DowntownDC BID Launches Annual Retail Survey

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Each summer, members of the DowntownDC BID’s economic development team grab bottles of water and clipboards and take to the streets of Downtown to catalog every single first floor, second floor and basement retailer and every available retail space within the 138-block Downtown BID area.
 
Last week, the team got out their clipboards and readied their spreadsheets. Clothing store? Restaurant? How many square feet? The information will all be culled and analyzed to create exclusive data about DowntownDC that will be made available to the public.
 
The BID’s first retail survey was conducted in the early 2000s, prior to the opening of Gallery Place, H&M and Zara. The only remaining destination retailers from that time are Macy’s, Banana Republic, Radio Shack and Barnes & Noble. 
 
Today, the retail survey is a much more interesting and complex project.
 
Due to DowntownDC’s growing popularity as a retail destination and a retail status that has begun to rival major local shopping districts, the survey will take five to six weeks to complete.
 
But the end product yields valuable data regarding the type of existing retail, square footage for each occupied and potential first floor and basement retail space in the Downtown BID, which is all sought after by local developers and other interested parties each year.
 
This information then becomes part of the annual State of Downtown report, which offers the public detailed statistics and analysis related to square footage by category of retail, unoccupied space, areas under construction and exact locations of retail. [Download the complete 2013 State of Downtown report here.]
 
This data undertaking has significantly increased in scope this year as retail has begun to boom in the Downtown BID.
 
The retail vacancy rate dropped to 8.1 percent in 2013 from 9.7 percent in 2012 as developers snatch up available space. Luxury retail openings at CityCenterDC, developed by Hines, growth along F Street through Douglas Development, and other retail openings have significantly increased retail offerings in the BID, which will reach a peak of approximately 840,000 SF of destination retail at the end of this year.
 
The largest BID retailer by far remains Macy’s at 227,000 SF, followed by Forever 21 with 65,000 SF and Bed Bath & Beyond with 47,800 SF.
 
In addition to clothing and apparel retailers, currently 15 new destination restaurants plan to open in the BID in 2014 (which includes five planned openings at CityCenterDC) for a total of 156 destination restaurants by the end of the year. An average of 11 new restaurants have opened in Downtown annually between 1999 and 2013.
 
The 2014 restaurant openings will significantly offset expected restaurant closings, which have averaged 7 per year in Downtown between 1999 and 2013.
 
Stay tuned later this summer for details from our retail survey!