Mount Pleasant’s Strugles
14 11 2008The Washington Post ran an interesting story yesterday about how much Mount Pleasant businesses have been struggling lately. Since the huge fire earlier this year, many additional storefronts have gone dark, and the tightening credit market and floundering economy have made it ever more difficult for new business to fill the voids.
We are surprised the burned out building hasn’t been reoccupied yet, but the problem Mt. Pleasant is facing is common across many neighborhoods throughout the area, how do you attract businesses that the community wants and needs? [Photo: Rockcreek]
replace all the poor and ignorant people with wealthy consumers. that oughta do it!
There are plenty of wealthy consumers in Mt. Pleasant, but the powers that be there are vehemently and insanely anti-business. They make Takoma Park look like the model of economic development!
I think Mt. Pleasant is geographically destined to be a residential district. Even though it’s readily accessible by public transport, it’s surrounded by Rock Creek on two sides. Crestwood and Kalorama are in a similar situation. I think incoming Mt. Pleasanters favor a transition into a more humane Adams Morgan, but AM has Dupont and U Street as neighbors as well as a (weird) red line connection that’s helped them gain favor with MoCo crowds/money.
I think with Marx Cafe and the other few bastions of gentri-commerce, Mt. Pleasant has hit it’s limit. Which isn’t a bad thing: you can’t transform every neighborhood into the next Dupont.
Also I think some of the problem is that the wealthy people that have moved in recently and pushed out the residents that supported some of the now closed businessess.
Surprise surprise. A slumlord that never invested in his building doesn’t know how to recover from a fire. He probably cheaped out on the fire insurance like he cheaped out on meeting the fire code. Now he’s faced with something complicated like restoring a building in a historic district, and he probably doesn’t even know how to change a light bulb. No one’s buying real estate anymore, so no one smarter is going to come into the picture for another 2 years.