d’oeuvres, there is a Belgian-inspired list of specialty beers and cocktails. Maxime is open daily from 4 to 11 p.m.

Food Delivery Service DoorDash Debuts


DoorDash debuted in D.C. at the end of March, combining elements of food-delivery apps like GrubHub and Seamless with the contractor-driver model of Uber and Lyft. DoorDash delivers only from restaurants in Northwest D.C. and only within a four-mile radius of your restaurant of choice. So far, Bethesda Bagels, Ben’s Chili Bowl, Pho 14, Busboys & Poets and Chipotle have partnered with the service. DoorDash differs from Seamless and GrubHub in that it charges a flat $7 for fee food delivery and the driver, not the restaurant, is in charge of pick up and delivery. DoorDash promises successful delivery within one hour of an order.