On Saturday morning, downtown Crystal City is about as exciting as a stack of printer paper.

A few joggers trot past a row of beige office buildings on Crystal Drive, the corporate boulevard that teems with lanyard-wearing office workers during the week. Crystal City Shops, the dated underground mall, is eerily quiet without federal contractors picking up their dry cleaning or queuing up for coffee at Au Bon Pain.

With Amazon on its way here, this neighborhood could see a wave of development that brings new jobs, new businesses and new energy. That’s good news for JBG Smith, the real estate company that owns most of the area’s commercial buildings. But the tech company’s arrival is being met with mixed emotions on the other side of Route 1, where a cluster of small businesses exists in the shadow of Crystal City’s high rises.

‘The Soul Of Crystal City’

Saturdays on the west side of Route 1 are raucous compared with sedate Crystal Drive. Cross the highway and you’ll find cab drivers lunching on juicy lamb at Kabob Palace, locals wolfing down home fries at Bob & Edith’s, down-on-their-luck men pushing shopping carts on South Eads Street and women dancing topless at Crystal City Restaurant.

It’s also where you’ll find Freddie Lutz presiding over a cheerful brunch at Freddie’s Beach Bar, the only full-time gay bar in Northern Virginia. Here, the smell of eggs mingles with the sound of Motown wailing from the stereo, as Lutz chats up members of a gay soccer team that’s taken up half the sunny veranda.

“What’s the difference between gay soccer and regular soccer?” Lutz wondered aloud, a faint smile materializing under his dark mustache.

Freddie’s is in the heart of what some might call the down-home part of town: 23rd Street South, in the neighborhood of Aurora Highlands. Lutz grew up here.

“I think 23rd Street has always been the soul of Crystal City,” says the bar owner. “It’s one of the most diverse streets I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Freddie’s is a Day-Glo beacon on 23rd, with rainbow flags and pink flamingos screaming color from the rooftop. The bar’s neighbors include a brightly painted tobacco shop selling bongs and bubblers; a smattering of hookah bars and lounges; Ethiopian and Asian restaurants and a newly opened vintage dress shop.

But foot traffic has been sluggish on this strip for years now, Lutz says, especially at midday. Once a lunchtime destination, the neighborhood was hit hard by federal budget cuts that sucked government workers out of downtown Crystal City. When jobs finally began to come back, chains and other big eateries sprouted up on Crystal Drive, cutting into 23rd Street’s lunch trade.

That’s why Amazon’s arrival has delighted many business owners here, who predict the company’s 25,000 or more highly paid employees will pump new dollars into this side of the neighborhood, too.

Billy Bayne, Jr. is one of those giddy business owners. On the morning Amazon officially announced it was coming to Crystal City, Bayne sat in the smoking room of the Crystal City Restaurant, fielding congratulatory text messages from friends.

“I just got another text. It’s been happening since last night,” Bayne said, his blue eyes shining. “[Amazon] is absolutely huge news for business owners, for employees that work here, for people that are out of work. It is really a savior to Crystal City.”

Crystal City Restaurant has been in Bayne’s family since his father opened it under the name Arlington Luncheon in 1963. Back then, this neighborhood wasn’t yet called Crystal City — developer Robert H. Smith had just begun a whirlwind of construction that would later produce multiple apartment buildings, offices and an underground shopping mall. Smith named the development Crystal City after the ornate chandelier in the neighborhood’s first residential high rise, Crystal House, and Bayne’s father updated his restaurant’s name accordingly.

Crystal City Restaurant eventually added topless dancers to bring in more customers.

“Back in the heyday, we had lines outside for lunchtime,” Bayne, Jr. said.

But the lines dried up over the last 20 years when major employers such as the Department of Defense and the Patent and Trademark Office left Crystal City under budget pressures, shipping thousands of jobs out of the neighborhood. Quickly, the area became a ghost town — and local businesses suffered.

“There’s more people that went out of business on this street than stayed in business,” Bayne, Jr. said. “The only way we survived is because we own our property. If I had a rent payment, I would be bankrupt.”

That’s why Bayne, Jr., who also co-owns Crystal City Sports Pub up the street, has nothing but kind words for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world.

“Thank you, Jeff Bezos, for bringing your headquarters here,” he said, as if the billionaire were listening. “We needed it.”

But the topless bar owner’s excitement is tempered by others who say Amazon isn’t a silver-bullet solution to 23rd Street’s problems.

‘Just Another Big Business’

Rich Micheli isn’t convinced that Amazon’s arrival in Crystal City will send a tidal wave of highly paid tech workers across Route 1, where he’s owner and chef at Portofino Restaurant, a Northern Italian dining room on 23rd Street.

“JBG Smith and the [Crystal City Business Improvement District] are going to do their best to keep them on that side,” Micheli said.

His skepticism is matched by Joe Hovsep, who runs a dry cleaning and shoe repair operation on 23rd Street with his wife. Will tech workers bring their shirts and shoes to his place? Maybe, or maybe not, Hovsep says with a shrug.

“It’s just another big business,” he said, sounding like someone who’s seen it all after 24 years in the neighborhood.

Still, Micheli and others predict that over time, Amazon employees will tire of Sweetgreen, Subway and We, the Pizza, and cross over to the funkier side of town. And two landlords on 23rd Street want to take it a step further: They’ve hatched a plan to reinvent the strip as everything downtown Crystal City is not.

Stratis Voutsas, who with his spouse controls numerous properties on 23rd Street, says local businesses should be careful not to depend too much on spillover from Crystal Drive.

“We had the government closures and we lost a lot of people. Now we’re putting all our eggs in one basket with Amazon,” Voutsas said between sips of coffee at Bob & Edith’s Diner. “Amazon is a great addition, a welcome addition. But what happens if an event occurs and Amazon walks out? … We want to diversify this [area] so we have long-term viability — with or without Amazon.”

That’s why Voutsas and his wife, Georgia Papadopoulos, have a plan to turn the strip into a regional destination in its own right. They want to fashion 23rd Street into a Bohemian village — one with subsidized artist housing, a pedestrian-friendly plaza and an assortment of unique shops and ethnic restaurants.

“Everyone on this street welcomes differences, cultural differences, language differences,” Papadopoulos said. “We’re going to be a different option to the national brands.”

Papadopolous and Voutsas said they’ve been courting Artspace, the nonprofit arts developer that’s constructed affordable artist space in Maryland and D.C., but not yet Virginia. They’ve been talking to local officials about dropping a section of Route 1 underground, uniting the two halves of Crystal City. They also want to close a few local streets to car traffic, so locals, office workers and tourists can shop and mill about on foot.

“We’re trying to create a neighborhood square where people will come and gather, without monster buildings around you,” Voutsas said. “We don’t want to destroy what is here. We want to enhance what is here.”

But Voutsas and Papadopoulos couldn’t destroy much on 23rd Street, even if they wanted to — they say the buildings they control are held in a trust that requires them to be preserved. The trust, established by the late Crystal City property owner Louis Pappas, requires that the buildings’ character is maintained.

Keeping this side of 23rd Street mostly the same — just busier — sounds like a great idea to Freddie Lutz, owner of Freddie’s Beach Bar.

Sitting in his bar, surrounded by tchotchkes, Barbie dolls and an advertisement for a choral show called “Make America Gay Again,” Lutz says Arlington needs a place like 23rd Street. And someday, so will Amazon workers.

“Those people are probably going to want to venture out and try some different stuff,” he said. “I’m sure whatever they provide for their people at Amazon — I doubt they’re going to have a gay bar in there.”

This story originally appeared on WAMU.