Harris Teeter is the latest victim of the crash of downtown Bethesda's nighttime economy. The store at 4805 Battery Lane plans to no longer be open 24 hours a day. New store hours will be from 6:00 AM to midnight. The move leaves Safeway at 5000 Bradley Boulevard as the only 24-hour grocery store downtown.
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Late night hours have become a dark and quiet time in downtown Bethesda since the failure of Montgomery County Councilmember Hans Riemer's disastrous "nighttime economy initiative." The fiasco resulted in the closure of 15 nightspots in Bethesda to date, the closure of the 24-hour Hamburger Hamlet, the end of overnight pharmacy counter hours at CVS Pharmacy on Arlington Road, and late night hour cutbacks at businesses like Barnes & Noble and Nando's Peri-Peri.
There just aren't enough people out at night anymore to sustain nighttime businesses. The large flow of clubgoers that once spilled out onto downtown streets around 2:00 AM have mostly decamped to the District for nightlife, cutting off vital revenue to the County's budget, which is now in the red every year. Riemer's failure was capped off by his move to strengthen and preserve the County's archaic government liquor monopoly, which is killing bars and restaurants in MoCo, and sending even more spending money into the District instead.
24 comments:
Bad news for folks who work late and want to get a gallon of milk or loaf of bread.
Looking forward to this!
I know someone who goes there often, and he said the reason for the closure at night is so they can kick out all the homeless people who basically live there. I guess that's the issue with having a Starbucks and those tables all around near the entrance.
Giant doesn't have this issue since they don't have anywhere to sit down.
Safeway on Bradley/Arlington has a Starbucks and large sit down cafe area.
They are still open 24 hours.
@ 7:01 AM - Also that eating area behind the cash registers. I'm surprised they didn't realize the need to seal off those areas in the off hours when they built the store two years ago.
"The fiasco resulted in the closure of 15 nightspots in Bethesda to date"
Ignoring, for the moment, the fact that "closure of 15 nightspots" includes locations in which new nightspots have opened, how is downtown Silver Spring doing? Up? Down? Unchanged? Is the high turnover a County-wide problem, or is it specific to Bethesda and its landlords?
Seems like Teeter has a homeless problem at all hours since a man was working the aisles begging for change when I was last there during the day.
MoCo certainly hasn't solved the homeless problem if these anonymous comments are true that there are hoards of homeless during the night. Collateral damage from an anemic county economy.
"Safeway on Bradley/Arlington has a Starbucks and large sit down cafe area. They are still open 24 hours."
Probably because they don't have a luxury apartment complex in the same building, entered through the same lobby.
"Riemer's failure was capped off by his move to strengthen and preserve the County's archaic government liquor monopoly"
How did he "move to strengthen and preserve" it? Simply failing to abolish it does not equal that.
Still waiting for an answer...
#DodgingDyer
Meanwhile Bob The Builder has yet to report on the homeless shelter one block from HT at the corner of Cordell and Woodmont owned by the same County he is running for office as a commissioner.
The man is utterly clueless.
In case you missed (ignored) it.
Crime is down for a fifth year in a row in D.C region
Crime is down overall in the D.C. region over the last five years, including murder, assault, robbery and car theft, according to a report by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments covering the period from 2013 to 2017.
But in Montgomery County, there were eight more homicides in 2017 than 2016, and rapes increased by 20 percent in 2017. “This is something we should be concerned with and focus on,” said Metro Transit Police Chief Ron Pavlik.
A change in how the FBI categorizes rapes may account for the uptick in the percentage. Certain sex offenses previously not categorized as rape are now included. [WTOP]
SCCCOOOOPPPPPPPPPEEEEEEDDDDDDDDDDDD
We must have a thriving nighttime economy then, in the upscale arc of University Blvd between Kensington and Wheaton, anchored by a 24-hour CVS in Kensington, and a 24-hour Safeway next to the Wheaton metro. Wheaton also features a 24-hour IHOP and 24-hour Wendy's.
1:48pm urban planners understand that a real 24 hour city provides a broad breadth of services 24/7.
Listen to them.
Urban planners understand that the availability of services does not need to extend to every hobo with a circadian rhythm disorder.
@ 12:14 PM -
From the WTOP article:
"Fairfax County, Virginia, saw 20 homicides in 2017 compared with 19 the year before."
Fairfax County has also had 12 homicides for 2018 year-to-date. Since January 1, 2016, there have been a total of 51 homicides in Fairfax County.
For Montgomery County, there have been 16 homicides in 2016, 21 homicides in 2017, and 11 homicides 2018 year-to-date, for a total of 48 homicides in Montgomery County since January 1, 2016.
Fairfax and Montgomery County have nearly identical populations of 1 million each.
Also, between January 1, 2017 and September 13, 2017, there were a total of 15 homicides in Montgomery County.
As noted above, between January 1, 2017 and September 13, 2017, there were a total of 11 homicides in Montgomery County.
It seems that hobo activity has increased in Bethesda since the otherwise very nice Connie Morella Library (re-)opened.
12:14/3:53: Very misleading article, if that is how WTOP is reporting it. For example, by excluding 2018, they failed to report that rape is up a whopping 53% in Montgomery County this year. Violent gang crime is up 72%. Murder is up 10%, on top of a 31% spike last year.
7:48: A factual post is not stupid. Your attempt to discredit the truth is.
"Murder is up 10%"
No, you are just plain wrong, Dyer. You are cherry-picking the numbers for early August.
between January 1, 2017 and September 13, 2017, there were a total of 15 homicides in Montgomery County.
As noted above, between January 1, 2018 and September 13, 2018, there were a total of 11 homicides in Montgomery County.
That's a decline of 27% over this same period last year. And if there are fewer than 5 additional homicides in the remaining 3 1/2 months of 2018, the toll for 2018 will fall behind that of 2016.
9:54: Riemer strengthened the monopoly by A) not calling for the full privatization of the monopoly in his "nighttime economy" initiative, and B) instead backing the MoCo cartel's Potempkin Village strategy of putting private sector cosmetics on the same total government liquor monopoly pig. "The new boss is from the private sector, and he's going to run it like a private company!!!!" LOL Why not just privatize it, then?
Montgomery County's elected officials are corrupt from stem to stern.
8:13: You are the only one who can make any sense of your word and math salad. WTF? You take a piece of 2018 out and claim it's the rate for the whole year? And that we should celebrate now, because it's within the realm of possibility that there would be less murders in the coming months?
You are desperate, man. Desperate.
We are on-course to top last year, which itself was a 31% spike in murders.
Saith Dyer: "You take a piece of 2018 out and claim it's the rate for the whole year?"
What @ 8:13 PM actually said: "Between January 1, 2017 and September 13, 2017, there were a total of 15 homicides in Montgomery County.
"As noted above, between January 1, 2018 and September 13, 2018, there were a total of 11 homicides in Montgomery County.
"That's a decline of 27% over this same period last year."
Are you fucking illiterate, Dyer? The comparison was between the same periods in each year.
8:27: Nobody calculates murder rates by a partial period of a year. Secondly, where do you even get those homicide numbers? The police department official numbers haven't even been released for the summer months and September. Based on the last official MCPD stats, murders are up 10% this year. How did we go from having more than last year in a July report to magically having less than last year in just two months? You just have to punch yourself and admit you are wrong - crime is up in MoCo. You can't just cherry pick parts of the year, and fantasize about future numbers, and then claim murders are down (although your bosses on the soft-on-crime County Council would approve).
Do the zombies represent his mindless supporters or the mindless blogs he started to give himself good "press"?
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