“To some degree, Covid had a cleansing effect on various retail markets, and I think Georgetown is one of those,” Dochter & Alexander Retail Advisors principal Dave Dochter said. “I think what you’re going to see coming back in Georgetown is going to be much more exciting for the consumer.”

A few months into the pandemic, Jason and Yuri Oberbillig began selling Japanese and French-inspired pastries from a tiny counter at the front of Cleveland Park Italian restaurant Al Volo. The compact pop-up operation, SakuSaku Flakerie, allowed guests to order a coffee and pastry to go or bring their goodies to the serene patio behind the restaurant, well before the dinner crowd arrived.

Four hundred D.C. commercial real estate professionals came together Tuesday evening at The Ritz-Carlton in the West End to bestow honors to the top-performing brokers and most respected executives in the industry.

After ceding ground to upstart neighborhoods, one of the oldest retail destinations in D.C. has mounted a comeback. Georgetown has seen retail vacancy fall by 7 percentage points since it peaked at 20% in the spring of 2021, according to Dochter & Alexander Retail Advisors. The submarket has roughly 1.6M SF of total retail space. Direct-to-consumer brands and smaller tenants looking for a prestige address to showcase their products are leading the charge, retail brokers in the area told Bisnow.

Retail vacancies have begun to come down from their pandemic highs across the Metropolitan Washington region, but not in Downtown D.C. The District’s central business district’s vacancy has risen from 6.6% in winter 2020 to 20.7% this summer, according to new research by retail advisory firm Dochter & Alexander. The East End‘s vacancy rose from 9.2% to 21.2%. Combined, there is more than 800K SF of vacant high street retail in the heart of the nation’s capital. Those office-heavy areas are lagging behind the rest of the region, where high-street retail vacancy dropped overall vacancy rate to just over 14%, down from about 15.8% last fall.

Certain areas of the city are recovering more swiftly. While downtown and other office-heavy districts remain soft, the 14th Street corridor continues to be an active place, said Dochter & Alexander Retail Advisors principal and co-founder Dave Dochter. But within those submarkets lie further particularities, Dochter said. “Is it a well-positioned corner with good ceiling heights and outdoor space and appropriate infrastructure? You’re in a good place,” Dochter said. “Are you mid-block with low ceiling heights? Then no.”