Sam’s Park & Shop would seem the ideal setting for neighborhood-based retail — a small strip shopping center on busy Connecticut Avenue adjacent to the Cleveland Park Metro station and catty-corner to the Uptown Theater.
The Cosi sandwich chain thought it had found a prime location there for its newest D.C. outlet. But after a wearying struggle over zoning regulations, the lunchtime staple has opted to move on, and now a mattress store is pursuing that vacant storefront.
The failure of Cosi to find space in Cleveland Park exemplifies a debate much larger than a single zoning battle, landlords and neighborhood residents agree. That dispute is at the heart of something no less significant than competing visions of what the venerable old neighborhood should be and what it will become.
“I get a sense sometimes that some people want to turn Cleveland Park back into the way it was decades ago,” said Bill Adler, co-moderator of the Cleveland Park e-mail list. “Everyone’s got their own image of what they like and they don’t like.”
At the Park & Shop, two retail spaces are empty. And more vacancies are found in a strip of aging storefronts nearby.
Landlords blame zoning restrictions that prohibit new restaurants from moving in. Proponents of those restrictions argue landlords are raising rents and holding out for tenants willing to pay. Still others would welcome new dining establishments by lifting the restrictions entirely.
Preserving the community is crucial, said Phyllis Gestrin, a resident since 1989. Most homeowners, she said, “would probably value more the maintenance of the neighborhood as it is.” It’s the renters, she says, who want to turn Cleveland Park into a wine-and-dine locality.
“I moved in here because I love the atmosphere,” Gestrin said. “I like that I can take my grandson to the neighborhood and introduce him to the guy who owns the cleaners.”
Despite its urban locale, Cleveland Park is viewed by many as thefirst suburban-like stop on Metro’s Red Line north of Woodley Park. It is a community where the fading 1950s-era storefront facades and family-owned businesses are preserved and protected by historic and commercial overlay districts — pockets where greater restrictions are layered on top of the neighborhood’s zoning regulations.
“It’s kind of like a little village we live in,” said Jay Morris, the 29-year owner of Brothers Sewing & Vacuum. “We see the same people over and over. People who live in Cleveland Park live here because it’s like a small family.”
But a growing number of residents, many in theirs 20s and 30s, view the zoning limitations as obstacles to progress — indiscriminate regulations that fail to grasp the difference between a nightclub and a sandwich shop.
“You’ve got a lot of people who like living in an urban environment despite the traffic and noise,” said Avram Fechter, a Cleveland Park Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner. “That’s part of the charm.”
The neighborhood historic district limits building heights and protects facades, while the commercial overlay restricts the number of restaurants allowed on a two-block stretch of Connecticut Avenue between Macomb and Porter streets.
The debate is exemplified in Cosi’s battle to have a presence in the Park & Shop. The District’s zoning administrator ruled earlier this year that Cleveland Park is already above its eatery limit — defined as 25 percent of the storefronts along Connecticut — and banned the sandwich shop from locating there.
Cosi appealed the ruling to the Board of Zoning Adjustments, and a hearing was scheduled for September. But Ralph Ours, leasing associate with shopping center owner Federal Realty, said the lunchtime favorite has given up and now wants to buy out of its lease.
“It’s unfortunate,” Ours said. “We thought Cosi was a tenant that would fit the neighborhood.”
For now, he said, Federal Realty has stopped marketing the strip to boutique coffee and sandwich shops. It is, however, being pursued by a mattress store.
Is Cleveland Park already saturated with places to eat, or is there room for more? It is home to at least 20 eating and drinking establishments, a mix of chains and locally owned fare.
There are those who contend the overlay is at least partly responsible for empty storefronts. It stands, they say, in the way of market forces and more dining-out choices.
“Restaurants I strongly believe are an important force to a neighborhood’s vitality,” Adler said. “They bring people outside.”
But by lifting the overlay, other residents respond, Cleveland Park would degenerate into an “entertainment destination” consumed by chain restaurants and crowds of outsiders — another Van Ness or Adams Morgan, they fear. If the zoning rules were consistently enforced, they say, landlords such as Federal Realty would be compelled to target no-restaurant retailers for their spaces, ensuring a diversity of shopping options for residents.
“Once building owners realize that they can’t keep a storefront vacant waiting for a high-rent restaurant when the overlay limit is exceeded, they will lease to other types of establishments,” ANC-3A Chairman Nancy Macwood recently wrote on the Cleveland Park e-mail list.
Twenty-year neighborhood resident Virginia Austin said Cleveland Park is “turning into Georgetown.” Despite its “wonderful food,” she said, her ’burb is overwhelmed on the weekends with bumper-to-bumper traffic, while older businesses are being “driven out.”
The community, Ward 3 D.C. Council Member Mary Cheh said, “obviously has to work through this” by “finding the right formula.”
“You have to work within those constraints but those constraints shouldn’t mean empty storefronts,” she said. “I’d like to see every store occupied and busy with customers.”
Mike Shawe contributed to this article.
