Columbia Heights Still Looking for High End Retail
The developers of the new DC USA shopping center in Columbia Heights are still looking for more high end retail, according to a Washington Business Journal article. DC USA, located at 14th and Irving NW, still has about 80,000 square feet of space to fill, which developers hope to fill partially with fancier fare than the Target, Marshalls and Best Buy already planned for the space.
Regular readers may recall that Columbia Heights residents complained about the prevalence of discount stores like Marshalls, which will open in a few months, and Ross Dress for Less, which is currently in talks, in the DC USA development on their neighborhood listserve. Ellwood Thompson's, an organic grocery store based in Richmond, is also in talks to move in, and there have been rumors about sporting goods store REI, which the company denied to one Columbia Heights listserve user.
The Biz Journal article, part of which is available online without a subscription but which was posted in full on neighborhood listserves, says the developers originally tried to woo places like Nordstrom, Macy's, Sears, Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, but didn't have any luck, getting Target instead. The developers, Grid Properties, fired the leasing company, Newmark Knight Frank, after Newmark didn't attract high end retailers.
Photo by Amber Wiley
"When you talk to [high end retailers] about coming to an urban neighborhood, they look at you kind of cross-eyed," Robert Moore, president of the Development Corporation of Columbia Heights, told the Biz Journal. The article notes that some say getting higher end stores will be easier now, thanks to increasing incomes in the area, while John Asadoorian, a D.C. commercial realtor, said he didn't think chains with market penetration would increase sales by opening in the development.
The article notes that the average household income in Columbia Heights has jumped $16,000 from 1999 to 2006, from about $50,000 to about $66,000. Housing prices, of course, have gone up as well. They note that 77,000 people live within a mile of the development. That's a lot of folks with a lot of buying power.
The Target store is set to open March 9, with more stores opening in the next few months.