Signs of a changing neighborhood

Prince of Petworth reports, in "Petworth’s Sala Thai has Soft Opening Friday Night" that a Thai restaurant is coming to the Petworth neighborhood. Petworth has experienced a fair amount of demographic shift as younger households (often of different race, educational attainment, and socioeconomic status) had bought properties from older African-American families, as they were attracted to the neighborhood by its relatively close in location to Columbia Heights, Adams-Morgan and Downtown, facilitated by the green line subway station at New Hampshire and Georgia Avenues. The more intense housing development on part of the subway station will bring further change.

In my "Richard's Rules for Restaurant-Based Revitalization" post, originally from 2005 but updated from time to time, I made the point that Thai restaurants are an indicator of neighborhood change, that this is a cuisine preferred by the younger set, as opposed to how older demographics may have preferred Chinese food at one time.

The opening of a Thai restaurant on Georgia Avenue in a new housing development across from a Metro station is a perfect example of this point.