The Washington Post has a story on how city officials are developing a city-wide plan to keep and attract new retail.
H Street is on the list, along with Georgia Avenue, Shaw, M Street SE, Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue, East Capitol Street and Bladensburg Road. The other neighborhoods have not yet been identified.Each faces its own challenges. Some require redevelopment from the ground up, others resemble suburbia. But H Street is perhaps the closest to a turnaround.
The community hopes the city's plan will create a better environment to attract retail. Among their requests are tax breaks for restoring old buildings, an expedited permitting process and cleaner streets.
"They talked about H Street in the theoretical and now we're here," said Joe Englert, who owns several popular bars in the neighborhood. "Now they've got to get in a different mind-set."
In May, we linked to a similar story about how city officials in Tempe were jointly marketing street-floor retail throughout the city.