Responding to retail decay in Friendship Heights (DC/Montgomery County, Maryland)

 I've written about the decline of this once thriving commercial district:

-- "Friendship Heights and the production of retail decay," 2020

The retail killer Ashkenasy (they wrecked a couple locations in Baltimore including Harborplace, and haven't been great managers of Union Station's retail) owned Mazza Gallerie for awhile, it went into foreclosure.  Once home to a Neiman-Marcus department store, now closed, it's going to be torn down and redeveloped into retail and housing.

WTOP reports that DC and MoCo are working to create a business improvement district to help improve the area ("Friendship Heights BID? DC and Montgomery Co. are working on it").

In the beginning of my Main Street days (2002) districts like Dupont Circle pushed for being included. 

I scoffed, saying that they had plenty of resources, and neighborhood commercial districts didn't.  The reality is that then successful districts like Friendship Heights and Georgetown still faced voracious competition, but from the suburbs ("Turnabout is fair play: why Topher Matthews/GGW is wrong about TIF incentives for a department store in Georgetown," 2012).

So I was missing the point. The lesson from Main Street and BIDs and the original Downtown management program in Corning New York in the early 1960s, is that _all_ such districts need ongoing management so they can be their best, compete with other districts, recruit, stay on top of possible negative changes, etc.

So now that FH is super duper languishing they are considering creating a business improvement district. Obviously this should have been done years ago, especially as department stores began to falter and DC invested in other areas, as did Montgomery County.