April 21, 2008
Bloomingdale Restaurant Plans Raise Eyebrows
If you spend any time on Bloomingdale or Eckington blogs or email lists, there could be no question in your mind that residents of the up and coming neighborhood(s) (Bloomingdale was just treated to a profile in the Washington Post) want more retail and services. They want a full service, sit-down restaurant, by all means. But now that plans for an enormous new dining and nightlife complex in the long-fallow Old Engine Co. 12, a 111-year-old firehouse at 1626 N. Capitol St., have been at last been finalized, area residents appear to be deeply skeptical. The Washington Business Journal first reported on what's in store for the firehouse property last week, which will be called 2020 Martini at Engine Co. 12:
... the D.C. eatery will be conceived around a theme of fire and water. The first floor will serve brick-oven pizzas, baked in an imported Italian oven sculpted with a fire engine facade. That floor will also include a small pasta bar and a sushi bar. Martinis, too, will be served from a 30-foot bar that will appear as if it's ablaze and have water running through its center.Sounds a bit ... over the top, to be sure. But aesthetic issues aside, there's some serious questions about the sustainability of such an ambitious project in this neighborhood. The property is being developed by Brian Brown of NextGen Development, and Twyla Garrett of Cleveland-based Garrett Entertainment Corp. Garrett has already built a similar, Italian-themed multi-story restaurant complex in a similarly gentrifying area of Cleveland, which has a music and flash heavy web site you can check out at your own risk. But when you look at the numbers quoted in the Business Journal story, it's hard to imagine how this venture could possibly add up. Brown purchased the property for $600,000, a perfectly reasonably price, but plans to put in $2.4 million for renovations. Garrett plans to add another $1 million herself. How many tables would you need to fill every night to service $4 million of debt every month? It would have to be in the hundreds. It's just hard to imagine a restaurant of that style, in that neighborhood, being able to attract that large of a crowd every night.
Plans for the second floor call for a lounge atmosphere with live music performances, where pizzas and sushi will be delivered by a glass-enclosed conveyer belt resembling a ladder, Garrett said. She's also developing a proposal for nearby XM Satellite Radio to have occasional broadcasts from a mini-studio she and Brown would outfit.
The third floor will be devoted to the Mocha Fusion Coffee Lounge, an espresso bar. And finally, a rooftop deck will offer tapas.
Over at Eckington (way better than spotsylvania), there's some seemingly valid concern that this amount of investment will mean certain disaster.
It will probably fold after 10 months. The search for a new tenant will begin–a process that will linger since no one will want to pay a premium for the lavish renovations and glitz (while the owners try to hold out for someone who will help recoup these losses). After another 10 months, the owners will give in, a new agreement will be signed, and, 6 months later, a new restaurant will open.A handful of other neighborhood residents we've spoken agree. They're excited, by all means, that something is finally being done with this space, and that a restaurant will be opening nearby. But the consensus seems to be that this particular project is needlessly financially risky and overly gaudy, when what they'd like to have is a neighborhood restaurant with staying power.
What do you think about the plans for 2020 Martini? What kind of restaurant were you hoping to see in the firehouse space?
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Cue the IMGoph comment in T-minus 5, 4, 3, 2, ...
The restaurant sounds like a very neat idea and I think the space they're filling has a lot of potential.
But that seems like an awful lot of money to dish into this place. It may be a little too overzealous for Bloomingdale (no offense), kind of like its name.
I haven't been in Bloomingdale in a while, so how is it these days? Would the residents of the neighborhood go to a restaurant like this?
thanks drew, glad to know that i'm so predictable. :)
of course, sommer mentions a handful of neighborhood residents that she's spoken to. i was one of those people, and yeah, it is way too 'big sky' of a plan for that space, i think.
in the long run, maybe, but for right now, something smaller scale would make more sense. build up demand in the area, and then go for the big-time.
i hate to say anything negative about my 'hood, but north capitol just isn't ready for this big-old thing to plop down in the middle of the area. it's a concept that might work in an established nightlife corridor (think 18th street or u street), but not north capitol.
not for now, anyway...
The 2020 website was horrendous and really seemed like more fluff than reality. The gallery for photos didnt look real. It sounds great on paper but I just dont think it would work for that price, unless they plan to burn it down for insurance.
2020 Martini at Engine Co. 12
That is one mouthful for a name. Wood-oven pizza AND sushi? Ok.
That is one mouthful for a name. Wood-oven pizza AND sushi? Ok.
....and a pasta bar, and a coffee house, and tapas. How about they try one type of cuisine and do that well, before going all Vegas buffet spectacular with their plans?
Although I would like it if they added skeeball to the mix. Fire, water, and skeeball is a winning concept.
The building sounded much more promising when Mike Benson of Saint-Ex and Bar Pilar was in talks with XM to do a bar with live shows and broadcasts from there. This whole pizza/sushi/espresso/martini/tapas place sounds like it's either having some sort of identity crisis, trying to appeal to anyone and everyone, or just acting as some sort of food court. I think the time is right to move a higher-end restaurant/bar into the neighborhood, but this concept sounds a little too quantity over quality to me.
Yeah, I live near there. It'd be nice to have a sit-down restaurant, but a comfy place with a few tables and a fireplace... not this wacked-out Martini bar on steroids. I suspect that, like all other plans in the 'hood, it will sit in limbo for 4-5 years and then be abandoned to some other scheme.
Man, I would LURV me some Vegas buffet bar in DC! Surf and turf sushi and 24-hour all-you-can-scarf breakfast for $7.95! Or the rise-n-blow mornin' disgorgement special for $4.99! Hell, where's DC's equivalent of Slots-of-Fun and their footlong chilidogs for $1? All served by M.A. psych majors dressed like Liberace on crank. They're just trying to work their way through GW, man. Cut them some slack.
I have no idea what the f*** these guys are going for here. If they want to get all elemental, they should use an earth/air/fire/water motif and serve everything in a hot, steamy, muddy volcano. Every once in a while your server Gollem will bite your wedding ring off your finger and do a little dance before being cast into the replica Mount Doom in the middle of the dance floor. Don't worry, old skool rap nite is thursdays. Tonight it's German techno/industrial nite and we're featuring Kraftwerk, Neu, Neubauten, and a little Laibach in the mix. And don't forget to visit the Oxygen Bar in Eckington Grotto (all sales are final, void where prohibited by law).
Is there even a sitdown place to get a decent BURGER in Bloomingdale? I mean, you gotta learn to crawl before you learn to walk.
Shoot, I was hoping for an Earth, Wind and Fire-themed restaurant.
Is this the hipster version of the "chinese, hamburger, subs, pizza, wings, and ice cream" joints?
Most restaurants fail. If these bloomingdale-come-latelys want a sure thing, they should build it themselves.
That said, this place sounds like a bad idea -- pizza AND sushi? It's not a ballpark.
Where's the parking?
Is DC the last city in the country that thinks "martini lounge" = cool? What is this, 1998?
You left out the Wolfsheim, Monkey. (And the skeeball.)
ricky - It took years for Cosmopolitans to get to DC. Same with apple martinis and table service. DC's always a couple years behind the hiptard curve.
This seems to combine the best elements of Cheescake Factory and a heroin shooting gallery and for that, I think these guys deserve our encouragement.
if i had the money, i would put a restaurant/bar right here in the middle of bloomingdale. we have a perfect spot for one (on the corner of 1st and seaton), with huge amounts of space for outside seating, but it just sits there.
the argonaut is what i use as an example of the kind of place that could do well here. ok, not just well, it would be a money-making machine. the closest place for all of us in bloomingdale and eckington to go to to sit down and have a beer is either nellie's on u street or kelly's irish times down by union station. there is a black hole of neighborhood-serving bars in the city, and we could fill that quite successfully here.
Refresh my admittedly damaged memory. I vaguely recall reading in these very pages last year that some upscale restaurant or club was on its way to the North Capitol Street corridor near Union Station maybe? All I remember was the usual real estate/investor doubletalk about the "NoCa neighborhood," "high concept," and "creative synergy."
Creative synergy. Sweet. Code words for 'some dumbass consultant got a nice fat check for this concept'.
Isn't the best use obvious?
It's a firehouse.
Make it a gay weenie-dancing bar, complete with sorry-ass jokes about hoses, etc.
I could totally get behind a gay-themed firehouse restaurant concept bar, so long as it had a trendy name like "Firehosers" or "Flamers!" or "The Gloryhole" and so long as they didn't serve footlongs.
And by "get behind" I mean "run away screaming."
While I'm largely in agreement with the sentiment that this place is going to be too schizophrenic to be successful, I also think it's pretty cool that someone is planning to invest $4M in the neighborhood. Assuming this place ever opens, I'll probably go at least once out of a sense of morbid curiosity.
Pizza and sushi and tapas and martinis? Could make for some very interesting vomit.
I daresay the vomit here will be no more cosmopolitan than that which you'd find at any stripmall food court.
I'm more interested in what will replace this shotgun-approach restaurant when it folds. I think a Japanese airsoft machine gun bar and lounge is in order here.
Yeah, seems a little ambitious for a restaurant.
What a great building though... that would make a fantastic place to live.
It really sounds like they are trying to be all things to all people. You can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time. But you can't please all of the people all of the time.
The problem is, if you don't please enough of the people enough of the time you don't make rent. And if enough of the people don't leave enough of their money at the door enough of the time, you can't make a profit. So while I don't agree with the schizophrenic menu, I do agree with the idea of having a cheap area for the locals to have a beer and burger, a more upscale area for cocktails on the weekend, and a swank members only joint where the thugish Escalade-and-driveby-dvd-porn crowd can drop some Franklins on Armandale and Crystal while trying to impress their 'hos. Straight UP.
Hubby and I occasionally toy with the idea of opening a bar (like imgoph, hubby had also been thinking ala argonaut) on North Capitol. I'd go corporate law firm to pay the bills and he'd quit his job and work on it full time. With all this money being invested in this restaurant, this dream seems more unlikely. I just think the commercial leases/rent would become even more unaffordable. There's barely anything on North Capitol and it's already unaffordable.
Sidenote: At some point in the last year, I had a random conversation with the owner of the "Borf building" (for lack of a better name)on the same block. I was looking at the firehouse up close, and he must have thought that I looked like a real-estate type. His unsolicited advice: "you don't want any part of that, man. The money to clear out the asbestos alone would kill your project."
It's a beautiful building and any venture that results in a finished product regardless of the taste of the interior designer will bring it a hell of a lot closer to whatever its final incarnation will be.
That said, even if it wasn't such a culture clash, does Bloomingdale really have the density to support this place on a Tuesday? And are the residents of R Street ready to deal with even more competition for their street parking and weekday evening quiet(er) time? I seem to recall a recent dust-up over the renewal of the Bloomingdale Farmer's Market because it affected a dozen or so parking spaces on R between first and Florida. This project would have a much larger impact, no?
I think we need to be a little less critical of these developers. I mean, they're doing asbestos they can.
Snort.
(rimshot)
It would be so much nicer and useful, to have a restaurant more in the way of a Carlyle Grand, Sweetwater Tavern or other Great American Restaurant. I do like the concept of having different genres on each floor, but the choices they've made don't really sound like they'll fit in our neighborhood...or moreover, what we want.
i got two words that are going to put bloomingdale on the map: leprechaun strippers. all you need is a neon green sign that says "Paddy O'Furniture's Pumproom and Irish Massage" and you got a license to print money.
cue pennywhistle version of Harlem Nocturne.