On up-and-coming H Street Northeast, a faded carryout sandwich shop sits next door to a newly opened restaurant and refinished facade. At the Argonaut restaurant, considered one of the trendy trailblazers here in 2007, a cocktail costs roughly the same as a sundress at a nearby discount clothing shop. Boarded-up buildings still dot every block.
“We’re in a race to bring all good things down here,” said Anwar Saleem, head of H Street Main Street, the corridor’s marketing arm.
| Crime still holding back progress |
| While the bricks and mortar of H Street’s revitalization is coming quickly, image takes longer. |
| Crime here is still an issue, although locals say it’s vastly better than when D.C. police officer Scott Lewis was shot and killed while trying to help a deaf motorist in 1995. |
| Less than two years ago a woman was shot in broad daylight near the Atlas Performing Arts Center, and violence is still common at night. |
| H Street, in D.C.’s Atlas District, was rebuffed when community officials sought to put a trendier name on street banners. |
| “We tried to get the name Capitol Hill North but no one wanted a part of that,” said Anwar Saleem, head of H Street Main Street. |
Once the busiest retail corridor in D.C., H Street was devastated by the 1968 riots. By 2000 more than 150 vacant buildings marred the landscape.
“It was like, I don’t care who comes in — just do something,” Saleem said of the beginning of the revitalization.
After nearly three years, the grueling construction of a trolley line meant to revive the corridor is complete. But H Street’s business owners, the supposed beneficiaries of the new transit line, say it came at a cost.
In the wake of construction are the remains of dozens of boarded-up businesses that couldn’t survive the firestorm of construction and increased property values caused by the revitalization and influx of trendy new establishments.
Now it seems as though shiny new businesses are squeezing out the tattered establishments that toughed it out during the worst years here when crime and crack ruled the streets. But locals say it’s not that black and white.
“You have to adapt,” said Atif Tale, owner of Inspiration BBQ. Tale has been a business owner here for more than a decade but shut down his carryout restaurant during construction to focus on catering. He reopened as a barbecue joint this year.
“There was a change in landscape and we had to change our business,” he said. “It’s a mixing bowl down here, but in a good way.”
More than 150 businesses have opened or reopened here in the past three years, including 28 in 2009, the height of the recession.
However, businesses report they lost 25 percent to 50 percent of their revenue during construction, which began in September 2008 and ended this month. And unlike other corridors in the city, H Street businesses didn’t get tax relief.
At the same time, property taxes tripled and many proprietors couldn’t handle the one-two punch as leases soared.
June Lim, owner of Grace Deli and convenience store, said she wants to retire but is now losing money. She lost nearly half her customers during the street construction. Two neighboring establishments went under and boarded up.
There’s no official count, but locals say dozens upon dozens of shops closed during construction. Over the last year, 57 properties had significant outstanding taxes due, according to Saleem.
However, Frank E. Hankins, who opened his Sova espresso and wine bar in 2007, said a lot of convenience and discount clothing stores on H Street are suffering because their regular customers are being pushed out of Northeast by gentrification.
“Their customer base used to live six blocks away — now they live six miles away,” he said.
Most business owners here — old and new — are minorities.
“I personally have felt no resentment from other business owners already here,” said Hankins.
