No one who spends any time walking around Columbia Heights, U Street or Logan Circle probably needed the New York Times to tell them that there are way more condos on the market than people to buy them. But it’s nice the rest of the country now knows how shortsighted our local real estate developers and investors have been. From today’s Times: In hopes of salvaging something from their costly plans, hundreds of developers like…

When architects, developers, and laborers set about transforming the former Columbia Hospital for Women into the massive Columbia Residences complex at the intersection of 25th Street, L Street, and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, they placed the area within a protective cocoon of chain-link fences. Inside the fences, just across L Street from the back door of Marcel’s restaurant, went a little-known monument commemorating a joint international agreement to reduce military forces patrolling the Great Lakes. With…

Once mainly a dumping ground for hotels in easy striking distance of both Georgetown and downtown, the District’s West End neighborhood has lately experienced a building boom that may bring more residents than ever into the quiet area east of Rock Creek Parkway, north of Foggy Bottom, and west of Dupont Circle. For years, the West End had been a veritable eye of the storm — remaining oddly quiet, while the rest of the…

The West End Guide reports that Trader Joe’s, the gourmet Los Angeles-based grocery chain, is set to open its first location in the District by 2006. Trader Joe’s is eyeing the old Columbia Hospital site in the West End, which is being converted to retail and residential use. Anticipating Trader Joe’s arrival, the team from the WEG did a market basket survey to compare Trader Joe’s prices with those at the Social and Watergate Safeways,…