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Yeah the owners also closed a bunch of other U Street mainstays like the Brixton, El Rey, etc. The nighlife in Shaw/U Street will be very different in the next few years. Hell DC's Black nightlife will probably be very different. Will be interesting to see exactly how COVID/changing demographics continue to affect it.
Retail all over the nation is moving towards a food and beverage focus. Grocery stores, food halls, sit-down restaurants with bars, and some clothing stores will be the focus. There is nothing in Boston already built outside of downtown Boston or Seaport with the scale of what is being built in downtown Ward 7 in DC so they really aren’t apples to apples.
Are there any subdistrict CBD areas at the scale of the coming Ward 7 downtown in DC with a majority African American middle class population living in the residential housing stock across America? This area will have over 1 million sq. feet of office added to the over 200,000 sq. feet of office already there. That’s 1.2 million sq. feet of office space. It will also add over 3,500 units to the thousands of units already there now. Total housing units will surpass 5,000 units based on what is proposed and already there. The amount of retail is unprecedented for an area way outside the urban core at 364,000 sq. feet which will be added to retail already there along Minnesota Avenue. You have been to this corridor so you know there are substantial infill development opportunities along this corridor in addition to what has already been proposed.
The demographics are still up for debate because we don’t know who will move to this area. I think it will be a middle class black enclave like those seen in Prince George’s county, but we will see. Again, this is definitely an amazing case study.
The future of EOTR and PG will be interesting to say the least. I wonder if Minnesota Ave/Benning Road will become a center for black restaurants and nightlife when it is built out. And I'm hoping that they do actually extend the street car.
Demographics wise, Ward 7 and 8 are less than 5% white each. and both over 90% Black. I don't anticipate such a drastic increase in the white population that black folks will no longer be the majority. Ward 8 will probably have a higher nonblack population honestly, in the neighborhoods near the Green Line.
Yeah the owners also closed a bunch of other U Street mainstays like the Brixton, El Rey, etc. The nighlife in Shaw/U Street will be very different in the next few years. Hell DC's Black nightlife will probably be very different. Will be interesting to see exactly how COVID/changing demographics continue to affect it.
I saw El Rey, which I used to like but never thought of as black. I've seen Brixton a lot and honestly, I don't remember if I went in or not. Sometimes the nights are like that.
I wouldn't have thought El Rey and Marvins were owned by the same people/group but I guess so its the indoor/outdoor thing.
For the most part when youre in Boston or you're town you don't have to go very far, hence the term "townie". Whereas in DC things are much more "metropolized" and less balkanized. There I found myself nauseous from driving laps around the beltway all the time.
I'm assuming you're exaggerating somewhat lol. I know that parts of PG can be lacking in terms of amenities but you don't really have to go as far north as Silver Spring/Wheaton or as far south as Arlington to get what you might need for the most part.
I'm assuming you're exaggerating somewhat lol. I know that parts of PG can be lacking in terms of amenities but you don't really have to go as far north as Silver Spring/Wheaton or as far south as Arlington to get what you might need for the most part.
I wasn’t literally nauseous lol but it did have my mind in circles: the way that people socialize is just very different and more spread out. Life always characterized by higheay travel and strip plazas in a way it simply isn’t in New England.
The rest isn’t hyperbole. It’s also because I worked deep in NW but lived in suitland and drove Uber in my off time. What I discovered with my friends being in the area and driving around locals is that class stratification is way less. And if driving locals pretty much anywhere. Less so for black peoples in the area between Rockville and Arlington. People don’t necessarily need to go anywhere too too far but they want to.
I’d drive African Americans to just about anywhere. In Boston I can accurately predict 5/6 towns where someone might be going based off a combination of their speech, dress, ethnicity-unless you’re picking up a raggamuffin- this is more or less impossible in DC but it’d be easier to guess where your rider ISNT going. To me it’s easy to tell someone from Roxbury from somebody from Mattapan -harder to do so in DC.
The extent to which DC is less hyper local than Boston is immediately noticeable. Mostly because everywhere in MA was developed for higher populations well before the automobile. And county government are pretty effective at decentralizing poverty, most of PG and the DMV in general was settled after the fair housing act. Boston wasn’t. Generally like NJ and CT there are more abrupt racial/socioeconomic shift not caused by natural boundaries.
The future of EOTR and PG will be interesting to say the least. I wonder if Minnesota Ave/Benning Road will become a center for black restaurants and nightlife when it is built out. And I'm hoping that they do actually extend the street car.
Demographics wise, Ward 7 and 8 are less than 5% white each. and both over 90% Black. I don't anticipate such a drastic increase in the white population that black folks will no longer be the majority. Ward 8 will probably have a higher nonblack population honestly, in the neighborhoods near the Green Line.
My prediction is that the black entertainment on H street and U Street will shift to Downtown Ward 7 in the next decade. I believe the level of infill for retail and mixed use development is extremely high and the African American population lives in Ward 7 and Ward 8 along with Prince George’s County. I think some good points have been made about the black population and the suburbs and Ward 7 and Ward 8 are so close to the Maryland line that it’s a natural downtown for people living in Prince George’s County which I have heard people say before in reference to the city.
The problem in the past was that people had no reason to stop in either Ward 7 or 8 when driving downtown. They just drive through Ward 7 and Ward 8 and cross the Anacostia River into the urban core of DC. Once this area is built-out and the entertainment and restaurants come, like all other developments built from scratch at this scale, it will explode.
I know the issues people have with new developments trying to recreate older organic neighborhood development, but in this instance, having a critical mass is essential to the success and vibrancy of a new destination. For the DC area, there are already class A apartment buildings around Largo metro station and Branch Avenue metro station that are 95% black. We have the black middle class for it now in the DC area, we just didn’t have the product in black neighborhoods until what is happening now.
We will wait to see if the same river that isolated the almost 100% African American Ward 7 and Ward 8 from the rest of the city for the past decades will continue to protect that African American culture of Ward 7 and Ward 8 from changing. My guess is yes! The river not only protects Ward 7 and Ward 8, but also Prince George’s county. I think people underestimate that too.
Yeah the owners also closed a bunch of other U Street mainstays like the Brixton, El Rey, etc. The nighlife in Shaw/U Street will be very different in the next few years. Hell DC's Black nightlife will probably be very different. Will be interesting to see exactly how COVID/changing demographics continue to affect it.
I think COVID-19 will impact the nightlife shift to where African American people actually live. Here is a video update on Market 7 below which will basically be an African American version of Union Market with black vendors from across the diaspora. It will have a centralized bar and events catering to African American entertainment.
I wasn’t literally nauseous lol but it did have my mind in circles: the way that people socialize is just very different and more spread out. Life always characterized by higheay travel and strip plazas in a way it simply isn’t in New England.
The rest isn’t hyperbole. It’s also because I worked deep in NW but lived in suitland and drove Uber in my off time. What I discovered with my friends being in the area and driving around locals is that class stratification is way less. And if driving locals pretty much anywhere. Less so for black peoples in the area between Rockville and Arlington. People don’t necessarily need to go anywhere too too far but they want to.
I’d drive African Americans to just about anywhere. In Boston I can accurately predict 5/6 towns where someone might be going based off a combination of their speech, dress, ethnicity-unless you’re picking up a raggamuffin- this is more or less impossible in DC but it’d be easier to guess where your rider ISNT going. To me it’s easy to tell someone from Roxbury from somebody from Mattapan -harder to do so in DC.
The extent to which DC is less hyper local than Boston is immediately noticeable. Mostly because everywhere in MA was developed for higher populations well before the automobile. And county government are pretty effective at decentralizing poverty, most of PG and the DMV in general was settled after the fair housing act. Boston wasn’t. Generally like NJ and CT there are more abrupt racial/socioeconomic shift not caused by natural boundaries.
I get what you're saying. In New England, the setup allows you to value its convenience. In DC and other places, the setup is perceived more as evidence of freedom and options.
Strip Mall Culture is highlighted the further South you go. But I think all of the Northeast is relatively okay in his regard.
Maryland and Virginia are very much southern in this regard. Especially Prince Georges, and Charles County. I think anyone whos been to Prince Georges would admit there are wayy too many strip malls. Too many of them are woefully outdated and decayed.
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