JBG Smith has found a restaurant tenant for the former Panera Bread space at 4459 Willard Avenue in Friendship Heights, which has been vacant for about a year and a half.
Potbelly Sandwich Shop will open there later this year. This will probably be welcomed by office workers in the area who have missed Panera for lunchtime sandwiches. It's a solidly middle-class entry for an area whose target demographics have trended downward, with the flight of the ultra-rich from Montgomery County to lower-tax jurisdictions in the region.
This is exactly the type of casual restaurant that Chevy Chase needs. They lack places like this to pick up an affordable sandwich. I hope they have outdoor dining as well, a much needed amenity in the area.
ReplyDeleteThe Chevy Chase Collection also needs these types of casual eateries, and less hyper-expensive, low volume boutique stores like Tiffany’s. Of course more original and unique restaurants are welcome, but Chevy Chase needs to get off its high horse and provide realistically priced shops and restaurants to become a more complete city.
Great addition. Thank God it's not another Subway.
ReplyDeletePanera sucks and Potbelly is worse. This isn't a great addition it's an embarrassment.
ReplyDeleteSo not true!
Delete11:21 AM
ReplyDeletePanera is great and so is Potbelly.
Much better than Subway and the like.
So true!!!
DeletePotbelly, Panera (and affiliated chain Au Bon Pain) and Subway are closing dozens of restaurants nationwide.
ReplyDeleteThere is a good article in the Post's Sunday Business section about how we've already reached "peak restaurant" across the country.
"The gourmet grocers are failing too."
ReplyDeleteDean & DeLuca, Balducci's...any others?
Why the hate for Panera? The Bethesda, Silver Spring and Rockville locations are great. Food is healthier than most fast casual places and there's plenty of room to study or hang out.
ReplyDelete11:45 I saw that too. Nice article. The gourmet grocers are failing too.
ReplyDelete11:49 AM 7/14/19
1:59PM One of the articles I read talked how specialty food products are booming, they are being incorporated into mainstream markets instead of specialty stores. The products (Beyond Meat, for example) are the driving the growth.
ReplyDeleteSomeone likened it to when mainstream grocers brought in natural and organic foods in the 1980's, leaving the "natural food" stores failing. You could finally buy your Kashi at Giant.
@1:59 - Balducci's is failing?
ReplyDeleteI read somewhere that many experts believe that the quantity of restaurants in the country has maxed out, based on the current population, and the lifestyle choices that folks now make about dining out. They say this means that the net number of restaurants will no longer increase, like it has for decades, and for every new eatery, an older one will close.
ReplyDeleteThis seems to make sense to me, as popular places like Bethesda seem to include only a certain number of restaurants. All these shiny new high-rise office and mixed use multifamily apartments buildings seem to include really nice, glass lined, Class A retail space and adjacent outdoor dining if they are in prime walkable areas.
With the net number of total restaurants being a constant, this means many existing retail spaces in older Class B locations will likely not include restaurants. With the reduction in “brick and mortar” retail, this means many of these vacant spaces may not be easily be back-filled with retail shops either. Service spaces and financial institutions seem the likely infill that we will see in more and more of these older buildings. Some may even remain vacant for many years, even in a thriving downtown like Bethesda.
Some community’s have programs to include attractive back-lighted translucent graphics in the vacant storefronts to make the streetscape more pleasant , well lighted and safe. Perhaps the Bethesda Up folks should consider a program to do this, and assist landlords.
Bethesda nightlife has declined since Glass and Reimer convened the Nightlife Task Force.
DeleteI love what Bethesda UP does to maintain and beautify the downtown. Their workers are always helpful.
But, they only put on one big event s year (Taste). Some of the other events are stale at this point ( daytime arts festival). I'd recommend freshening up the events. There's not anything other than Taste that draws people from other areas.
Suze - 1:59 PM here - I followed up on that, Balducci's is doing fine.
ReplyDeleteHowever my neighbor just handed me last Friday's New York Times Business section and right on the front page is the story about Dean & DeLuca. It's a good thing that JBG Smith went with Chase Bank, given the money that is flooding into Bethesda now, and not get stuck with a slightly failing grocery, adding to all of Federal Realty's white elephants on that block.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/10/dining/dean-and-deluca-closes-stores.html
Thanks for the heads-up, Anna.
Yup, all the gray heads moving in.
DeleteGood time to remind everyone that our MoCo leaders fumbled getting Amazon HQ2 and all those workers that would have moved in to Bethesda.
There really is no comparison between the White Flint mall site and Crystal City.
ReplyDeleteCrystal City is
-right next to an airport.
-right next to a Metro station.
-adjacent to several highways, and just a mile from a major bridge leading into downtown Washington DC.
-has tons of vacant offices, ready for immediate occupancy, thanks to the poor judgement of the NoVa cartel in relying on defense contractors for their tenants.
The White Flint mall site has none of those advantages.
Downtown Bethesda has many advantages, but they do not include large blocks of vacant land or contiguous vacant offices.
8:01AM
ReplyDeleteI guess our Council was simply played by Bezos then. Amazon simply ingested all of our proprietary data and we got nothing.
@1:59 - Thanks for the article! That's too bad about Dean & DeLuca. I've never been, but a few of my friends are loyal customers, and it sucks that the company is being mismanaged so badly. I will admit to being disappointed that they backed out of their lease at the JBG project, I was looking forward to trying them out. Glad to hear that Balducci's, at least, is doing well!
ReplyDelete8:13 AM You're cool with Amazon having all of our proprietary data?
ReplyDelete8:26AM - We're l-o-n-g past that point. Long past.
ReplyDelete8:48pm it's actually new. For the first time, The Council turned over enormous amounts of proprietary data to Amazon which they have ingested. And Amazon often is a bad actor (I.e. the current employee protests)
DeleteI remember how Robbie used to love Amazon before their owner bought the Washington Commie Post.
ReplyDelete9:26AM - What proprietary data are you referring to?
ReplyDeleteDo you really think they didn't already have our data?
1031am they didn't have access to the county's proprietary economic and resident data before.
ReplyDeleteIt's all redacted stuff in the proposal.
Amazon knows more about the county's future than actual residents.
As did NYC, Arlington...all the possible places.
ReplyDeleteMuch of the info was already public although spread among many institutions and departments, some from private organizations. The big thing was coordinating and gathering.
Having that information, compiled in one place, can let Amazon in the future go back to cities and say things like we didn’t put HQ2 in your neighborhood but we have this really good idea for an R&D hub. Say, aren't they doing that in PG County?
11:25 AM
ReplyDeleteNope, this WAS NOT public data. Hence why it was all redacted. The Council got played and now Amazon will have an even greater advantage over small business bricks and mortar stores in MoCo.
If it's redacted, how do you know?
ReplyDeleteIt could also be proprietary data, interim data.
So I guess you think the various local governments also got played in and around:
Atlanta
Boston
Austin
Denver
LA
NYC
Indianapolis
Columbus
Toronto
Miami
Nashville
Pittsburgh
Newark
Raleigh
Philly
Dallas
Chicago
"It could also be proprietary data, interim data."
ReplyDeleteLOL
If it's redacted, how do you know?
ReplyDeleteYou don't - it's all speculation and paranoia
Proprietary and interim data
DeletePlease stay in your lane, this is getting embarrassing.
Embarrassing for who? Certainly not for the one asking questions. (me) Note the question marks after my comments.
ReplyDeleteMaybe for the one insulting her for trying to learn. (you)
So this is "your lane"? How so?
7:21am
DeleteYour "Proprietary and interim data" word salad yesterday...seemed like you were off your troll game
And that line about how you aspire everyday to be the man that Hans Reimer is. That was a bit over the top laugh out loud stuff.
I'm glad dyer keeps you around, for laughs.
Oh, 8:36AM...sigh...reading comprehension, sweetie...please...you'll thank me
ReplyDeleteIt's like, to me it's starkly obvious that Robert Dyer hates Hans Riemer for being so successful in life and attaining goals Dyer could only dream about.
By your logic, that would be 100% true because I said so.
Now where am I "aspiring" in my above post?
There you go again, projecting...
If you think this comment is a "word salad," you've got bigger problems than reading comprehension.
If it's redacted, how do you know?
It could also be proprietary data, interim data.
FYI, I've been quite vocal that I'm not a fan of Hans Riemer, never have been. Never voted for him.
ReplyDeleteFunny how y'all can remember a specific word I used once in a post years ago, but not that I don't support Riemer.
Why can't Dyer praise our government and elected officials more?
ReplyDelete11:37AM You're so funny with that giant hyperbole you cart around.
ReplyDelete