Illustration by Josh Kramer / DCist/WAMU

In a typical D.C. springtime, the sidewalks of Georgetown would be packed two across with out-of-state tourists, parents visiting their D.C. college students, and shoppers popping into one of the dozens of retail shops lining M Street NW.

But when COVID-19 swept through D.C. last March, its bustling streets became vacant seemingly overnight. Dozens of storefronts soon followed, with nearly every week bringing news of a closure or two in the historic neighborhood.

“We’ve seen a lot of closures, so we’ve got a little bit of a hole to dig out of,” says Georgetown Business Improvement District CEO Joe Sternlieb. The neighborhood, which is one of the city’s oldest, also features one of the densest commercial corridors in D.C. — with more than 500 stores and restaurants recorded at the end of 2019. Unlike other commercial strips in D.C. that depend on nearby offices for business, the neighborhood relies heavily on visitor and tourist spending, making it particularly susceptible to the decrease in retail spending during the pandemic.

Over the course of 2020, more than 60 businesses closed permanently or temporarily in Georgetown — ranging from decades-old local shops, like Don Lobos Mexican Grill, to national retailers like Forever 21, Aldo, and Lucky Brand Jeans — as coronavirus dried up what was once a well of tourism and entertainment cash. That’s twice the rate of business closures it saw in 2019.

Months that typically represent peak visiting times, like April, July, August, and October, came and went with few visitors, leaving some businesses without any revenue to survive on. Jamie Scott, the BID’s director of planning and economic development, says about one-third of Georgetown’s visitors come from outside of the D.C. region in a good year. In 2020, that portion decreased to about 23%.

For Bruce Marine, the owner of Cherub Antique Gallery on M Street NW, the drop in sales he saw — which he attributes to the coronavirus travel restrictions — eventually led to his decision to close his shop in July after 36 years in D.C. Marine says he usually relied on buyers who flew into the city and stayed at nearby hotels.

“My clients I met either from the hotels, or they were European and business travelers,” says Marine, who now operates his business virtually. “And I knew that it wasn’t coming back so soon…so I thought I should be realistic.”

Marine did reopen his storefront briefly in early summer, when D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser allowed retailers to welcome a limited number of shoppers, but had little success. While he mostly relied on previous clients for business, he says he’d sometimes strike a sale with a tourist popping in during a day of shopping, or a parent visiting their Georgetown student over a family weekend — none of which could happen in 2020. (Like other colleges in the city, Georgetown University, which has an undergraduate student body of around 7,000, has been conducting majority-remote classes since last March.)

“I can’t even express how much I missed the relationships I formed with these magnificent people I met through the years, but it is what it is,” Marine says.

Despite the numerous closures and sharp decline in tourist activity across the neighborhood, Sternlieb says the numbers don’t tell the whole story — “things look worse than they actually are,” he says.

According to Scott, about 63% of the closures in 2020 were of larger, national retailers, many of which had already been staring down bleak financial futures before the pandemic, like Brooks Brothers. Scott says 13 of the 60 businesses were already expected to close in 2020, regardless of the pandemic.

Sternlieb and Scott say 2021 holds more promise for Georgetown businesses than other commercial areas that depend on office buildings for revenue — but it’ll be an uphill battle. Georgetown is extending its streateries and sidewalk space to allow for more outdoor dining areas this spring, and Scott and Sternlieb hope an in-person fall semester on college campuses will bring an added boom come August.

Sternlieb says interest in the vacant retail spaces picked up in the last quarter of 2020, and there are currently ten new businesses opening, or are slated to open, this year. (That’s still only about a third of prospective additions in a normal year, according to the Georgetown Metropolitan.) Some of those businesses are chains, direct-to-consumer storefronts, or trendy restaurants, continuing the years-long trend of newer brands replacing Georgetown’s smaller or independent businesses. 

Already, Sternlieb says the opening of Foxtrot, a boutique grocery store chain, drew significant crowds last weekend, and he expects the neighborhood to remain in the top market of retail leasing in the city.

“I think that we’re gonna recover more quickly than a lot of other places because we are unique,” Scott says. “It’s just the type of place that people want to be.”

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Filed Under: aldo, covid-19, don lobos mexican grill, forever 21, georgetown, lucky brand, pandemic closures,