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The Post's Paul Schwartzman schools us on what really needs to happen for anything to be approved in Georgetown. After gaining approval from the ANC, the Apple Store facade design is now headed back to the Old Georgetown Board, the body with the apparent real power to dictate what the historic shopping district will look like. Be afraid!
The encounter is so fraught with uncertainty that Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's office has offered to give Apple advice on how to handle the board and asked to see its latest rendering before the meeting.The tension will surely be made worse by the fact that the latest design (pictured) looks nearly identical to the first, rejected design. The meeting is set for Thursday, so stay tuned.
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Just give the Georgetown Board a bunch of Macbook Airs and let THEM design the f**king facade.
Or better yet, just leave it an empty, sad, vacant FCUK store. No better metaphor for Georgetown.
There is a HUGE difference between the most recent design and the first- the first design has 5 windows on the 2nd floor while this one has 4. Clearly that will make ALL the difference
Damn, it's so obvious!
Plus, this one has trees. Whole earth, you know.
Georgetown bites!
These assholes on the Board have rejected the design THREE TIMES!!! Can you imagine one of these blowhards at a restaurant and sending their food back to the chef THREE TIMES with the expectation that they'll finally get a better plate???
F**CK Georgetown! THREE TIMES!
They're all pretty ugly, but the first one doesn't seem so bad.
You know, the old building that they're tearing down is absolutely gorgeous. At first I thought they were proposing alterations to the facade of the existing building, which would be criminal. But since Georgetown apparently has no problem with tearing down the old building, why would they have a problem with putting something modern in its place?
It's not historic preservation when you build an imitation historic building, folks.
the existing building, while nice, was built in the 1980s. Not an issue of historic preservation at this point.
Shows you why I'm not a historic preservationist. I have no eye for these things.
I liked the second design - the glass cube. Kinda neat and unexpected for that section of Georgetown. But I don't see much difference between this design and the first one, other than one less window. IF Apple's design is rejected once again, wouldn't they be smarter to move their store elsewhere in the city?
jesus, you'd think they'd be smart enough to go elsewhere.
of course, whoever is consulting on this probably told them, "georgetown is home to the most open pocketbooks when it comes to DC shopping. it's the only neighborhood you should look at."
apple aficionados (of whom i am one) will go damn near anywhere to get their fix. they could put the store on 12th street in brookland and singlehandedly quintuple the foot traffic on that stretch...
How about next to the Denny's in Deanwood? :)
hell yeah, it's transit accessible. maybe they can reuse the senator theater, turn it into something better than the subway that's there right now...
There's a AutoZone on H St. that, while quite handy, is huge, already has parking, and would be a kick ass location for an Apple Store. But despite the plethora of tatted up hipsters that frequent H St., I guess we don't have the right "demographics" over here.
@stmove
Even if they do open up an Apple store in G'Town, I'll still go to the one in Crystal City.
How about the old Linens N' Things space in Friendship Heights?
I thought the swanky part of Friendship Heights would be a good place for the Apple store, but then the address would technically be in MD and the Bethesda store is practically just up the street.
Too bad they're putting the District's only Apple Store in shitty Georgetown. I'll still go out to the Pentagon City location instead, because it's much more accessible by both public transportation and car.
Should've put it someplace downtown, Penn Quarter, south Dupont, Gallery Place, etc.
I love the third design with the massive Apple logo. I'm also kind of sad that they're tearing down the existing building though, I always liked it.
So I'll put it out there - Who cares? Both, what the design is, and whether Georgetown gets an Apple store? I mean, I love boring, over-priced, minimalist-designed appliances as much as the next guy, but uh, who cares?
Obviously, people in the neighborhood care. Georgetowners don't want their precious historicity sodomized by blank minimalism. And as this thread shows, people in other neighborhoods would love an Apple Store, for bragging rights cachet value alone. "See, mom! I don't live in the ghetto! I've got a Harris Teeter! (Or Whole Foods, or Trader Joes, or an Apple Store...)"
Put it in Dupont, U Street, or Gallery Place and leave Georgetown to the fate it deserves.
Putting it in Georgetown is too bad. The only people who shop there are VA and MD Tourists, and they already have Apple stores in the VA and MD malls right up their streets. DC will effectively still have no store. That store could have anchored a neighborhood shopping district that needs more traffic and by a metro, but then again apple is not known for doing anything that benefits anyone but themselves (says this apple junkie while I shoot more overpriced hardware into my veins).
good point. i don't know of any DC locals who hang out in georgetown much, unless they're taking their out-of-town visitors sightseeing or something.
also, i'm not trying to be snarky, but people actually buy stuff at the apple stores? i usually buy my mac stuff through online resellers. they're usually less expensive and have a better selection.
Don't know if they still do, but Apple used the customer research company that The Gap used to place their stores. They perform months of demographic studies on customers, residents, incomes, tax breaks, foot traffic, parking, transit, proximity to other comparable stores, the whole nine yards, before they come up with candidates for stores. I imagine Georgetown ranks high on local incomes and tourist traffic but low on mass transit. They might be able to do a Dupont or Penn Quarter store, but I don't think those neighborhoods are Georgetown-ey enough. They're not really tourist destinations in and of themselves. You'll probably see an Apple Store in Chevy Chase before there's one on U Street.
I have serious trouble understanding the type of people that would hang out in a place like this.
More importantly, the second-to-last sentence is an inaccurate representation of the story (although it nicely heightens the aura of outrage and conflict). From what I gather, the first design was the closest to being acceptable, so going back to that design isn't likely to raise the tension... in fact the Post states that the board is likely to approve it. It's hard to imagine what Apple was thinking when they went from that first design to their generic ice cube model.
I have serious trouble understanding the type of people that would hang out in a place like this.
C'mon! Clueless hotties trying to figure why their Macbook won't run Vista? "Geniuses" pontificating about things they know nothing about? Homeless guys looking at porn sites? Throw in some diarrhea jokes and you practially have DCist itself.
for a moment I thought you were describing a weekend night at the Red Room...