December 2012 RSS Feed

The strongest housing market is a walkable urban neighborhoods, like those in the U Street neighborhood, according to a report by the Fiscal Times, a newly started online business publication tied to the Washington Post.

Neighborhood walkability in D.C. draws homebuyers who want a small town feel in a big city as neighborhood walkability makes a trip to the grocery store feel more intimate than a grocery store trip by car would feel in the suburbs.

While Washington D.C. does boast a strong mass transit system with the Metro and busses, it’s the neighborhood walkability that connects homeowners to their surrounding blocks, fostering a sense of community. Zillow, a residential real estate website, often scores neighborhood walkability in its listings.

No matter whether you’ve been naughty or nice, D.C.’s holiday season is shaping up with a wide array of fun this year, starting with the D.C. Santa Crawl.

The D.C. Santa Crawl is billed as D.C.’s “biggest holiday event” (although I don’t see how it can top the Nutcracker) and offers a holiday-themed barhopping even in the downtown area. It runs from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. next Saturday, Dec. 8. It’s $15 if you register online or $20 that day. You get a refillable mug and access to some specialty and discount D.C. holiday fun beverages.

The whole crawl includes some great little bars – BlackFinn, Recessions, Public Bar, The Bottom Line, Irish Whiskey, The Mighty Pint, Ozio, and Black Rooster Pub. Many bars are right at Farragut Square, where I used to work,…

A new Walmart is coming to the Chinatown area on H Street near the intersection with New Jersey Avenue NW in Ward 6.  It will be next to Gonzaga High School and across from the Government Printing Office.  The Walmart coming to Chinatown will be one of the first Walmart stores in the country to have apartments in the complex, making it the most urban of the new Walmart stores coming to DC.

The new development will include a 4-story 85,000-square-foot Walmart Supercenter encased in large glass windows.  This is about half the size of an average Walmart, but within that Supercenter, shoppers will find 40,000 square feet of grocery and pharmacy areas.  Surrounding the Walmart coming to the Chinatown area will be a mixed-use building containing retail at…