Columbia Heights is Transformed, Why Now?

You can't help but be impressed with the new look Columbia Heights where 14Th and Irving streets intersect in Northwest. Whether you live in the neighborhood and have been bothered by the years of construction or you stalled in traffic while trying to get to the Maryland suburbs, you can't ignore the changes.

Today, Tuesday, Mayor Fenty, Ward One Councilman Jim Graham, At Large member and Chair of the DC Council Economic Development Committee Kwame Brown were there to officially open the new Target store. The public can get inside on Wednesday.

There will be a Best Buy, Marshall's, Bed Bath and Beyond, a Starbucks and lots more-and that's just inside the Mall.

Lining the sidewalks, leading to and from the Columbia Metro station will be even more pedestrian friendly stores...five or six of them small businesses or neighborhood owned.There is a new Giant supermarket and Tivoli Theatre. Offices, high end condos and apartments are also going up. More than a dozen new sit down restaurants now exist where there were empty lots before.

All this roughly 40 years after the riots left this part of town a virtual urban desert--no big business would come here-no upscale housing developer could see a market for buyers or renters in these parts.

DC Officials today were quick to point out there has been no major uprooting of fixed income long term residents. There is low and moderate housing in the neighborhood.

The developer of DC-USA or the Columbia Heights Mall is Drew Greenwald of Grid properties, developers of a similar mall in Harlem. He told me at today's dedication that big stores like Target are reaching a saturation point in the suburbs and looking for new locations; He says they also feel big cities like DC are more accommodating (with 42 million dollars in tax incentives). Greenwald might have added the big stores are following the markets... and scores of yuppies and buppies with good jobs and incomes began discovering DC and neighborhoods like Columbia Heights at about the time that Metro opened the Columbia Heights station--no need for a car.

Neighborhood parking will be even tighter-despite the dollar an hour-one thousand parking spaces under the Mall. You'll want to avoid 14Th street beginning this weekend (think Midtown Manhattan) .

Did I mention the seven hundred jobs available in the DC-USA Mall, alone. Target officials told me 60 percent of those positions will go to DC residents. That's ten percent above what they agreed to with City officials.

All vowed today that the same kind of economic development is coming to other depressed DC neighborhoods. I'll keep you posted.

Click here to watch Bruce's Columbia Height's Story.