LensCrafters has posted some "coming soon" window screens at their future store at the corner of Arlington Road and Elm Street at Bethesda Row. The eyewear retailer more often found in the typical American mall is a sign of declining times in Montgomery County, as the rich continue to flee MoCo's Draconian taxes for lower-tax jurisdictions in the region.
There just isn't enough concentration of ultra-wealthy residents to support high-end retail like Kate Spade, which recently closed here. It will be interesting to monitor the performance of Anthropologie & Co., Williams Sonoma and Pottery Barn going forward. Wealth flight has already ravaged Montgomery County's vaunted "Rodeo Drive" in Chevy Chase, turning it into a Skid Row of vacant storefronts, aging apartment buildings and smashed-out bus shelters. Now the wave is beginning to buffet once-solidly-high-end Bethesda Row.
With the "new" County Council having failed to take action on our economic development crisis despite having been in office for five months, we can predict a continuing moribund economy. We're in real trouble folks, and your property tax bill will continue to rise while County revenue continues to fall. Voter remorse on steroids!
18 comments:
Oh my, this looks bad. Please tell us more...
Perhaps if you repeat the same news of our eminent demise often enough, people will listen.
Maybe people will get the point and elect you to save our moribund economy.
Or maybe not.
SIGNS!!!
Chevy Chase is Skid Row now? Lol c'mon man. Clearly you've never walked through the real one in LA. FRIT seems to be doing fine with their downtown Bethesda properties. If you owned any of their shares, you would know..
5:07: You need to take a drive south on Wisconsin Avenue and see all the vacant storefronts, aging apartments, and smashed-out bus shelters. Retail and restaurants are NOT doing fine in MoCo, as the mass Going Out of Business! signs in windows countywide indicate.
6:48: Too bad I posted actual photos of the bus shelter in question, vulgarian.
BOOM
Where are these "aging apartment buildings" on Wisconsin Avenue in Friendship Heights? Are you referring to Highland House? Are you referring to Somerset House? LMAO
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This is 5:07. I pass through Chevy Chase via Wisconsin Ave. daily during my commute. I don't see how vacant storefronts along a few blocks translates to the decline of an entire county's economy. Its more like the retailers fled an area full of old rich people for a more dynamic City Center.
7:52: It's not just the blocks of vacant storefronts, but the decline in revenue to the County, that show it was the rich customers who fled MoCo first. Then the shops they had kept afloat with their money all went out of business or moved where the rich people had moved.
Translation - your guys on the Council blew it.
It is more of the rising rents that are causing businesses to close in Bethesda. Federal keeps rents high because all these companies that don't really know the area are sold on the demographics and are "jonesing" to be here.
You are 100% correct that Jeni's is going in a section of the Mamma Luccuci location. They are giving back 1/3 of their location due to declining sales and rising rents. I believe Jeni's is under estimating the harsh winters and early night life of Bethesda. They would get more bang for their buck in DC (Wharf/Nats Stadium/H Street area) than downtown Bethesda. Just my opinion from what I see, experience, and hear.
Robert, I don't understand how you can come up with such a broad conclusion about county demographics based on the closure of a few luxury retail stores. And what do you mean by "rich customers" fleeing MoCo? Do you mean selling their homes and moving outside of MD? Or do you mean customers shifting their shopping destinations from Friendship Heights to Citycenter, Tysons Galleria or going online?
You sound extremely passionate about this, but I don't see any numbers to support this.
10:04: Not only are there numbers, but they show the exact amount of tax revenue those wealthy people took with them to each nearby county they moved to. I have reported extensively on that.
Those numbers then strongly correlate with the drop in revenue, and most obviously, with the closure of high-end stores in Chevy Chase - and now in downtown Bethesda.
8:42: Thanks for the info. I could not get them to answer on the record about it.
Well, they certainly aren't going to Tyson's Galleria. Macy's closed there.
10:55 AM I'm surprised the Macy's lasted their as long as it did. There is another, larger Macy's literally across the street at Tysons Corner Center. Made no sense to have two.
There were no stores that closed at The Collection which moved to Northern Virginia. It's all about City Center DC opening, not about "the flight of the super-rich from moribund MoCo". In fact, five of those chains have never had stores in Northern Virginia. And Barney's Co-Op closed all of their stores nationwide in 2013.
8:29: I never said the stores went to Northern VA. The rich people went to Northern VA. That's why the stores closed. You don't seem to realize that if the closures were related to the brands, rather than to the downfall of "MoCo's Rodeo Drive," the empty storefronts would have quickly filled with other high-end retailers. Clearly they did not, and it's because the ultra-wealthy population in MoCo is now too small to sustain such boutiques.
The shockwave that wiped out Chevy Chase is now reaching Bethesda Row. We're in real trouble here, folks.
Still waiting for you to name those "aging apartment buildings" along Wisconsin Avenue.
"You don't seem to realize that if the closures were related to the brands, rather than to the downfall of 'MoCo's Rodeo Drive,' the empty storefronts would have quickly filled with other high-end retailers."
So why hasn't NoVa "quickly filled with the high-end retailers" that closed at The Collection?
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