Feb 16, 2011

In Washington, a Historic Retail Strip Is RevivedBy Terry PristinNYTimes.com

In recent years Barracks Row, a shopping strip on Eighth Street southeast of the Capitol that had languished since the 1960s, has been transformed building by building and block by block into a popular destination for residents and Congressional employees seeking an ethnic meal or an offbeat gift.

The movement to revive Barracks Row, one of the oldest retail corridors in Washington, goes back more than a decade. But the neighborhood really took off once a group of distinctive restaurants began to arrive in 2004.

Now local business and community leaders would like to extend the shopping strip southward and provide a more inviting link to the nearby Nationals ballpark and the residential area that is rapidly growing around it.

Part of Barracks Row is across from the barracks that house Marines who are charged with protecting federal buildings. The pedestrian-friendly stretch of small-scale buildings starts at D Street, a short walk from the venerable Capitol Hill fixture Eastern Market, and runs south to M Street. The northern part of the row has more than 30 restaurants as well as dozens of professional offices and independent stores that would be priced out of more established shopping districts. Its vacancy rate hovers around 5 percent, said Martin Smith, the executive of Barracks Row Main Street, the public-private group that has guided the makeover.

But like many cities around the country, Washington is stuck with the consequences of allowing a highway to slash through an urban neighborhood. In 1962, the Southeast Freeway bisected Barracks Row. “That became the moat,” said Michael Stevens, the executive director of the Capitol Riverfront Business Improvement District, which has helped to promote development around the new ballpark. “It created a large physical barrier.”

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