News & Politics

Georgetowner • June 18, 2013

The Georgetown BID celebrated another year of representing the village’s business interests at the BID Annual Meeting on June 10, held at the Four Seasons Hotel. Neighbors and business owners alike came out to mingle, tip a few back and hear the BID’s take on a business market often subjected to a fair share of doomsaying.

There you would have never guessed it. The buffet spread was impressive, laughter reverberated around the room and a few celebrities even popped in at the gathering’s fringes (reports circulated that Laura Bush stopped by to say hello). In one corner, BID marketing staffers Debbie Young and Nancy Miyahara presided over a cut-and-paste project where participants could cut pictures from magazines and affix them to one of several sheets of butcher paper labeled with a specific neighborhood-centric theme, such as “My Hopes for Georgetown,” “Shopping in Georgetown,” and “Georgetown Makes me Feel…”

Some guests turned their nose at the project, others gutted entire periodicals to get their ideas down on paper, so to speak. In the end, the activity highlighted the theme of the evening: that a successful Georgetown will rely on a vast collection of images and ideas to form a single identity as a commerce center that can draw business from visitors and Washington natives alike. The BID calls it their “brand review,” and earlier this year hired The Roan Group, a local consulting firm, to help articulate Georgetown’s “brand” and derive an edge from it. The firm’s principal Neill Roan gave a presentation on his company’s findings that evening, and BID board President Crystal Sullivan delivered an upbeat speech on the neighborhood’s business prospects.

“[The BID looks] forward to 2010 with anticipation and also optimism,” she said.

So far, BID’s sanguine outlook appears to be dead on. Sullivan was excited to announce that at long last the blue bus, often thought of as the runt of the bus routes traversing through Georgetown, would be assimilated into the enormously popular Circulator system beginning Sept. 1, 2010. The new Circulator route, which extends through Georgetown between Rosslyn station and Dupont Circle, will mirror its predecessor, which has for a decade ferried riders in and out of the mass transit-challenged Georgetown, despite recurring funding lapses that nearly axed the program on several occasions.

The numbers also looked good for BID-sponsored community events, which in the past year have grown enormously in both popularity and controversy (the exorbitant budget for the Merriment Christmas celebration ignited particular ire among board members last summer). Nevertheless, public attendance has been on the rise, with a record 12,000 attendees and 30 restaurants participating in the October 2009 Taste of Georgetown event. The April 2010 French Market also enjoyed record attendance, and charitable donations collected for the Georgetown Ministry Center through BID-sponsored events increased 10 percent over last year. In September, Sullivan said, the BID plans to organize a Georgetown chapter of Fashion’s Night Out, Vogue magazine’s international fashion gala for charity. At present, Georgetown plans to be the only District neighborhood involved with the project.

Finally, the BID’s finances were reported to be in healthy shape. Board Vice President Andrew Blair said the organization had budgeted a revenue increase of over a quarter million dollars in 2010 (totaling $4.8 million), while anticipating an increase in program expenses to $4.4 million, nearly equaling the total revenue figure from 2009.

Afterward, Neill Roan took the stage and delivered a slideshow presentation on the brand identity of Georgetown, based on data and interviews gathered from local businesses and residents. In his presentation, big on aphorism but hazier on more practical conclusions, Roan called the Georgetown cachet “an identity driven by perception, myth … and experience,” citing its stature as a unique historical district seldom matched nationwide in both historical preservation and proximity to a major city. The direct benefits of this identity, however, remained unclear.

Roan did have a few more concrete responses to typical complaints about the neighborhood, notably its scarcity of on-street parking and inaccessibility for mass transit passengers. He also questioned the usefulness of Georgetown’s liquor moratorium, an ordinance he called “a barrier to new restaurant development.”
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Gary Tischler •

David Roffman, for many years the publisher and owner of The Georgetowner, was feted with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Georgetown Business Association at its Senior Advisor Luncheon at the City Tavern Club June 16.

That brought out not only members of the Georgetown Senior Center, which Roffman was instrumental in keeping alive after the passing of founder Virginia Allen last year, but also a lot of other Georgetown old-timers who appreciated Roffman’s long-time status as a village historian, promoter, champion and swain. At an occasion like this, you tend to hear some phrases repeated often, among them “I haven’t seen you in ages,” “I thought you were … never mind” and “No thanks, I don’t drink anymore.”

Good memories and some irony, story-telling and laughter were the hallmarks of this occasion. Roffman had once been president of the Georgetown Business Association and now he had the group’s Lifetime Achievement Award to go with the Citizens Association of Georgetown’s Peter Belin Award. Not bad for a guy who would be the first to admit that he’s not much of a businessman.

You might suspect that his singular achievement for which he was being honored was that of being a highly visible, active and energetic publisher of The Georgetowner after founder Ami Stewart passed away. That would be about half right, or even less than that.

You might suspect that the award was about a love affair — the one between Roffman and Georgetown and its people and history. People like Sally Davidson (widow of Stuart Davidson, the founder of Clyde’s), Earl Allen, the seldom-seen Mike O’Harro, king of disco, the Wheelers and the Weavers, Pat Burke, who was in his young cop days Georgetown’s live-in policeman and is now MPD’s homeland security assistant chief, Grace Bateman and a host of others, all of whom showed up along with a few folks from the senior center. And where there’s a newspaper publisher, there are candidates for office —Kwame Brown and Vincent Orange, both vying for city council chairman, also made an appearance.

Small community newspapers are tricky businesses — they’re usually free, they depend on the kindness of local businesses to provide advertising revenue, they reflect and report on and are reflective of the community they deserve. With all due respect to other such publications in this city, no other paper is so associated with place than The Georgetowner. And it’s fair to say that Roffman, when he owned and published the paper, reflected the community in all of its facets.

He wasn’t just a publisher, and his efforts weren’t only about stories, scoops, ads, deadlines and headlines. He was the village’s biggest cheerleader and booster, acting as if Georgetown were a particular lovely, elegant lady who needed to be helped across the street. He sometimes acted as if she were a party girl, to be sure, but that was part of the times.

Roffman would do stuff — he hosted parties, fund-raisers, publicized charity events (at good old reliable Nathans), promoted festivals (the annual Francis Scott Key day), institutions (the Georgetown Senior Center was a particular favorite) and events (Volta Park Day). He got involved — he went to ANC Meetings and CAG meetings, not just to report on them, but to speak at them and make himself heard. At times, he was brilliantly inventive — when a print run came back with two blank middle pages, he turned them into material to pick up doggy poop, a particularly hot issue at the time.

He had an unabashed passion for this place — the Old Stone House, the university, the cemeteries, the people from the Harrimans to Sky King. At the publishing level, he was more citizen than editor. And he was an eclectic original doing it, from the elephant vac effort to a startling proposal launched in the paper for the village to secede from the city.

If one of the great folks of Georgetown passed away, an Alsop, a Bruce, a Harriman, it was duly noted, but so was the passing of Freddie the Bum in a phone booth. If the paper highlighted galleries, antique shops and Earl Allen’s clothing store, Commander Salamander and Tramps got equal space.

In the pages of Roffman’s Georgetowner, the neighborhood became full bodied — it was the sleepy village and the noisy night time, it was contemporary and historic all at once, it was a classy place but it was also democratic.

So, the achievement was not just that David Roffman published The Georgetowner for many years. He became, whether he was here or not, a Georgetowner in full.

Garrett Faulkner •

There was a little bit of a ruckus in the neighborhood last Friday. Perhaps you noticed it?

Okay, unless you rather presciently avoided lower Wisconsin around rush hour, unplugged your television and modem for the day or simply live in a cave, there’s probably no conceivable way you didn’t hear about the afternoon opening of the District’s first Apple store, the latest of the glass-housed, sleek-walled temples of cool to be added to the tech world’s register. The store, which last year gracefully navigated Georgetown’s notorious crucible of historical preservation edicts, had been so ceaselessly ballyhooed and elevated in the news and blogosphere that the formal announcement of the opening two weeks ago seemed a kind of deflated letdown, the journey’s quiet terminus, a gentle nudge to remind us that, oh yeah, it is just a store.

Yet no one in the snaking, variegated line of the iFaithful, stretching down 150 yards and curling around to M Street, seemed to believe that. In fact, if the Apple zeitgeist has taught us anything the past decade, it’s that the company (and the culture devoted to it) does nothing quietly, nor does it — ahem — simply open retail stores. Once dismissed as a caricature of serious computing, the PC’s irksome kid brother grew up in the 2000s into a hipster wunderkind, a sexy foil to the boxy, metallic slabs that spoonfed office drones their daily dose of Solitaire, PowerPoint slides and the occasional fatal blue screen. With a Mac, you could do stuff, the stuff that mattered, everything from mixing audio to launching a blog to renovating your baby videos with tasteful scene cuts and pop music overdub. By the end of the decade, the Mac, with the help of a take-no-prisoners marketing campaign, has become a rally point for the poets and painters of the digital age, a muse for the everyman, a culture where creation, not computation, is the watchword. The Harvard-pedigreed world of Bill Gates doggedly pursued productivity; Apple made it all about artistry. Later developments, such as the iPod and iPhone, have so securely cemented themselves in the popular consciousness and vernacular that they became must-haves for any consumer, status symbols of a plugged-in generation.

Co-founder Steve Jobs, who got the boot from company leadership in the ’80s before remanning the helm a decade later to launch its 21st-century renaissance, is to be congratulated, of course. Slinking around in a black turtleneck, bespectacled and spectacularly smiling, he is the most ungeekly of the geeks, a man with bottomless charisma and a fearsomely good nose for the trends and memes that spring up in the daily chaos of the tech universe. More impressive is his role as the face of Apple — he embodies it, more than any famous face they can air on TV, more than Einstein, more than Yo-Yo Ma, more than Justin Long, the actor who since 2006 personified the Mac’s “cool” image opposite a dweebish PC wonk. The world knows well that Jobs is the compass, the poster boy, the shepherd tending a technophile flock.

And as we saw late last year with the iPad, he still has it. He strolls on stage, a cool customer amid a mob of reporters and rabid fans, dazzling them every time. At Apple there is a sort of bloodless revolution going on, with Jobs and a million Macolytes perched on the barricades.

It all begs the question: what would the sleek tech juggernaut want with static, fastidious Georgetown, especially when younger, hipper neighborhoods are springing up downtown and on Capitol Hill? The answer, as Apple’s Ilene McGee coyly suggested, may be self-evident.

As she led a small group of reporters around the store moments before the doors were thrown open to the public, I asked McGee, the regional director for Apple stores in the metropolitan area, why Georgetown was selected as the site of the District’s first, and for now, only planned Apple store.

“Why wouldn’t you pick Georgetown?” she responded. She added, quietly, that the decision was made from on high, as if it were calculated from the top.

If nothing else, the decision did not go unnoticed. When the buzz began in 2008, the concept drew both excitement and consternation from citizens, who wondered how Apple’s modernist, minimalist layout of its stores would even begin to fit in with Georgetown’s vaguely termed “historic fabric.” In early 2009, The Old Georgetown Board hewed so strictly to the neighborhood’s architectural dictums that it sent the blueprints through the wringer five times before they were approved.

Chairman Ron Lewis of ANC 2E, which vets architectural designs before their review by the OGB, seemed to have overcome any doubts his commission may have had.

“It’s great having Apple in Georgetown,” he said. “[The company] obviously saw the draw of being in Georgetown, and the design process worked out very well in the end.”

Walking through the doors for the first time, before the mad rush of customers, was like walking into a good library — there’s this pristine, sacred feel, a small whispering sound as if the tomes — or in this case, gadgets — contained within are passing information between one another. Up front is propped the company’s latest flagship toy, the iPad, just begging to be fiddled with. Behind it are the iPhones (and in a few days’ time, presumably, the new fourth-generation arrivals). Arranged throughout the store are display stands of Apple iMacs, Apple MacBooks, Apple software packages and Apple accessories below looming, backlit posters of Apple slogans. If it isn’t a cult, it’s most certainly a culture.

Georgetown’s store contains the standard trappings, including the Genius Bar (for tech support) and a kid’s center, a petite bank of eight computers where children can attend a three-day filmmaking camp for free. The store will also offer the company’s popular “One to One” computer training, this time in a truly unique venue: an indoor “courtyard” at the store’s rear, scattered with high wood tables dunked in sunlight that pours through a glass rooftop. McGee said the architecture is only the second of its kind among Apple stores worldwide.

“We’re so excited to be a part of the Apple-Georgetown community,” she said, all but quaking with enthusiasm.

Outside, the street milled with customers lined up behind a velvet rope. Most were unabashed Apple zealots — even though few had any plans to purchase anything that day, in part because they already own their share of iPods and OS X flavors.

Bob Schadler, who hopped in line an hour and a half before the official opening time, said he already owned several Apple computers. Next to him, Amy, who declined to give her last name, boasted that four iPhones circulate around her household.

“My whole family’s pretty much Mac,” she said. Neither intended to buy anything that day.

Ditto for West End resident Hannah Lockhart, the proud owner of an iPod, Macbook and iPhone. However, her friend Becky Hayes did say she had her eye on the “awesome” iPad.

For his part, Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans, who made a brief appearance at the kickoff, was pleased with the community’s reception.

“This is a real shot to Georgetown,” he said. “It really affirms that Georgetown is a retail mecca.” Given the ongoing economic slump, he hoped the opening would drum up business for surrounding retailers.

Moments before the appointed hour, an army of blue-shirted store employees sprinted up from the back of the line, high-fiving, shouting, fomenting excitement. It wasn’t hard to build a frenzy. When the doors opened the blue-shirts had formed a cheering gauntlet along the center aisle, and the world flooded in.

I watched for a minute, smiled and left. It’s finally here. Enjoy, Georgetown.
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Jessica Gelfarb •

Over the past week, a few citizens of Burleith began displaying signs that protest the increase in graduate student enrollment called for in Georgetown University’s 2010 Campus Plan, according to Vox Populi, a University blog.

The plan, which will increase graduate enrollment by 2400 over the next 10 years, led citizens to display lawn signs reading, “Oppose GU’S Campus Plan” and “Our Homes: Not GU’s Dorm,”

Neighbors opposed to University expansion fear that an increase in graduate enrollment would overwhelm Burleith and Georgetown, and argue that too many students will begin living — and partying — in the neighborhood after the plan is implemented.

Read more on Vox Populi.

Jessica Gelfarb •

Silver Spring Resident David Silverman is currently building a pinball machine at the Shops at Georgetown Park, Vox Populi reports. Silverman hopes the museum, which currently consists of 50 pinball machines displayed in a warehouse in his backyard, will be ready to open in Georgetown in September.

Residents who stop by the pinball museum won’t solely spend their visit playing this long-beloved arcade game. They can also learn about pinball’s history and how pinball machines are constructed.

According to the Georgetown Metropolitan, a neighborhood blogger, Silverman is looking for financial support to allow for these amenities. He plans to charge $25 for admission to the museum, a fee which doesn’t include the cost of using the machines.

Read more on Vox Populi and Georgetown Metropolitan

Caitlin White •

Rest assured.

If you’ve visited the Apple Store in Georgetown lately, you can’t help but notice that half the sidewalk is blocked off and under construction. Rumors have even circulated suggesting the blocked-off sidewalk is actually a sinkhole.

However, one construction worker at the site told The Georgetowner the sidewalk in front of Apple is not that at all. Instead, the workers are tying lines into the water and sewer for the new store.

“It’s all for the Apple Store,” he said.

The worker said the construction should be completed in a few days.
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Jenna Dewitt •

The construction on the second phase of the Georgetown Waterfront Park project has begun after lack of funding delayed the project. The park is expected to be 225 miles, the “largest park to be created in the Nation’s Capital in 30 years since Constitution Gardens was completed on the National Mall in 1976,” according to the National Park Service.

The former parking lot is already showing signs of a city park, with much of a shoreline pathway completed. The completed project will have flowers, benches, a fountain, promenades, bike trails and river overlooks with “sculpted granite slabs etched with historic images of Georgetown’s maritime heritage,” the National Park Service said.

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Georgetowner •

The Hurt Home project (3050 R St.) in Georgetown will be brought before the D.C. city council on July 13, after newly proposed renovation plans received a positive consensus from Georgetown residents at a July 1 meeting at Hyde-Addison Elementary School.

The Hurt property, which is owned by the city and once operated as a foster care center and school for the blind, was the sole topic of the meeting, which included Georgetown residents, D.C. officials and the developing team interested in taking on the project.

Members of the community were able to hear the most recent plans for the building from the Argos Group, the lone developer that answered the city’s request for proposal on the property last year. The proposal would develop condominium units within the building while preserving its historic exterior.

Originally, there was a high amount of negativity among community members concerning the number of units the Argos Group planned to develop, said Jack Evans, the District’s Ward 2 councilmember.

Argos’ original plan included 41 units. However, in response to residents’ concerns over the past year have reduced that number to 15 units. Units are expected to be between 1,400 and 1,900 square feet, and each unit will be allotted two parking spaces, according to Gilberto Cárdenas, a principal at the Argos Group.

The smaller amount of units will allow the developer to remove additions added to the building in the past, which will restore the Hurt Home to its original appearance, Cárdenas said.

“We’re actually going to make the footprint of the building smaller,” he added.

In addition, three of the 15 units will be Affordable Dwelling Units, as required by D.C. law. One of these three units will be reserved for the blind or visually impaired as a tribute to the building’s history.

Freddie Peaco, from the D.C. Council of the Blind, said she was excited about the project, but expressed disappointment there was only one unit built especially for the blind or visually impaired as the need for appropriate and affordable units for such residents is so great. Elements such as carpeting, lighting and textured surfaces help blind and visually impaired residents to live independently, Peaco said.

“All of these things make them accessible. They not only add to the value of the property, but to D.C.,” Peaco said.

During the meeting, Georgetown residents suggested an addition of visitor parking spaces to keep cars out of the street. Developers said they will work with a traffic study specialist to solve other traffic concerns as well.

Visual impact was one of the most wide-spread concerns. Developers emphasized they will return the building to its original appearance as much as possible, and are planning to add landscaping to about half of the back of the site to improve the view from Dumbarton Oaks and the surrounding neighborhood.

“It will have almost no visual impact as far as additions or parking. It is set way back from property lines,” Suman Sorg, the principal architect of Sorg Architects who worked on projects such as Cady’s Alley and Phillips School, said. “It’s going to take back the building to the original.”

Residents were also assured that the site will be safe. The Argos team is exploring options for security once the units have been completed and there will be security on duty daily during the construction process. However, the fact that the building will no longer be vacant is already moving toward a safer neighborhood, according to the team.

“An active building is the best thing we can do for the security of the area,” project developer Philip Anderson said.

Perhaps the most vocal concern was the financial backing of the project. Cárdenas assured residents that the project has “a very strong financial backing” through Potomac Investment Properties, one of the largest real estate developers in the city.

“We are at 100 percent of the cost and 100 percent of the equity,” hesaid. “We are going to need debt financing but we have letters of support, letters of intent.”

Cárdenas added that community support was a top priority in this project.

“One thing we will never do is impose something on the community,” he said.

At the meeting, ANC 2E Chairman Ron Lewis gave his vote of confidence to the project.

“This developer has been one of the most receptive to community input I have ever seen,” Lewis said.

The restoration is expected to take about a year, according to the development team.
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Garrett Faulkner •

You better believe Georgetown celebrates the Fourth of July.

On the afternoon before celebratory fireworks again lit the monuments of our capital, the denizens of its oldest neighborhood gathered at Volta Park for a little music, a little picnicking and a little time to soak in what would prove to be a model summer day.

That event, of course, was Concerts in the Park, the last installment of CAG’s three-month series armed with a simple formula: bring a band and a few tasty treats to the park, and they will come. It was enough to lure around 100 neighbors, which wasn’t a bad turnout for a holiday weekend, CAG President Jennifer Altemus said.

Co-chaired by Elizabeth Miller and Renee Crupi, the concert series’ afternoon finale kicked off with a parade around Volta Park before transitioning to a lively festival, the kind where everyone’s on a first-name basis and the music is good, no matter who’s playing (for the record, it was reggae-esque rockers Son of a Beach).

Volunteers passed out plush linen towels from Cady’s Alley décor shop Waterworks, along with a few raffle tickets for a facial care package from local doctor Mark Venturi. Most of the youngsters, parents in tow, haunted the activity booths, ranging from cookie and flag decorating to a water balloon toss to the time-honored estimation station (kudos to Edwin Steiner for his correct guess of 4118 M&Ms). Others simply lounged on their blankets, chatting with adjacent picnickers and soaking up the expiring daylight. Miller and a few committee members manned the ice cream stand, scooping up cones here and there for any passerby with a free hand.

Elsewhere, Georgetowners tested their mettle at a lineup of good-old-fashioned, county fair-like contests. A tug-of-war match pitted East Georgetown against West (this year, the East villagers came out on top), and a long table clothed in blue plaid served as battleground for a pie-eating contest, in which a handful of boys, their braggadocio notwithstanding, gave up the ghost to eight-year-old Emma Robinson, who apparently can chow down with the best of them.

It was, as you so rarely see in the city, a family affair. Kids and adults came and went, some rushing off for fireworks, others mingling with friends, carefree as summer.

Most of all, it was an instance of Georgetown as it should be — an aggregate of neighbors and loved ones, joined as one community.
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