There's not too much discussion of Washington here. I'm about the only one who posts anything new about the town in the thread I started some time ago:
Washington, NC ~ A Perspective
While I'm sure Washington's population has gone up a tic since the last census, I highly doubt that it has doubled to twenty thousand. Downtown living, however, has increased significantly, mainly due to Moss Landing condos, which targets Northern retirees.
Downtown Washington has a slow, steady growth happening right now. It is by no means booming. It's kind of dead after 8 PM. Nearly all the foot traffic is on the waterfront walkway - folks out for a stroll or watching the sunset. They're not really spending money. There is indeed more activity in the warmer months.
If you're in it for the long haul, now is a good time to invest in downtown Washington, but if you need a quick return and don't have a cushion to hold you up, you could face hardship. The growth IS there, but it's more of one-shop or one-store or one-housing-at-a-time kind of additions. It's not like Greenville or Wilmington, where there's a half-dozen to a dozen projects going on at once. Washington targets the retirees who are attracted to real, real slow way of life. I think most people would actually be disappointed if downtown 'boomed' and it became flooded with people and cars. Having said that, Washingtonians do want a little more, and they do get a little more each year. The growth is a reflection of the lifestyle: Nice and slow.
And yeah, downtown Washington, being directly on the Pamlico River, will get some flooding when a hurricane comes barreling through. It's expected in a river town, part of the cost of doing business. The last flooding affected downtown business operations for maybe a week. Most businesses rebounded quickly and opened back up in days. For your hotel/apartments, you'd need to advise your tenants to not park in your lot during the storm and that they could be without power and be stuck inside for a day or so. If you do a hotel, advising or requiring your guests to leave might be a better option that being responsible for them during a hurricane or serious tropical storm.
Can't suggest whether you should go with a hotel or apartments. Downtown could use more of each. I do know that there is a new hotel already in the works, being planned above in the newly opened restaurant, The Hackney. Will rental apartments appeal to retirees or do they prefer buying condos? I don't know. But I do know that Moss Landing is running out of open real estate and will soon have nothing new to offer in downtown Washington living. I expect they'll be full by year's end. Might be a good time to pick up where they leave off...
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