The rumors were true: Sephora will be taking over the Spanish Diner space at 7271 Woodmont Avenue at Bethesda Row. The addition of the beauty and cosmetics retailer in what has been a restaurant space for decades will continue property owner Federal Realty's trend in recent years of favoring retail over new dining tenants at the development. Sephora has a North Bethesda location at Federal Realty's Pike & Rose development, as well as another in Bethesda at Westfield Montgomery Mall. Spanish Diner closed last month.
18 comments:
Add shoplifting flash mob thugs to yer' bingo card, folks!
Oodles of tiny expensive items with such a high markup they're unlikely to invoke the po po so we will have yet another crime magnet. Too skeptical? Let's see.
Interesting swap!
Let's call a spade a spade.
Bethesda is gradually morphing into Silver Spring 2.0.
By buzz-in or appointment only like Lens Crafters and others...you watch.
Huh? Silver Spring doesn't even have a Sephora. Pike & Rose 2.0 or Downtown Crown 2.0 or Friendship Heights 2.0 might have made sense, but I guess that doesn't convey whatever classist or racist point you're trying to make.
Spanish Eyeliner
Nope
5:33, want to bet how soon Sephora is going to have to "hire" off duty police on that corner too? Upside, might bring business to DIG.
@5:33, SS may not share our specific retail spaces, but we have in common with our more more down-market neighbors to the east an increasing frequency of crime, and that often of an increasingly violent nature. I guess that doesn’t convey the thoroughly disproven idea of a classless society you’re trying to evoke, but the truth frequently disappoints fantasies such as yours, however noble your intent. Armed robberies and car jackings are not something with which Bethesda used to contend. They, and other violent crimes, do occur here now, and not infrequently.
May I suggest, if you are going to contest an opinion here, your stance should at least be reality-based. Racism/classism do not enter into observing the simple fact that, like Silver Spring, where violent crime is a daily or near-daily occurrence, Bethesda is seeing the frequency of such events increasing. The opening [proximal to the Bethesda Metro and, perhaps eventually, Purple Line stations] of a high-end retail chain with a national reputation for attracting organized gangs of brazen, sweep-the-shelves, garbage-bag-filling thieves is more likely than not going to wind up being the site where similar criminal acts take place. Please note, my prediction makes no reference to either class or race. (Fun fact: one crew of now-arrested cosmetics-stealers turned out to be hitting stores in various states as they were guided in their criminality by a California woman who was living high off the hog in a tony suburban neighborhood.) It isn’t the skin color or an ignorance of which club is best to use when chipping in from the fringe that dismays people. What rankles is the ease and comfort some people have with behaving lawlessly. Reading here of the impending opening of a store that is popular among thieves leads some area residents, I among them, to believe Sephora’s arrival will prove an alluring target for those with the aforementioned ease and comfort engaging in criminal misconduct. That prediction is neither racist nor classist; it is statistical.
Why is "hire" in scare quotes?
I'm really scared of the perfume store. I'm not sure how I'm going to fall asleep tonight. How do people in Chevy Chase and North Bethesda live like this??
7:07 'planning,' 'foresight,' 'trends,' 'analysis,' 'realities,' 'cause and effect,' 'nurture trumping nature,' together with 'insurance,' business plans/models,' and 'externalizing liabilities and costs' are concepts we collectively need to respect and understand if we want to get ahead of the same issues all around us. If everything were all sunshine, light, and unicorns, we wouldn't even need zoning, much less the additional police and private security presence we already have to endure, and obviously pay for.
7:03 , it's not abundantly clear that the 'magnet' stores such as Nike, Lululemon, MAC and maybe now Sephora are picking up costs of their now necessary hiring of MoCoPoPo. We get the blue lights for free, tho.
Some background on how Sephora and many other similar cosmetic aggregators work: cosmetic manufacturers essentially lease space in such stores and are known as 'rack jobbers' historically. The public facing entity, in this case Sephora, often only pays the cosmetics supplier for what goes thru their register, not with what is jobbers on the rack. There is little incentive to thwart theft unless it's violent newsmaking, or massive. That's part of the reason it's so attractive to thieves: fewer repercussions. The result is, underreported crime, and simply more criminals and opportunists now circulating in your 'hood.
The mark up, and 'costs of doing business' still are attractive to companies such as maybe Sephora often with little regard for the communities they profit from.
Nowadays it's security only for those who pay additionally for it. The rest of us cannot be trusted to protect ourselves or our property.
Whoops, meant to say "nature trumping nurture,' above!
Yup. The Bethesda Lenscrafters has a sign that says to wait to be buzzed in.
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