King Street, Alexandria and ruminations about inner city retail

Yahoo! Photos - King_Street_12_6.jpg
Originally uploaded by rllayman.

I don't remember the provenance of this photo. It's extracted from an old Yahoo Photo account. But it's relevant to an e-list discussion of the last few days on hstreetdc (a yahoogroups list) where we have been pretty actively discussing the "current conditions" (as a planner would say) of the H Street NE, DC commercial district.

One person started the conversation with a call for the necessity of added parking, and while I disagree that such is a priority, the rest of his points have been excellent.

In my opinion, what it comes down to is "the offer" and right now, H Street doesn't offer that much, at least for other demographics than those currently patronizing the corridor.

I aver, although to my knowledge no recent intercept study has been performed, that few area residents, regardless of race, ethnicity, or income level, are patronizing the corridor to a great extent.

It's interesting in that I went to PG Plaza last night to check something out at Target (a wasted trip) and my impression--it's been many years since I've been there--is that this mall is the equivalent of an enclosed upscale H Street or other inner-city neighborhood shopping district, such as Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, with a majority of the shops appealing to "minority" demographics... although in PG County as well as in DC, "minorities" are in fact the majority. It feels like an upscale experience compared to the now defunct Capital Plaza or Landover Mall, or to Iverson Mall.

This is relevant to an interesting point David Milder makes in his Business Recruitment Handbook, that if you're working with an inner-city commercial district targeting "minorities," are you even familiar with the brands and stores that target this demographic?

I imagine that the average new DC resident would likely be unfamiliar with many of the store names, which tend to be more inner-city directed, in PG Plaza although there are a smattering of familiar names such as the Gap, Old Navy, of course Hecht's and Target, JC Penney (which is targeting middle-income folks), and so forth.

Afterwards, I walked from PG Plaza to the West Hyattsville Metro and looked a bit more closely at the Hamilton Avenue commercial district near the Metro station. It's mostly Hispanic-oriented stores, which meant I couldn't find the most recent back issue of the Gazette, which I was hoping to score, demonstrating the increasing importance of Spanish in PG County too... The PG County Councilmember representing the close-in to DC district is Will Campos, who is Hispanic, which is a first for PG County.

The region is an interesting retail environment.