H Street NE nightlife district, failing?

The Washington Post has an article, "H Street was once a symbol of D.C.’s rebirth. Now it’s barely holding on," about the decline of the H Street NE entertainment district in DC, because of a rise in crime, loss in patronage, and closure of many businesses.

Since my claim to fame in urban revitalization is H Street NE:

-- "360 Apartment building + Giant Supermarket vs. a BP gas station, which would you choose?," 2013
-- "The community development approach and the revitalization of DC's H Street corridor: congruent or oppositional approaches?," 2013
-- "DC and streetcars #4: from the standpoint of stoking real estate development, the line is incredibly successful and it isn't even in service yet, and now that development is extending eastward past 15th Street," 2015
-- "The streetcar and the new potential for H Street retail revitalization," 2016

this is an important piece.

My overall take is that revitalization and commercial district success requires constant, ongoing management.  You can never stop ("MAIN STREET NICHES IN A MASS SALES WORLD," Neil Peirce, 2004).

And probably the death of Joe Englert, the impresario who helped develop many of the early establishments on the corridor, many with particularly interesting and creative business models, hasn't helped.  

In a way, he did more to revive the corridor than the city or the Main Street group I helped found, as he brought buildings, capital, vendor relationships, operators, and creative concepts together in multiple locations ("Joe Englert, DC nightlife impresario, dies | Lessons about nightlife-based revitalization," 2020).  Even more than the Atlas Theater rehabilitation.  While important, it doesn't attract enough patrons to carry an entire corridor.  

As Project for Public Spaces says, you need multiple attractions.

That being said, a Reddit entry in response to the article makes some excellent points that I wouldn't necessarily have come up with, not being there any more.  Although some people said the article overstated, that it focused on business failures, and not all the businesses, many opened within the last 18 months, that are succeeding.

1.  H Street isn't well connected to the Metrorail network.  (Been addressing that for decades. That's why I advocated for the separated blue line although now I think it should be a separated silver line.)  Union Station and NoMA are on the eastern edge, and it's a long slog to walk to the main destinations on the H Street corridor.  

The streetcar that's there is poorly connected and short--it needs to be extended east and west, which the city has really screwed up on--making a one seat ride to the commercial district easy.  It's not well connected to Union Station, and alternatively could have been connected to NoMA station.  If Union Station gets expanded as is planned, that will be corrected, but that's at 15 years away.

Flickr photo by BeyondDC.

2.  Despite the lack of a good Metrorail connection, Venture capital subsidized Uber rides back in the day made it easy and relatively inexpensive for people to get to and from H Street.  Now an Uber ride to the corridor costs $25 ("Farewell, Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy," New York Times).

3.  There's lots of competition in terms of night life districts, including the nearby Union Market and Navy Yard, both of which are much better served by Metrorail.

4.  Loss of music venues that would attract at least some people every night.

5.  More currently, inflation stoked restaurant and tavern prices has led many people to reduce their patronage of such establishments.

6.  H Street is wide and full of traffic and not so congenial for pedestrians.  Less of an issue, but an issue.

7.  Another point that's kind of interesting--commenting that residents aren't really patronizing the corridor (except for maybe the grocery stores), indirectly points out the difference between the demographics of residents versus those of commercial district patrons.  

You have to have money to be able to buy residential real estate in DC.  You have to have money to be able to afford to rent in a newly built apartment building.  So the people living in the area are maybe older and less likely to be going out to a tavern multiple times per week.  And they might rather be spending money on mortgage or rent than a high priced meal.

8.  And finally, crime.  But the other nightlife districts in DC have equally concerning crime problems too.  But no question public safety matters.  Maybe it's worth segmenting.  Crime against businesses.  And crime against patrons.  Both are bad.  Both have effects.

Ultimately, I think the two biggest issues are:

• the poor connections to Metrorail and the squandering of the opportunity of the streetcar and 
• the failure to do ongoing management of the offer, using daypart planning, especially in terms of maintenance of anchors to keep people coming throughout the week, not just on weekends.

-- "Planning programming by daypart, month, season: and Boston Winter Garden, DC's Holiday Market, etc.," 2016
-- "Little room for error: small retail business in general and in DC in particular," 2019

Speaking of daypart and retail planning, the article says that there are 20 marijuana dispensaries on H Street.  That certainly seems like an overconcentration.  

Ironically, one of my early issues was overconcentration of liquor stores on H Street--I was even featured in a Post article about it in 2003.  Then it was about loitering, littering and crime. And I raised the issue using academic research ("Spatial dynamics of alcohol availability, neighborhood structure and violent crime," Journal of Studies on Alcohol).

Many articles on marijuana dispensaries--but this focused primarily on recreational consumption, not just medical--found a strong association with increased crime, but found it declined over time ("Marijuana Dispensaries and Neighborhood Crime and Disorder in Denver, Colo," Justice Quarterly, press release explaining the article).  

My sense, since they are "medical" and the people don't consume the stuff nearby, that it's less of an issue.  But there is probably an association with crime, and in any case this contributes to a lack of retail diversity.

But transportation is the biggest issue, better connections making it easier for people to go to other nearby districts, some of which (as I wrote about in the Eastern Market piece) are more carefully managed to be constantly "on."  

This is a derivative of "Central Place theory," which I extend some in terms of thinking about intra-city districts.  I summarize this as when you have a choice between two or more districts, you choose to visit the one that's easier to get to, with more and better options ("Updating the post The "soft side" of commercial district revitalization," 2016).

If H Street doesn't measure up, it will lose out.

An idea. The problem with the streetcar is it's truncated. Until that's corrected I would upgrade the buses on H Street--the X2 line is a workhouse, but dowdy--to double deck buses.  But the city really needs to step up on the streetcar, which it has failed at for 10+ years.

Flickr photo by km_edinburgh